Technology, Talent, IP, and AI: Exploring the Foundations of Modern Hedge Fund Architecture w/ Lucas Rooney | S2E6

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Nov 11, 2025

Lucas Rooney, an investor and technologist, shares insights on building a hedge fund from the ground up. He discusses the vital '0 to 1' journey, emphasizing strategic tech decisions and recruiting top talent with clear vision. AI's impact on fund management is a hot topic, as Lucas explains how it reshapes data handling and the capture of intellectual property. The implications of AI on compensation structures are also explored, particularly how firms must adapt when knowledge can be instantly codified.

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ADVICE

Validate Idea And Choose Build Vs Buy

Diligence your fund idea with talent and allocator feedback before building.
Decide early on where to build versus buy core technology to avoid wasted effort.

ADVICE

Four Core Technology Layers

Build four core layers: data/ETL, analytics, trading/operations, and risk monitoring.
Design each layer to connect seamlessly and expose the attributes investors need for decision making.

INSIGHT

AI Forces Better Taxonomy

AI shifts focus toward taxonomy, labeling, and codifying thought processes from day one.
Better labels and process documentation improve human collaboration even without advanced AI.

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Welcome back to The Hedgineer Podcast. In this episode, host Michael Watson sits down with crowd-favorite returning guest, Lucas Rooney.

Lucas pulls back the curtain on the "0 to 1" journey of building a new fund, from diligencing the initial idea and recruiting top-tier talent to making the critical "build vs. buy" decisions for a foundational technology stack.

But how does launching a fund today differ from just a few years ago? One answer is AI.

Michael and Lucas dive deep into how the proliferation of AI reframes the entire approach to building systems, forcing a new focus on taxonomy, data labeling, and codifying the "thought process" of an investment from day one.

The conversation shifts to one of the most critical questions facing the industry: How do incentive structures change when an individual's knowledge and intellectual property (IP) can be instantly captured and instilled into the organization's systems?. They explore how firms must re-evaluate compensation and talent, as value shifts from executing perfunctory tasks to the high-level synthesis and compounding of IP.

🎧 In This Episode, We Discuss:

The "0 to 1" process of launching a new fund.
Key strategies for recruiting passionate technologists and investors.
The foundational tech stack: Designing the data/ETL, analytical, trading, and risk layers from scratch.
How AI forces better data hygiene and process documentation.
The "IP Capture" Problem: Rethinking talent compensation when AI can learn and retain an employee's knowledge permanently.
Why hiring is shifting from "task execution" to "IP synthesis" and "compounding".
The "Negative Space": Why capturing the bad ideas and hypotheses you didn't run is the next frontier for evaluating skill.

Hosted by Michael Watson, The Hedgineer Podcast dives into AI technology and data in the hedge fund, asset management, and prop trading space.

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