This speech influenced Justin D. Hertzberg, Esq., a prominent figure in the financial technology industry. Justin believes being a leader starts with being willing to put oneself in harm’s way. He has always loved the speech by Teddy Roosevelt—the Man in the Arena (quoted above) and feels it’s easy to be a critic, but it’s hard to take risks and choose a path knowing there is no guarantee of success. From there, it’s about combining work ethic, intelligence, and ideas. “Identifying opportunities in your area of focus and then creating solutions to capitalize on them. The other key thing to note is that nothing stays the same. Change is inevitable and constant. The more you are open to change and adapting, the more nimble you and your company can be,” elucidates Justin.

Justin is the CEO of FPFX Technologies, LLC, where, under his aegis, the company aims to assist trading firms and brokerages in growing their businesses through innovative technology solutions. They focus on solving problems, creating opportunities, and building communities. By leveraging customization and automation, FPFX Tech makes it easier for trading firms to attract and retain traders. Their unique value propositions, bespoke user interfaces, and instant feedback enhance the trading experience. Their vision is to deliver individualized trading experiences tailored to each trader’s specific market interactions.

While FPFX offers several technology solutions for trading firms and brokerages, its core offering is the Prop Trading Tech Kit, the first SaaS technology solution to support the rapidly growing Prop Trading Tech industry. “At the time we brought it to market, there were maybe 8 firms in that industry. Today, there are over 200 firms and around 150 are powered by our technology,” says Justin proudly. “Our Prop Trading Tech Kitis fueled by tremendous market acumen, incredibly talented developers and the ability to continuously improve the features, functions, integration and related services to help licensees of our solution build massive businesses.”

The Prop Trading Tech Kit is built-to-specification, end-to-end automation that supports the operation and administration of proprietary trading/funded account firms, eliminating headcount and allowing users to scale their business. The company’s software solution includes the ability to develop custom prop trading plans, automated account creation, account monitoring, risk monitoring, rules monitoring, auto liquidations and notifications, email notifications, discount codes, live streaming, certificates, trading contests, affiliate portals, leaderboards and a custom trader dashboard and admin CRM portal with real-time updating, among other features, functions, and customizations, including presentation in multiple languages. “We can integrate our solution with virtually any website, payment provider, broker, platforms (including MT4, MT5, DXtrade, cTrader, and MatchTrader) and email hosting to fully automate your prop firm,” adds Justin.

In a rapidly growing and evolving industry, change is constant. Justin and his team’s mission is to continue to provide leading-edge technology solutions to support itslicensees. But to do that, they must see around corners, anticipate challenges, and develop new, better, different, and/or alternative ways to conduct and grow our licensees’ businesses and, by proxy, their own. “Leveraging the power of automation to streamline business processes to allow for greater focus on growth. One good case study is a licensee of our technology that generated a 12x increase in the number of users once moving over to our Prop Trading Tech Kit,” states Justin.

Justin is proud of various achievements, but he takes great pride in watching the employees thrive inside the company and make their careers with FPFX. As a leader, he acknowledges that making money is excellent. Still, it is a byproduct of other achievements, like building a company culture where everyone has a real sense of ownership in what they do and how they contribute, which is true in the case of FPFX and a big reason for their success as a company. “The future is extremely bright for our company and our licensees. Our roadmap is full of new technology solutions, enhancements, and ways to deliver true competitive advantages to our licensees and their end-users,” says Justin, whose immense industry experience has led FPFX to great heights.

When Justin began his career as a securities and commercial litigator, he always felt more entrepreneurial than the practice of law supported. In 2009, he left law and joined a currency trading prop firm. It was his first exposure to trading anything besides baseball cards, and Justin became fascinated by markets and brokerage. From there, he moved into the brokerage space and started regulated introducing brokerage businesses in the FX/CFD industry in the US, UK, and Australia, some of which are still running today.

“When I started my first business, I positioned myself as a back-office operator, leaving all the front-end business development for others. I assumed that experienced salespeople could generate business and I could build the infrastructure to support it,” explains Justin. “I assumed wrong – at least for a new company when there are no inbound leads. Generating business from nothing is difficult and after a period of failing with my initial model, I moved into a business development role. Everything changed from there.” Justin also learned that business development is not a function of salesmanship. It’s a function of educating the audience. He understood that if a company has a great product or service, they don’t have to sell it. They must inform the audience on what makes the product better and why they should care. It is pertinent to mention that FPFX Tech is not a small company or one that has trouble generating interested lead flow, but they are hyper-focused on ensuring they have the right people in the right roles in the company. Pairing skill sets, personalities, and goals with the proper role.  

“I’ve always loved a great underdog story, especially around sports. Even though we are the industry leader in what we’re doing, I always bring an underdog mentality to anything I am involved in. Never comfortable, never satisfied. Always seeking more difficult challenges and obstacles. It keeps me from becoming complacent – which I believe is ultimately what leads to the favorite losing to the underdog,” concludes Justin.