Traders Magazine Profile of Maureen Downs
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.)