This content is from: Portfolio
The 2016 Tech 50: Jim Minnick
The eVestment CEO drops to No. 42 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.
Given the breadth of eVestment’s investment data and analytical offerings across asset classes, and a client base of funds and consultants numbering in the thousands, it is no surprise that the company has been hard at work improving its institutional asset management database — the largest in the world. CEO Jim Minnick, 46, spent much of the past year interacting with clients in an effort to evolve the platform. “We’re thinking a lot about how we’re engaging with clients, not just with our technology but also from a process standpoint,” he says. Atlanta-based eVestment has brought in top tech talent to work on its cloud-based software. In June it released a major update to the Analytics product suite, described in the announcement as “a complete reimagining of how a big-data solution should work and perform.” Minnick, who co-founded eVestment in 2000 with his wife, Karen, and two former colleagues from Watson Wyatt & Co., says the upgrade is part of a process of unifying all products and platforms, including those from acquisitions. “Private equity is just one piece of this,” as well as exchange-traded funds, he says. As eVestment’s offerings have broadened, Minnick has been focused on flexibility and ease of use. “We need to lower the learning curve,” he says. To deal with the complexities of big data and a diverse investment ecosystem, eVestment has emphasized collaboration with its clients. The firm, with nearly 400 employees and offices in six U.S. and five overseas cities, held its first user conference last November in Atlanta. “We’ve brought more clients into the development process than we ever have historically,” Minnick says. That process has included the formation of beta-testing groups for the platform update and formal feedback mechanisms.
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 1. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.  2. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange  3. Lance Uggla Markit  4. Phupinder Gill CME Group  5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg  6. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group |
 7. Robert Goldstein BlackRock  8. Adena Friedman Nasdaq  9. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures  10. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings  11. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments  12. David Craig Thomson Reuters |
 13. Michael Spencer ICAP  14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.  15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing  16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets  17. Blythe Masters Digital Asset Holdings  18. David Rutter R3CEV |
 19. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co.  20. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets  21. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings  22. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings  23. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp.  24. Brad Katsuyama IEX Group |
 25. Antoine Shagoury State Street Corp.  26. David Gledhill DBS Bank  27. Lou Eccleston TMX Group  28. Andreas Preuss Deutsche BÖrse  29. Dan Schulman PayPal Holdings  30. Scott Dillon Wells Fargo & Co. |
 31. Mike Chinn S&P Global Market Intelligence  32. Craig Donohue Options Clearing Corp.  33. Gary Norcross Fidelity National Information Services  34. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix  35. Sebastián Ceria Axioma  36. Michael Cooper BT Radianz |
 37. Tyler Kim MaplesFS  38. Neal Pawar AQR Capital Management  39. David Harding Winton Capital Management  40. Chris Corrado London Stock Exchange Group  41. Brian Conlon First Derivatives  42. Jim Minnick eVestment |
 43. Stephane Dubois Xignite  44. Mazy Dar OpenFin  45. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America  46. Kim Fournais Saxo Bank  47. Jock Percy Perseus  48. Robert Schifellite Broadridge Financial Solutions |
 49. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software  50. Pieter van der Does Adyen |