About

A Brief, But Impactful History

It started with a simple question in a San Francisco apartment back in 2018:

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could have a hedge fund in your pocket?”

We were three co-founders—quants, entrepreneurs, and relentless builders—kicking around an idea that felt both crazy and inevitable. At the time, we were deep in the weeds, crafting sophisticated strategies and chasing the vision of fully autonomous alpha. We had spent years honing our skills, building models that could generate a true edge. But the cost was brutal: stress, burnout, and countless hours lost to the operational drag of high-alpha investing.

We knew how to win the game, but we couldn’t stop asking: Why isn’t this easier?
Then it hit us. Time is the ultimate currency. And when we looked closer at the investing world, it was worse than we imagined—opaque, outdated, and still clinging to myths like the 60/40 portfolio. Robo-advisors and fund managers talked a big game while hiding behind performance marketing, never sharing the metrics we lived by—Sharpe, Sortino, volatility, drawdowns—because their numbers wouldn’t survive the spotlight. We searched for a platform built on transparency and accountability, but none existed. Not because it wasn’t possible—but because the incumbents didn’t want it to be.

So, we built it ourselves.

Sidepocket wasn’t born just to democratize hedge fund-like tools. It was a call to arms—to make elite, risk-adjusted strategies accessible, and to force the industry to evolve. We weren’t here to sell fairytales. We wanted to prove that hedging and cutting drawdowns could redefine what smart investing looks like.

There’s a whole segment of investors—relatively sophisticated, already in the game—who’ve realized that doing this well isn’t about effort alone. You need the right tools. You deserve access to premium strategies without institutional gatekeeping.

And beyond that, we saw a bigger opportunity: to empower thousands of financial education platforms, stock simulators, copy-trading apps, and creators. Most can’t legally offer real investing—they’re not SEC-registered—but they still shape how people learn and behave financially. We wanted to power them with the same institutional-grade tools, backed by decades of research and live-tested results.

We started by going directly to consumers, validating our tech in the wild. We built Sidepocket as a deep tech company—focused not on marketing fluff, but on research, algorithms, and user experience. Over $10 million in human capital has gone into it. And through the chaos of one of the roughest markets in a century—2022, the worst year for the 60/40 in 100 years—we delivered. We didn’t just survive; we stood out.

As a Registered Investment Advisor, we operate with fiduciary duty. That means we act in our users' best interests, period. The clarity, trust, and transparency our clients get isn’t just a tagline—it’s built into the code, the design, and every touchpoint.

But here’s the truth: Alpha isn’t infinitely scalable. This isn’t a mass-market robo-advisor or some AI-flavored gimmick. It’s a platform for people who know investing is hard—and know they’re better off with the right partner. We don’t gate-keep by wealth or connections. We reward initiative.
Sidepocket is for strategic minds ready to move—creators, educators, professionals—people who understand that the future of wealth-building will be decentralized, creator-led, and powered by tech that’s finally caught up.

We’re not just building for now.

We’re building the rails for the next generation of apps, educators, and platforms that will carry this mission forward.


Because the world doesn’t need more funds. It needs a better system.
And that’s what Sidepocket was built to be.

Meet the Sidepocket Team

CEO, Co-Founder

Daniel Idzkowski

CTO, Co-Founder

Shridhar Swaminathan

CPO, Co-Founder

Morgan McQuown

Financial Engineering

Maxwell Bradley, CFA

Security Officer

Travis Hassloch

Technical Operations

Yves Perrenoud

Infrastructure

Tomasz Pado

Partnerships

Artur Pawelko

Application Development

Sam Cabrera

Growth Marketing

Avishek Chakrabarty

Product Design

Christina Pena

Front-End Developer

Andrii Zakhariak

QA Engineer

Oleh Zakhariak

Research Advisor

PengCheng Zhu Ph.D. CFA

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