And as that most of our trading is machine to machine. We're counting in single microseconds, and when I look at wireless and human response time, the newer five G and even some of the optimizations of four G right now are getting down to twenty milliseconds. So if you can get down to the single digit millisecond latency, all of a sudden, it opens up the door for a brand new set of machine to machine applications. I think there's a big new industry in there somewhere. Welcome to the restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than a decade really learning about technology one makes it take and then describing and explaining that to my audience. But it's the conversations with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the leaders at the intersection of technology and business, that fascinate me the most. In partnership with T Mobile for Business, I explore the unique EAK set of challenges that see I O S and C t o S face from advancements in cloud and edge computing, software as a service, Internet of things, and of course five G. We are often left wondering how the leading minds and business continued to thrive. Let's find out. Our guest today is Brad Peterson, executive vice president and chief Technology and Chief Information Officer for NASDAK. Brad has extensive experience in the financial and tech sectors. That experience informs his unique approach to defining challenges and solutions while serving both internal and external partners at NASDAK and meeting their technological needs. Brad, thank you so much for being here with us today, And before we really dive into your role and your experience and your leadership philosophy, I wanted to learn a little bit more about you. So when did you first get interested in the field of technology. My father worked at Ford and he came home one day and said, there are gonna be a hundreds of computers in cars in the future. And I didn't even know what a computer was, so it was it sounded pretty fascinating, and so I asked him a little more about what was so special about a computer, and so he made it very personal and said, well, someday it's actually going to be able to do your homework for you. And at that point hooked. So I've got something that I don't have to do it someone else is going to do it. Of course, we may get into that about how far away your your general intelligence and your ability of computers to do your homework fully, But that was the day I think I remember getting hooked on this while your father was very forward thinking, because I think the average car now has between fifty and a hundred fifty CPUs and it so right on the money. Well, what was your first job in the field. I started as a programmer at a bank, and I was able to do something applying programming to business problems versus in school. You were pretty much solving kind of scientific and mathematical problems, and I found that pretty interesting. That's something that resonates with me, the idea of taking stuff you have learned through your academic experience and then applying it to real world situations. Skipping far enough ahead, when did you join the team of Nasdaq? When did that actually happen and what was your initial role? Well, I joined in two thousand thirteen, right at the beginning of the year. I would say the same role that I have today, although our company has changed, so my role in leading technology is ever changing. I was recruited to New York City and really think about the future of NASDAC and help form the strategy and and move more towards a technology oriented company. Verse is the heritage of a financial services exchange that that applied technology, which really was the seed of of NAZZAC. It's spent fifty years now, so we celebrate our fiftieth anniversary. That's incredible. And to be brought in right at the beginning of something so transformational, I'm sure that was really exciting. And you oversee roles of of c I O and c t O. Do those roles intertwined pretty naturally or do you find it it's more compartmentalized that you're It's very much holistic. And I would say my last two roles I was both c I O and CTO. I came from Schwab where I had both. And if you think about the c I O role at NAZZAC, we run all the technology for ourselves and that includes the traditional c I O role that is technology used by employees, whereas the CTO is building the technology sell to customers. But we have a huge amount of technology that is above and beyond any normal technologies supplied employees. But for our exchanges in North America and and in Europe, so you think about that. In a lot of companies they are not intertwined very much. In NASDAC, it is an intertwined C I O CTO role and the lines blur quite a bit. How do you describe your role to somebody. Let's say you're at a cocktail party and someone says, so, what do you do? Well, I swim laps to work out, So if if I'm going to be cold and need to start swimming again, I'll just say I run technology at NASDAC. So I wouldn't do that to you, But if I'm in a pool, that's my quick answer, and they usually try and stop me to say what does that mean? And if they don't, then I know they're not interested and that was sufficient. But I would say that the role that I play, obviously is a leadership one. It's really important to communicate with the other leaders of the business. What are the implications of technology trends and specifically disruptive technologies that might offer us, first an opportunity, So where can we spot something that we think is going to emerge and surprise everyone at the pace that it comes because of the nature of the technology, but also be on the lookout for disruptive technologies that could disrupt our businesses. There's both sides of it. There's the positive and there's the negative. And if you're looking out close enough and tuning to all the things that are going on in the world, which of which there are many, you can distill it down to a list of about a dozen technologies that create opportunity or risk for your business. I think our team is pretty well versed at this point after hanging out for eight years. I think we've tuned into in most cases the right trends and then positioned ourselves well to improve our business and certainly keep our business vibrant and alive and modern. Speaking of your team, how big is your partment? How many people do you manage? So we're over two thousand, two thousand sixty four to be exact, and the company is just about We are not quite half, but I would say given our strategy and our trajectory, the technology organization will become more than half the company in the long run. A lot of companies like to claim that they are technology companies. So I like to look at a couple of things. One is, do you sell technology to customers? Do they actually pay you for technology, and we check the box there. So we are the number one provider of technology to other exchanges and corporations with our corporate platforms. And then it's what percentage of your workforce are technologists? And there I think usually if if you're over fifty, it's another clear check the box. So we're close on that front and clearly qualifying the other. Well, you've you've touched on something that I want to know a little or about. I think a lot of people when they think of NASDAK might think of it as quote unquote just a stock market where you know a lot of trading activity happens. But how would you describe what NASDAK is and what it does to kind of clear away that misconception. I'm going to give you an answer I've never given before, so you get some unique content here if you unpack what NAZDAC does stand for. Did Originally it's the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System. We are not that anymore. We're now a global company and automated quotation system is very limiting. We do a lot more than just automated quotations. We absolutely do run markets as you mentioned, and they trade. We have clearing system we have surveillance systems, and we have recently purchased an anti financial crime company. When I do answer the question, now, I first start with the NAS a market that everyone knows and gives us so much brand awareness and prominence every day on TV. It is that and it's a great business, but it is also corporate platforms. We provide governance solutions for companies to run their board meetings. We have tools for the investor relations officer. So when a company goes public, there's a lot of things they have to do quickly to go from adolescents to adulthood. We've been asked what are the best tools, so we decide why not provide them ourselves. And then E s G. Environment, Social and governance is a big new trend. We see a role of expanding our corporate platforms into helping companies really up their game in terms of e s G. Awareness and communication, and then investor intelligence. Within that is our index business, which is a phenomenal business in its own outright. And then the final one is market technology. We're in a unique position because we run our own exchanges in the Nordics and the us, so we get great depth of understanding what it takes to run a market reliably with capacity, with security and performance, and we're able to sell to folks that traditionally in an industry might be your competitors, but because exchanges in capital markets are geographically franchised, we're able to be a provider without the normal worries that you might be doing business with a competitor. It's quite a unique business and we're the leader by far in that business. We call it market infrastructure Operators, where we will sell them our trade and clearing, surveillance, risk management systems. I very much appreciated that Brad demystified NASDAC for me, giving me a clearer picture as to the role of the organization plays. With that established, I felt it was time to dive into learning more about Brad's approach to leadership, and one thing I really wanted to know was how is journey through different industries informed his approach to leadership in MAZDAC. Yeah, I would say in hindsight that has been one of the best experiences. I didn't design it that way, but just this opportunity to work in financial services, in telecommunications and any commerce everyone. I learned something along the way. It really started in telecommunications. I observed they were implementing something called Signaling System seven, which was a out of band control network that really flattened the whole telcom network itself. So I took that away from my first job and saying, that's a brilliant architecture. So every industry has provided me with a view into a unique architecture that I have looked for in the new industries is this applicable? And certainly out of band signaling and control is very much a buzzword today of observe ability, and in telcom it was telemetry. But that is how you understand today what sas products where your uptake is how you can improve your product. The full improvement cycle is really this notion of instrumenting. You know what's happening. And fortunately modern sas products lend themselves towards incredible instrumentation and data about what's what's really happening real time and gives you a chance to recover so versus a physical product. And then at eBay, what's interesting is if you think about shopping, you're consuming huge amounts of product information just visually, and then periodically you'll stop in your brows and pick something, compare and and buy it. So if you think about the asymmetry to the amount of products you look at to the transactions, the architecture that I was exposed to an eBay was about massive amounts of simulation of someone browsing if you will, they're kind of virtually walking and shopping to the transactions when they actually buy. So we had this massive read infrastructure, and it brought on the advent of a big data. Really it was some of the early applications. It's amazing hearing these experiences you had as various transformational technologies were starting to emerge and mature. I love that. That also leads me to the next question, which is that you've worked in cutting edge technology companies and industries, you've worked in finance. What is it about these sorts of jobs that really appeals to you. Well, there is an attraction. So I did get some advice early on that the industry you pick has more to do with your your outcome and quality of life than what you do with that industry. So I married that was something I also learned at the time called positive network externalities in economics and it's been shortened to networks effects. So I'm very much attracted to industries where networks effects are in play. And you know, simply it's something becomes more valuable the more people are on the network if you will or are connected via that product or service. eBay was one of the grandest examples of it. So I would say I do look for companies that do have some network's effects attributes in their business model. If there's one thing most businesses can agree on these days, it's that change has never come about so quickly. New ways of working have become the norm. As a result, the status quo no longer cuts it when it comes to helping businesses adapt and innovate. That's why T Mobile for Business uses unconventional thinking to help businesses work smarter and grow faster. Only T Mobile offers America's largest and fastest five gene network. It's just one reason they're better able to help businesses solve the real world challenges they face as they evolve. For instance, their new WFX solutions help team members stay connected and productive where work happens. With nearly two and a half times the network coverage of a T and T nearly four times more than Verizon and forty billion dollars invested in network and business improvements over the next three years. T Mobile for Business is better for your business right now and into the future. See what they can do for your organization at T mobile dot com. Slash Unconventional Open Signal awarded T mobile fastest five G network based on average speeds. USA five G User Experience Report January. Capable device required coverage not available in some areas. Some users may require certain planner feature see T mobile dot com. As Brad pointed out, the network effect describes an organization that increases in value as you add more people to that network. Organizations that benefit from the network effect have more opportunities to create products internally and externally that can have an exponentially powerful impact as the network grows, and so Brad's experiences and industries that have that network effect clearly played a part in guiding his career. I wanted to shift the conversation over to emerging technologies, and as you all know, I'm fascinated by the seemingly limitless applications of five G connectivity. I also knew that Brad had once said at a conference that while the high throughput of five G is amazing. What he was personally excited about was the low latency associated with five G. I asked him if he could expand upon that. Sure, We in NAZDAC, most of our trading is machine to machine. We're counting in single microseconds, and when I look at wireless and human response time is you know, hundred to three hundred milliseconds. The newer five G and even some of the optimizations of four G right now are getting down to twenty milliseconds. So if if you can get down to the single digit millisecond latency and you can improve the determinism and the reliability, all of a sudden, it opens up the door for a brand new set of machine to machine applications. And I think that is first of all, incredibly exciting because I don't even know what they are. I could posit what they're up, I would be wrong. But there's going to be something that emerges and we go, this is wonderful um that we can do that. It's a machine to machine and then it's married with edge compute. And what you're seeing is the major cloud providers are extending their cloud infrastructure. They're doing deals with the telecom providers. It also may play into self driving cars or other communication and with localized infrastructure that now is enabled with communications capability that you can just think about new ways of dynamically pricing them. So that's why when I first thought about the lower latency and reliability coupled with the greater capacity of of five GUM started my my creative juices going, I think there's a big new industry in there somewhere. I couldn't agree more. I always look at at certain developments and technology as being kind of a seesaw where you'll see one side of technology make sudden improvements and leave another side of it behind, and then eventually there becomes a rebalancing, and the emergence of five g to me, is one of those where you say, oh, the thing that used to be the bottleneck is no longer a bottleneck, and now all the things that you wish you could have done with that technology but you were limited because of those barriers there no longer an issue. So now now what is standing in your way? I remember when I first started hearing the phrase Internet of things, and it didn't really mean anything to me, And now we live in a world where billions of devices are connected to networks. What's your view of Internet things as an emerging technology? Are there ways that you're eager to leverage IoT in what you do? Yes, Where we specifically would apply it at NASDAC is this notion of anything that is statically priced that should be dynamically priced. So we we because we're in the market's business, if you will, we start to see everything in terms of a market. And what if you had better resource allocation, because you could run a mini market and and allocate those resources in a different way. And however you want to design that market. You know, whatever what is the market structure of it could yield the outcome. But that's where IoT fits in. That's where the five G low latent machine to machine fits in. Where you might not even know that a market was run, that you put out a bid for something and it happens, the market crosses, it fulfills at the right price, and you haven't even used up your think time yet. So building applications like that, And the simplest one is, let's just go to New York City around Madison Square Garden when there's an event there, a concert, the parking should be more expensively closer in you are and less the further out you are. But it's it's statically priced, or it's starting to become dynamically priced. But but that's just a great example of if if the car and the parking space can mediate, and you then get directed to that parking space and you accept your you've given your car a limit order if you will, and it accepts on your behalf, so you're you're not even in the loop, and you're you know, wow, I had to park three blocks of way when I went to the last concert and two blocks away this time, and I gave it a fifteen dollar you know, limit order. That's pretty cool. So all those things huge productivity, left huge revenue opportunity for UM. For you know, a city like New York so so and and it's technology that's here right, you could you could see that that happening. So those kinds of things to me, UM, I get really excited about running markets, building technology and and I think micro markets UM is one of my favorite examples. I actually really love that example too. It makes me think of having a having a negotiation with my with my app about how much I'm willing to pay for the convenience of not having to walk too far to get to a venue that speaks to be on a very personal level. Or maybe content, you know, the media content when you're confronted with something you haven't subscribed to but you really want to read it, and there's a micro market opportunity there as well. I come across things all the time and in some cases I think I would love to pay for this one specific piece of content, but I don't really have that option. If there were a more broad approach to this, then I would probably be far more likely to go through those avenues and my in my research, so that really speaks to me too. Well. What would you say would be the most important technological change in the last few years with regard to uh TO, to the work at NASDAC Well, I would say we're right now studying other companies like Stripe and Twilio and this concept of innovation by combination, So you the building blocks are there in terms of a P I S and and just the acceleration of of of those companies being able to go global and and I think Stripe is quoted as saying they have over a million customers just that incredible growth because they made their products so consumable by engineers. So that trend of the engineer now is the one that buys your product. So they integrated in, they test it, they see that it works, and now you have a business that starts to grow organically from the build point when the engineer discovers it. We're decomposing our markets to to be consumable a p I S and then what we want to do is see who who creatively finds uses for those So that kind of comes back to I just think it's fascinating how that has happened so quickly. Yeah, it really creates an opportunity for collaboration. Well, then, who, in your opinion in tech leadership is really killing it right now? Who are the people you look to and you say, this person really has their finger on the pulse of what is going on. Well, I've been listening in clubhouse to Mark Andresen and I do always learn something. Mark has incredible insight to what's going on. Of course he's sitting right at the edge of everyone that comes in, you know that's doing something interesting. And then on the business side, I would say Patrick Collison and his brother John at Stripe, So they they are incredibly thoughtful people for especially for their age. I'm just very impressed with how they're going about building their company, how they're learning about, you know, problems in the world and addressing them in a responsible way. So I just think they're they're too outstanding. UM entrepreneurs who are who are building a great company? Great answer. We've talked about quite a few technologies so far. I found that people can have misconceptions about some tech sometimes because the definitions get ambiguous. I'm thinking about stuff like artificial intelligence or machine learning. I'm curious, what do you see as the most widely misunderstood technology, most misunderstood I would say probably the whole crypto right now, and certainly what is unique about all the different cryptocurrencies. So even with bitcoin, I I always asked someone, did you read the paper, the the original PDF that's on the internet. Um, that's nine pages long, and no one almost no one says yes, I've read it. So I always go go read it. It's not bad, you know, and maybe you get down to page five or six, and if you don't have a technical background, it starts to to get difficult to understand. But the first five pages are tremendous about what it is. Then there's all these cryptocurrencies. I think algorand Is is a great one. I up and to have studied that one, and they're solving real problems the cost of the mining and the block verification is brilliant, and then also trying to solve the centralization of the mining in certain parts of the world. So I think they have a real purpose. So they've they've gone about it. And then some are scalability and transaction rates, but a lot of them, um, I think people are investing them and they have no idea what what is the foundational if there is any algorith and Bitcoin have an ethereum have some foundational unique technology and attributes, most of the other ones don't. And so I would say that to me still seems like very misunderstood about what are the what are they trying to accomplish. I agree. When one of the major ones in the stories is literally a cryptocurrency that was created as kind of a joke and is now having a fairly imp us have run, you do start to wonder how many people bothered to read Satoshi's paper back in the day. So yeah, I think that you are right on the money, so to speak with that one. So Brad, we have time for just one more question. We all know that money never sleeps, even when people make their shut eye. What is it that keeps you up at night? The answer for me what keeps me up at night is a literal one because of the business we're in and we're running critical infrastructure, and then also our customers are using our technology to run their critical infrastructure. There's always some customer that got their market hours around the world, so even in the Middle East, they're running their markets on Sundays and in Asia when I'm supposed to be sleeping, that's daytime for them. It is oftentimes when I have to respond to a crisis, but fortunately those are not every night, otherwise I would not get any sleep. Thank you so much for joining us. I greatly appreciate your time and I've learned a lot just through this conversation, so thank you well. I appreciate you having me, Jonathan look forward to doing it again. What really struck me in my conversation with Brad was how he takes an almost free association approach to problem solving, using his experience in one field to guide his point of view and approach. In another it makes him extremely adaptable. He brings forward solutions that might not seem obvious, but once applied, they become the sort of thing that in hindsight seems like it should have been obvious. It's really hard to spot those solutions in advance, though. It's really the restless ones who are able to take that kind of approach. I feel that much of what we covered from leveraging software as a service to other wild applications and beyond, and of course how the benefits of five G are ripe for new applications that can take advantage of low latency. All of that has widespread applicability and it makes me excited to see what's next. Join us for more conversations with innovative leaders here on the Restless Ones. We'll be speaking with more c I O s and c t O s from different industries to hone in on the skills and tech it takes to be a pioneer. See you next time. These days, new ways of working have become the norm, and the status quo no longer cuts it when it comes to helping businesses evolve and grow. That's why T Mobile for Business uses unconventional thinking to help businesses sees innovation only. T Mobile offers America's largest and fastest five gene network, which makes their new WFX solutions possible, letting businesses stay connected and reductive where work happens. See what T Mobile for Business can do for you at t mobile dot com. Slash Unconventional Open Signal awarded. T Mobile fastest five G network based on average speeds. USA five G User Experience Report, January. Capable device required coverage not available in some areas. Some users may require certain plann or features see mobile dot com

And as that most of our trading is machine to machine. We're counting in single microseconds, and when I look at wireless and human response time, the newer five G and even some of the optimizations of four G right now are getting down to twenty milliseconds. So if you can get down to the single digit millisecond latency, all of a sudden, it opens up the door for a brand new set of machine to machine applications. I think there's a big new industry in there somewhere. Welcome to the restless ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I've spent more than a decade really learning about technology one makes it take and then describing and explaining that to my audience. But it's the conversations with the world's most unconventional thinkers, the leaders at the intersection of technology and business, that fascinate me the most. In partnership with T Mobile for Business, I explore the unique EAK set of challenges that see I O S and C t o S face from advancements in cloud and edge computing, software as a service, Internet of things, and of course five G. We are often left wondering how the leading minds and business continued to thrive. Let's find out. Our guest today is Brad Peterson, executive vice president and chief Technology and Chief Information Officer for NASDAK. Brad has extensive experience in the financial and tech sectors. That experience informs his unique approach to defining challenges and solutions while serving both internal and external partners at NASDAK and meeting their technological needs. Brad, thank you so much for being here with us today, And before we really dive into your role and your experience and your leadership philosophy, I wanted to learn a little bit more about you. So when did you first get interested in the field of technology. My father worked at Ford and he came home one day and said, there are gonna be a hundreds of computers in cars in the future. And I didn't even know what a computer was, so it was it sounded pretty fascinating, and so I asked him a little more about what was so special about a computer, and so he made it very personal and said, well, someday it's actually going to be able to do your homework for you. And at that point hooked. So I've got something that I don't have to do it someone else is going to do it. Of course, we may get into that about how far away your your general intelligence and your ability of computers to do your homework fully, But that was the day I think I remember getting hooked on this while your father was very forward thinking, because I think the average car now has between fifty and a hundred fifty CPUs and it so right on the money. Well, what was your first job in the field. I started as a programmer at a bank, and I was able to do something applying programming to business problems versus in school. You were pretty much solving kind of scientific and mathematical problems, and I found that pretty interesting. That's something that resonates with me, the idea of taking stuff you have learned through your academic experience and then applying it to real world situations. Skipping far enough ahead, when did you join the team of Nasdaq? When did that actually happen and what was your initial role? Well, I joined in two thousand thirteen, right at the beginning of the year. I would say the same role that I have today, although our company has changed, so my role in leading technology is ever changing. I was recruited to New York City and really think about the future of NASDAC and help form the strategy and and move more towards a technology oriented company. Verse is the heritage of a financial services exchange that that applied technology, which really was the seed of of NAZZAC. It's spent fifty years now, so we celebrate our fiftieth anniversary. That's incredible. And to be brought in right at the beginning of something so transformational, I'm sure that was really exciting. And you oversee roles of of c I O and c t O. Do those roles intertwined pretty naturally or do you find it it's more compartmentalized that you're It's very much holistic. And I would say my last two roles I was both c I O and CTO. I came from Schwab where I had both. And if you think about the c I O role at NAZZAC, we run all the technology for ourselves and that includes the traditional c I O role that is technology used by employees, whereas the CTO is building the technology sell to customers. But we have a huge amount of technology that is above and beyond any normal technologies supplied employees. But for our exchanges in North America and and in Europe, so you think about that. In a lot of companies they are not intertwined very much. In NASDAC, it is an intertwined C I O CTO role and the lines blur quite a bit. How do you describe your role to somebody. Let's say you're at a cocktail party and someone says, so, what do you do? Well, I swim laps to work out, So if if I'm going to be cold and need to start swimming again, I'll just say I run technology at NASDAC. So I wouldn't do that to you, But if I'm in a pool, that's my quick answer, and they usually try and stop me to say what does that mean? And if they don't, then I know they're not interested and that was sufficient. But I would say that the role that I play, obviously is a leadership one. It's really important to communicate with the other leaders of the business. What are the implications of technology trends and specifically disruptive technologies that might offer us, first an opportunity, So where can we spot something that we think is going to emerge and surprise everyone at the pace that it comes because of the nature of the technology, but also be on the lookout for disruptive technologies that could disrupt our businesses. There's both sides of it. There's the positive and there's the negative. And if you're looking out close enough and tuning to all the things that are going on in the world, which of which there are many, you can distill it down to a list of about a dozen technologies that create opportunity or risk for your business. I think our team is pretty well versed at this point after hanging out for eight years. I think we've tuned into in most cases the right trends and then positioned ourselves well to improve our business and certainly keep our business vibrant and alive and modern. Speaking of your team, how big is your partment? How many people do you manage? So we're over two thousand, two thousand sixty four to be exact, and the company is just about We are not quite half, but I would say given our strategy and our trajectory, the technology organization will become more than half the company in the long run. A lot of companies like to claim that they are technology companies. So I like to look at a couple of things. One is, do you sell technology to customers? Do they actually pay you for technology, and we check the box there. So we are the number one provider of technology to other exchanges and corporations with our corporate platforms. And then it's what percentage of your workforce are technologists? And there I think usually if if you're over fifty, it's another clear check the box. So we're close on that front and clearly qualifying the other. Well, you've you've touched on something that I want to know a little or about. I think a lot of people when they think of NASDAK might think of it as quote unquote just a stock market where you know a lot of trading activity happens. But how would you describe what NASDAK is and what it does to kind of clear away that misconception. I'm going to give you an answer I've never given before, so you get some unique content here if you unpack what NAZDAC does stand for. Did Originally it's the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System. We are not that anymore. We're now a global company and automated quotation system is very limiting. We do a lot more than just automated quotations. We absolutely do run markets as you mentioned, and they trade. We have clearing system we have surveillance systems, and we have recently purchased an anti financial crime company. When I do answer the question, now, I first start with the NAS a market that everyone knows and gives us so much brand awareness and prominence every day on TV. It is that and it's a great business, but it is also corporate platforms. We provide governance solutions for companies to run their board meetings. We have tools for the investor relations officer. So when a company goes public, there's a lot of things they have to do quickly to go from adolescents to adulthood. We've been asked what are the best tools, so we decide why not provide them ourselves. And then E s G. Environment, Social and governance is a big new trend. We see a role of expanding our corporate platforms into helping companies really up their game in terms of e s G. Awareness and communication, and then investor intelligence. Within that is our index business, which is a phenomenal business in its own outright. And then the final one is market technology. We're in a unique position because we run our own exchanges in the Nordics and the us, so we get great depth of understanding what it takes to run a market reliably with capacity, with security and performance, and we're able to sell to folks that traditionally in an industry might be your competitors, but because exchanges in capital markets are geographically franchised, we're able to be a provider without the normal worries that you might be doing business with a competitor. It's quite a unique business and we're the leader by far in that business. We call it market infrastructure Operators, where we will sell them our trade and clearing, surveillance, risk management systems. I very much appreciated that Brad demystified NASDAC for me, giving me a clearer picture as to the role of the organization plays. With that established, I felt it was time to dive into learning more about Brad's approach to leadership, and one thing I really wanted to know was how is journey through different industries informed his approach to leadership in MAZDAC. Yeah, I would say in hindsight that has been one of the best experiences. I didn't design it that way, but just this opportunity to work in financial services, in telecommunications and any commerce everyone. I learned something along the way. It really started in telecommunications. I observed they were implementing something called Signaling System seven, which was a out of band control network that really flattened the whole telcom network itself. So I took that away from my first job and saying, that's a brilliant architecture. So every industry has provided me with a view into a unique architecture that I have looked for in the new industries is this applicable? And certainly out of band signaling and control is very much a buzzword today of observe ability, and in telcom it was telemetry. But that is how you understand today what sas products where your uptake is how you can improve your product. The full improvement cycle is really this notion of instrumenting. You know what's happening. And fortunately modern sas products lend themselves towards incredible instrumentation and data about what's what's really happening real time and gives you a chance to recover so versus a physical product. And then at eBay, what's interesting is if you think about shopping, you're consuming huge amounts of product information just visually, and then periodically you'll stop in your brows and pick something, compare and and buy it. So if you think about the asymmetry to the amount of products you look at to the transactions, the architecture that I was exposed to an eBay was about massive amounts of simulation of someone browsing if you will, they're kind of virtually walking and shopping to the transactions when they actually buy. So we had this massive read infrastructure, and it brought on the advent of a big data. Really it was some of the early applications. It's amazing hearing these experiences you had as various transformational technologies were starting to emerge and mature. I love that. That also leads me to the next question, which is that you've worked in cutting edge technology companies and industries, you've worked in finance. What is it about these sorts of jobs that really appeals to you. Well, there is an attraction. So I did get some advice early on that the industry you pick has more to do with your your outcome and quality of life than what you do with that industry. So I married that was something I also learned at the time called positive network externalities in economics and it's been shortened to networks effects. So I'm very much attracted to industries where networks effects are in play. And you know, simply it's something becomes more valuable the more people are on the network if you will or are connected via that product or service. eBay was one of the grandest examples of it. So I would say I do look for companies that do have some network's effects attributes in their business model. If there's one thing most businesses can agree on these days, it's that change has never come about so quickly. New ways of working have become the norm. As a result, the status quo no longer cuts it when it comes to helping businesses adapt and innovate. That's why T Mobile for Business uses unconventional thinking to help businesses work smarter and grow faster. Only T Mobile offers America's largest and fastest five gene network. It's just one reason they're better able to help businesses solve the real world challenges they face as they evolve. For instance, their new WFX solutions help team members stay connected and productive where work happens. With nearly two and a half times the network coverage of a T and T nearly four times more than Verizon and forty billion dollars invested in network and business improvements over the next three years. T Mobile for Business is better for your business right now and into the future. See what they can do for your organization at T mobile dot com. Slash Unconventional Open Signal awarded T mobile fastest five G network based on average speeds. USA five G User Experience Report January. Capable device required coverage not available in some areas. Some users may require certain planner feature see T mobile dot com. As Brad pointed out, the network effect describes an organization that increases in value as you add more people to that network. Organizations that benefit from the network effect have more opportunities to create products internally and externally that can have an exponentially powerful impact as the network grows, and so Brad's experiences and industries that have that network effect clearly played a part in guiding his career. I wanted to shift the conversation over to emerging technologies, and as you all know, I'm fascinated by the seemingly limitless applications of five G connectivity. I also knew that Brad had once said at a conference that while the high throughput of five G is amazing. What he was personally excited about was the low latency associated with five G. I asked him if he could expand upon that. Sure, We in NAZDAC, most of our trading is machine to machine. We're counting in single microseconds, and when I look at wireless and human response time is you know, hundred to three hundred milliseconds. The newer five G and even some of the optimizations of four G right now are getting down to twenty milliseconds. So if if you can get down to the single digit millisecond latency and you can improve the determinism and the reliability, all of a sudden, it opens up the door for a brand new set of machine to machine applications. And I think that is first of all, incredibly exciting because I don't even know what they are. I could posit what they're up, I would be wrong. But there's going to be something that emerges and we go, this is wonderful um that we can do that. It's a machine to machine and then it's married with edge compute. And what you're seeing is the major cloud providers are extending their cloud infrastructure. They're doing deals with the telecom providers. It also may play into self driving cars or other communication and with localized infrastructure that now is enabled with communications capability that you can just think about new ways of dynamically pricing them. So that's why when I first thought about the lower latency and reliability coupled with the greater capacity of of five GUM started my my creative juices going, I think there's a big new industry in there somewhere. I couldn't agree more. I always look at at certain developments and technology as being kind of a seesaw where you'll see one side of technology make sudden improvements and leave another side of it behind, and then eventually there becomes a rebalancing, and the emergence of five g to me, is one of those where you say, oh, the thing that used to be the bottleneck is no longer a bottleneck, and now all the things that you wish you could have done with that technology but you were limited because of those barriers there no longer an issue. So now now what is standing in your way? I remember when I first started hearing the phrase Internet of things, and it didn't really mean anything to me, And now we live in a world where billions of devices are connected to networks. What's your view of Internet things as an emerging technology? Are there ways that you're eager to leverage IoT in what you do? Yes, Where we specifically would apply it at NASDAC is this notion of anything that is statically priced that should be dynamically priced. So we we because we're in the market's business, if you will, we start to see everything in terms of a market. And what if you had better resource allocation, because you could run a mini market and and allocate those resources in a different way. And however you want to design that market. You know, whatever what is the market structure of it could yield the outcome. But that's where IoT fits in. That's where the five G low latent machine to machine fits in. Where you might not even know that a market was run, that you put out a bid for something and it happens, the market crosses, it fulfills at the right price, and you haven't even used up your think time yet. So building applications like that, And the simplest one is, let's just go to New York City around Madison Square Garden when there's an event there, a concert, the parking should be more expensively closer in you are and less the further out you are. But it's it's statically priced, or it's starting to become dynamically priced. But but that's just a great example of if if the car and the parking space can mediate, and you then get directed to that parking space and you accept your you've given your car a limit order if you will, and it accepts on your behalf, so you're you're not even in the loop, and you're you know, wow, I had to park three blocks of way when I went to the last concert and two blocks away this time, and I gave it a fifteen dollar you know, limit order. That's pretty cool. So all those things huge productivity, left huge revenue opportunity for UM. For you know, a city like New York so so and and it's technology that's here right, you could you could see that that happening. So those kinds of things to me, UM, I get really excited about running markets, building technology and and I think micro markets UM is one of my favorite examples. I actually really love that example too. It makes me think of having a having a negotiation with my with my app about how much I'm willing to pay for the convenience of not having to walk too far to get to a venue that speaks to be on a very personal level. Or maybe content, you know, the media content when you're confronted with something you haven't subscribed to but you really want to read it, and there's a micro market opportunity there as well. I come across things all the time and in some cases I think I would love to pay for this one specific piece of content, but I don't really have that option. If there were a more broad approach to this, then I would probably be far more likely to go through those avenues and my in my research, so that really speaks to me too. Well. What would you say would be the most important technological change in the last few years with regard to uh TO, to the work at NASDAC Well, I would say we're right now studying other companies like Stripe and Twilio and this concept of innovation by combination, So you the building blocks are there in terms of a P I S and and just the acceleration of of of those companies being able to go global and and I think Stripe is quoted as saying they have over a million customers just that incredible growth because they made their products so consumable by engineers. So that trend of the engineer now is the one that buys your product. So they integrated in, they test it, they see that it works, and now you have a business that starts to grow organically from the build point when the engineer discovers it. We're decomposing our markets to to be consumable a p I S and then what we want to do is see who who creatively finds uses for those So that kind of comes back to I just think it's fascinating how that has happened so quickly. Yeah, it really creates an opportunity for collaboration. Well, then, who, in your opinion in tech leadership is really killing it right now? Who are the people you look to and you say, this person really has their finger on the pulse of what is going on. Well, I've been listening in clubhouse to Mark Andresen and I do always learn something. Mark has incredible insight to what's going on. Of course he's sitting right at the edge of everyone that comes in, you know that's doing something interesting. And then on the business side, I would say Patrick Collison and his brother John at Stripe, So they they are incredibly thoughtful people for especially for their age. I'm just very impressed with how they're going about building their company, how they're learning about, you know, problems in the world and addressing them in a responsible way. So I just think they're they're too outstanding. UM entrepreneurs who are who are building a great company? Great answer. We've talked about quite a few technologies so far. I found that people can have misconceptions about some tech sometimes because the definitions get ambiguous. I'm thinking about stuff like artificial intelligence or machine learning. I'm curious, what do you see as the most widely misunderstood technology, most misunderstood I would say probably the whole crypto right now, and certainly what is unique about all the different cryptocurrencies. So even with bitcoin, I I always asked someone, did you read the paper, the the original PDF that's on the internet. Um, that's nine pages long, and no one almost no one says yes, I've read it. So I always go go read it. It's not bad, you know, and maybe you get down to page five or six, and if you don't have a technical background, it starts to to get difficult to understand. But the first five pages are tremendous about what it is. Then there's all these cryptocurrencies. I think algorand Is is a great one. I up and to have studied that one, and they're solving real problems the cost of the mining and the block verification is brilliant, and then also trying to solve the centralization of the mining in certain parts of the world. So I think they have a real purpose. So they've they've gone about it. And then some are scalability and transaction rates, but a lot of them, um, I think people are investing them and they have no idea what what is the foundational if there is any algorith and Bitcoin have an ethereum have some foundational unique technology and attributes, most of the other ones don't. And so I would say that to me still seems like very misunderstood about what are the what are they trying to accomplish. I agree. When one of the major ones in the stories is literally a cryptocurrency that was created as kind of a joke and is now having a fairly imp us have run, you do start to wonder how many people bothered to read Satoshi's paper back in the day. So yeah, I think that you are right on the money, so to speak with that one. So Brad, we have time for just one more question. We all know that money never sleeps, even when people make their shut eye. What is it that keeps you up at night? The answer for me what keeps me up at night is a literal one because of the business we're in and we're running critical infrastructure, and then also our customers are using our technology to run their critical infrastructure. There's always some customer that got their market hours around the world, so even in the Middle East, they're running their markets on Sundays and in Asia when I'm supposed to be sleeping, that's daytime for them. It is oftentimes when I have to respond to a crisis, but fortunately those are not every night, otherwise I would not get any sleep. Thank you so much for joining us. I greatly appreciate your time and I've learned a lot just through this conversation, so thank you well. I appreciate you having me, Jonathan look forward to doing it again. What really struck me in my conversation with Brad was how he takes an almost free association approach to problem solving, using his experience in one field to guide his point of view and approach. In another it makes him extremely adaptable. He brings forward solutions that might not seem obvious, but once applied, they become the sort of thing that in hindsight seems like it should have been obvious. It's really hard to spot those solutions in advance, though. It's really the restless ones who are able to take that kind of approach. I feel that much of what we covered from leveraging software as a service to other wild applications and beyond, and of course how the benefits of five G are ripe for new applications that can take advantage of low latency. All of that has widespread applicability and it makes me excited to see what's next. Join us for more conversations with innovative leaders here on the Restless Ones. We'll be speaking with more c I O s and c t O s from different industries to hone in on the skills and tech it takes to be a pioneer. See you next time. These days, new ways of working have become the norm, and the status quo no longer cuts it when it comes to helping businesses evolve and grow. That's why T Mobile for Business uses unconventional thinking to help businesses sees innovation only. T Mobile offers America's largest and fastest five gene network, which makes their new WFX solutions possible, letting businesses stay connected and reductive where work happens. See what T Mobile for Business can do for you at t mobile dot com. Slash Unconventional Open Signal awarded. T Mobile fastest five G network based on average speeds. USA five G User Experience Report, January. Capable device required coverage not available in some areas. Some users may require certain plann or features see mobile dot com