Note: This post by Terry Flanagan originally ran on Trader’s Magazine’s LinkedIn page on November 12, 2025

Maureen C Downs likens entrepreneurship to playing quarterback.

A QB needs to overcome a range of obstacles including erstwhile tacklers, ballhawks, and pass defenders to move the ball down the field.

An entrepreneur doesn’t risk physical harm, but there’s a range of challenges including business model, personnel, funding, technology, operations, competition, and market conditions — any of which can result in the equivalent of a drive-killing quarterback sack or turnover.

Maureen considers her entrepreneurial ‘superpower’ to be the ability to deal with the multitude of issues that come at a founder every day, while still being able to see down the field, ie where the receivers are going and where the gaps in the defense are. The focus stays on getting into the end zone, even if it’s not known exactly how or when that will happen.

Maureen is a three-time capital markets entrepreneur with her husband Jim Downs. She co-founded Downs Capital, a proprietary trading firm that worked on the CBOE and CBOT from 1986 through 1995, and Connamara in 1998. EP3 by Connamara Technologies, an exchange platform and order matching engine, was conceived and incubated at Connamara and was spun off as a separate company in 2022.

Connamara Technologies has 13 employees and is self-funded. The firm has managed to carve out a niche in the exchange space despite going up against much larger competitors.

Of course, no entrepreneurship journey is all peaches and cream, and Maureen is candid in Monday-morning quarterbacking herself on certain decisions. Specifically, she said Connamara Technologies should have committed more capital to sales, marketing and branding early on, and the firm also should have added staff quicker to accommodate the growth of the business.

Both aspects underscore that starting a business is more about playing offense than defense.

Advanced academic degrees and Ivy League connections can help an entrepreneur raise capital, but Maureen said being smart hardly guarantees a successful business. Success comes down to execution, which requires a different set of skills such as guts, instinct and perseverance.

In fact, Maureen believes intelligence can even be a detriment to entrepreneurship — if that brainpower goes toward analyzing and overanalyzing every facet of every decision.

“The reality is, in an entrepreneurial business there are so many issues in front of you that you just don’t have the luxury of time and money to try to get the right answer on everything. You get to the best answer you can with the best information you have today, and move forward.”

(This is the seventh of a series of profiles of capital markets business founders in honor of National Entrepreneurship Month.)

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tradersmagazine_maureen-c-downs-likens-entrepreneurship-to-activity-7394084759234158593-s5Oh?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAADZqWV4BPjs6O8g8hV3SOs9yZTUBrlrHX3s

“For decades, the Downses have been market architects, watching technology fundamentally reshape trading, from the grain pits of the Chicago Board of Trade to the options floor of the CBOE. They didn’t just foresee the rise of prediction exchanges; they built the engine making the challenge possible, and they believe this disruption is inevitable, and likely a good development for retail customers of sportsbooks and exchanges.” Read more at InGame.com

November 1, 2025

As part of the TabbFORUM 40 2025, Jim Downs was listed under “10 More to Watch on the leading edge of change and innovation in financial markets.” Read the story below.

October 29, 2025

Via PR Newswire: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/architect-financial-technologies-launches-ax-global-regulated-exchange-for-perpetual-futures-on-traditional-financial-assets-302597794.html

CHICAGO, Oct. 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Architect Financial Technologies Inc. (“Architect” or “The Company”) announces the launch of AX, the first regulated exchange for trading perpetual futures on traditional underlying asset classes. AX offers novel perpetual contracts on foreign currencies, interest rates, single stocks, stock indexes, metals, energy, and other commodities.

AX is operated by the Company’s Bermuda-based affiliate Architect Bermuda Ltd. (“Architect Bermuda”), regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (“BMA”). Architect Bermuda holds dual licenses under the BMA’s Investment Business Act and Digital Asset Business Act, providing AX customers the security of transacting under a robust and comprehensive regulatory regime.

AX’s perpetual futures contracts are standardized, centrally cleared, and matched on anonymous central limit order books. Backed by first-in-class matching engine technology built by Connamara Technologies, the exchange offers an advanced web-based user interface and low-latency APIs, with open source SDKs available in multiple programming languages. AX customers will be able to use both traditional fiat currency and digital asset stablecoins as collateral to meet margin requirements.

AX’s launch under Architect Bermuda’s regulatory licensure is a critical step forward for global derivatives trading, bringing key innovations in digital asset products to vast, comprehensively-regulated traditional financial markets. AX combines the security, transparency, and regulatory supervision of traditional futures markets with the capital efficiency, operational simplicity, and flexibility of digital asset non-expiring perpetual contracts. Offering instruments optimized for twenty-first-century market structure, AX aims to catalyze a new era in futures trading across the currencies, equities, credit, commodities, and insurance sectors.

AX is currently available to institutions — including hedge funds, market makers, family offices, asset managers, insurance and reinsurance companies, and lenders — in eligible jurisdictions. To learn more about AX and onboard to the exchange, visit https://architect.exchange or contact [email protected]. Sophisticated individual traders interested in trading on AX can access the waitlist at https://architect.exchange.

About Architect

Architect Financial Technologies Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides institutional trading technology, US electronic brokerage services, and a global perpetual futures exchange. Architect Securities LLC is a FINRA-registered Introducing Broker-Dealer for SEC-regulated securities and security derivatives. Architect Financial Derivatives LLC is an NFA-registered Independent Introducing Broker for CFTC-regulated derivatives. Architect Bermuda Ltd. is regulated under the Bermuda Monetary Authority and operates AX, a multi-asset perpetual futures exchange for institutional customers.

To learn more, please visit https://architect.exchange and https://architect.co.

This communication is for informational purposes only, and does not constitute a recommendation, investment, or legal advice. Readers should consult their investment, fiduciary, and/or legal advisors for guidance in making investment or business decisions.

SOURCE Architect Financial Technologies Inc

October 21, 2025

Via CNBC: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/architect-financial-technologies-launches-ax-global-regulated-exchange-for-perpetual-futures-on-traditional-financial-assets-302597794.html

DraftKings is acquiring predictions platform Railbird as it prepares to launch a mobile platform in the coming months to be called DraftKings Predictions.

Railbird is licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to offer an event contracts exchange. DraftKings targeted the company for its team and proprietary technology. 

“We are excited about the additional opportunity that prediction markets could represent for our business,” DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said in a statement to CNBC. “We believe that Railbird’s team and platform—combined with DraftKings’ scale, trusted brand, and proven expertise in mobile-first products—positions us to win in this incremental space.”

Predictions markets allow customers to trade on the outcomes of various events in the worlds of finance, culture and entertainment, which will allow DraftKings to expand beyond its sports betting business. The markets on election outcomes and sports are the most controversial.  

Dozens of states, their gaming regulators and tribes are suing or taking other actions to try to prohibit companies from offering trades based on sporting events, because they see it as unlicensed gambling.  

Nevada is among the states warning that companies risk losing their gambling licenses if they offer sports in their prediction markets.

If DraftKings offers sports events contracts, it’s likely to focus only on states that don’t offer licensed sports betting, like California and Texas, to avoid running afoul of the states where it offers sports betting.  Additionally, technology exists to prevent those sports trades from being available on tribal lands.  

DraftKings also may offer more advanced “know your customer” guardrails, a term commonly used to reference identity verification, given its experience in the regulated gambling market.  

September 23, 2025

Via CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/23/startup-zerohash-raises-104million-morgan-stanley-sofi-apollo.html

Crypto infrastructure startup Zerohash has raised $104 million in funding with backing from financial firms including Morgan Stanley and SoFi, CNBC has learned.

The Series D round was led by Interactive Brokers, the global automated trading firm, and includes strategic investors who are also clients of Zerohash, founder and CEO Edward Woodford told CNBC in an interview. The company is valued at $1 billion, he said.

“We wanted to raise from the largest, most trusted brands in the world and have that be the bridge into this new technology,” he said.

Funds managed by Apollo also participated in the round, according to Zerohash.

The startup is among a wave of firms, both publicly traded and privately held, taking advantage of the more favorable regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies under President Donald Trump.

After Trump took office this year, the government flipped from being highly skeptical of crypto under former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler to embracing it as a nascent technology.

Suddenly, the CEOs of financial firms including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America were expressing confidence that they would get involved. SoFi CEO Anthony Noto told CNBC in April that he was ready to bring crypto trading back after the regulatory shift.

Founded in 2017, Zerohash provides banks and fintech firms with the ability to offer blockchain-based products in three major areas: crypto trading, stablecoins and tokenization, according to Woodford.

“Part of this raise is obviously accelerating [adoption] across all three of those verticals with a range of customers who are also investors,” he said.

Interactive Brokers already uses Zerohash for crypto trading and custody and will launch a stablecoin product with the firm, Woodford said.

While Woodford said he couldn’t comment on whether Morgan Stanley and SoFi were also clients, he suggested announcements will be coming. Spokespeople for Morgan Stanley and SoFi declined to comment.

“These groups aren’t VCs,” Woodford said. “You can assume that there’s obviously a couple of announcements coming down the road with these other investors.”

Later Tuesday, Morgan Stanley said in a memo obtained by CNBC that it was close to offering crypto trading though its E-Trade division with the help of Zerohash.