This is the first article in our Why We Built Loqsea series, in which our founders and key team members share the thinking, frustrations, and decisions that led to building the platform. We start with Tomasz Rydzewski, Founder of Loqsea.
Before Loqsea, Tomasz was trading oil at a hedge fund. He was not an outside observer. He was at the desk, using the same systems he would later decide to replace. What he experienced there is where this story starts.
We were using one of the established, off-the-shelf systems. Expensive, slow to install, slow to update, difficult to adapt. It did what it was designed to do. But it was not built for how we actually traded.
Everything felt rigid. Disconnected from how decisions were really made on the desk.
The trader’s system was not actually a system. It was a collection of disconnected tools: a spreadsheet for pricing, a separate risk system, another system for positions, market data coming from somewhere else. None of them talked to each other properly. So traders did what traders always do. They patched everything together themselves. Manual workarounds. Copy-pasting. Constant reconciliation. Not because they wanted to. Because they had to.
When you are trading live markets, you cannot afford friction. You cannot afford delay. And you definitely cannot afford to rely on systems you do not fully trust.
The deeper issue was that the tools were not built around the trader. The trader was forced to adapt to the tools. Every live decision was being supported by information that was incomplete, delayed, or had been manually assembled by someone who had better things to do.
At some point it became clear: if we wanted to operate properly, we needed something better. Something we trusted. Something extensible, where we could build our own tools on top of it, not fight against the system itself. None of that existed. So instead of waiting for someone else to build it, I started building it myself.
Most CTRM systems were never designed for the front office. They were built for operations and compliance: trade entry, contract management, settlement, regulatory reporting. They are excellent at capturing what has happened. They were not built to show you what is happening now.
So you ended up with well-resourced firms running established platforms and still relying on spreadsheets for their live risk view. Not because they had not invested in technology. Because the technology they had invested in was solving a different problem. The front office had been left to fill the gap with whatever they could patch together.
The integration problem made it worse. Getting data from an exchange into a position system, from a position system into a risk tool, from a risk tool into something a trader could actually act on: that chain had latency at every point. By the time the information arrived where it was needed, it had already lost most of its value.
Three things. Real-time data, not end-of-day. Full integration, not isolated tools connected by manual bridges. And extensibility: the ability to build on top of the system rather than around it. None of the platforms available could offer all three convincingly.
The fragmentation hit every part of the desk, but differently.
It did not start as a company. It started as code.
I was writing it in the evenings, on weekends, whenever I had time. Building, testing, refining. One goal: create something that actually works for traders in real conditions. The first version was not perfect, but it was already showing something important. It worked the way we needed it to.
Then we got our first customer. That changed everything. From that point we were no longer building in isolation. We were building with real feedback, from real users, solving real problems as they happened. That is when Loqsea started to take shape as a product.
That meant speaking directly to traders, understanding exactly what they need in real time, and building tools that match how they think and operate. Then expanding outward into risk, analytics, and middle and back office workflows. But always starting from the front office. Traders are the ones taking risk. Traders are the ones generating P&L. If the system does not work for them, it does not work.
Instead of a collection of tools, we built a unified environment where everything works together. Pricing, positions, risk, analytics: all connected. Not stitched together. Designed together.
Four principles guided every decision. Everything must be integrated: no more isolated tools or manual bridges. Everything must be real-time: not end-of-day, not overnight, live. Everything must be extensible: a desk should be able to build on top of the system, not around it. And deployment must be fast: a trader joining a desk should be up and running in hours, not months.
That last point mattered. We had seen how long traditional implementations take. By the time they are fully installed, the desk has already adapted around their limitations. We wanted the opposite: a system that adapts to the desk immediately.
For the first six years, we did no advertising. Everything grew through word of mouth. Traders would move from one fund to another and one of the first things they would do is reach out to us. They did not want to go back to the old way of working. They were telling each other. That told us we were building something that actually mattered.
If any of this sounds familiar, it is not a failure of your desk. It is a mismatch between the tools available and the way modern trading actually works. That is the gap Loqsea was built to close. And it is still what we focus on every day.
Want to see how Loqsea works in practice? Book a demo and we will walk you through the platform in the context of how your desk actually runs.
