The 2013 Tech 50: Robert Goldstein

When asset management behemoth BlackRock branded its technology organization in 2000, it decided on the name BlackRock Solutions even though “everything was dot-com at the time,” recalls Robert Goldstein, who has worked for the firm since 1994 and headed BRS since 2009. “We didn’t think of ourselves as being in the technology business. Our focus was on solving problems — and it still is.” Meanwhile, “solutions” has become a “hot term,” notes Goldstein, and BlackRock Solutions is a hot property, accounting for $518 million of BlackRock’s $9.3 billion in 2012 revenue. BRS’s mission from the start was to sell other firms systems to handle the bulk of what they needed to run their shops, thus freeing those customers to hone their money management competencies. The core Aladdin platform, managed by business development veteran Ryan Stork, who reports to Goldstein, boosted year-over-year sales 11 percent in the first quarter. “We’ve stuck to our knitting,” says Goldstein, 39, referring to a business model that’s grounded in the asset and risk management requirements of BlackRock and other users. However, clients have grown hungrier for analytics and advice — for “innovative strategies that solve for specific outcomes,” he says. Last August, Goldstein became head of the institutional client business as well as BRS. He describes that as “part of a proactive effort to evolve our structure in view of clients’ ever-changing requirements.”