An August 2007 article about SFB that gives an interesting description of their service, growth and market niche. At the time, they had 8 employees and a far smaller list of clientele.
THOROFARE -- A small company in a nondescript two-story office building here has carved out a niche for itself as the arbiter of information on options trades.
"We monitor and we manage options symbology for the financial industry," said S. Lee Clifford, president, CEO and majority owner of SFB Market Systems Inc.
SFB's SymbolManager software is used by four exchanges that list options to keep track of all the data related to them, including their trading symbols, expiration dates and strike prices. Two other exchanges use an earlier SFB product, although one is switching to SymbolManager soon.
SFB also has a product called SymbolMaster, which provides an online repository and data feed of the information contained in each exchange's version of SymbolManager.
SFB launched SymbolMaster about two-and-a-half years ago and for a while only had three customers for it. That number has since grown to 11 and Clifford said eight more customers are interested. SymbolMaster subscribers include financial information provider Bloomberg LP and Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based investment firm Susquehanna International Group LLP.
"People are starting to find us," Clifford said.
SFB's products and services are necessary because of the ephemeral nature of options.
An option gives its owner the right to engage in a future transaction involving a specified quantity of a financial instrument at a specified price by a specified time.
For example, a call option on a stock gives the owner the right to buy the stock at a set price, called the strike price, by a certain time, known as the expiration. A put option works similarly, but gives the owner the right to sell.
Unlike a stock, which is traded from the time the company goes public until the time the company is bought or goes out of business, an option has a short shelf life. It's worthless after it expires and it may be rendered worthless by sharp moves in the price of the financial instrument it gives its owner the right to sell or buy. As a result, exchanges that trade options are always replacing old options with new ones.
When the Boston Options Exchange opened in February 2004, it kept track of options data manually.
"Very quickly, we found that didn't make any sense," said Oliver Gueris, the exchange's vice president for market operations.
The exchange turned to SFB, and today is a user of SymbolManager, as are the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the International Securities Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange is implementing SymbolManager, while the American Stock Exchange still uses its predecessor, although Clifford is in discussions with it about converting.
The original version of SymbolManager was developed by Stan Becker, who called it the Stan Becker System. It consisted of multiple spread sheets created with Microsoft Corp.'s Excel 4 software that featured programs, called macros, written by Becker.
Becker developed his system about 10 years ago. Clifford met him and learned of it while she was a business systems manager at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange.
She was impressed by it, but had a concern, which she voiced to him: "What will happen to it if something happens to you?"
The concern turned out to be prescient. In 2003, Becker was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Clifford put together a plan to buy the rights to his software. At the beginning of 2004, she left the stock exchange and founded SFB, drawing its name from Becker's initials.
Ten months after receiving his diagnosis, Becker died. The SFB History page on SFB's Web site is devoted to him. His family still owns 6 percent of the company.
Clifford has since replaced the product Becker developed with SymbolManager, which is written in Microsoft's C# programming language.
Clifford financed SFB in classic entrepreneurial fashion, using money from her 401(k) plan, credit cards and home equity and family loans until she could get bank funding for it.
Last June, she got some equity funding for the company when Track Data Corp. bought a 15 percent stake in it for an undisclosed sum. Track Data is a Brooklyn-based provider of direct-access brokerage and real-time financial-market data, news and research.
Clifford is still looking for more funding for SFB, which now employs eight, including Stan Becker's daughter, Lisa, who works as a Chicago-based sales executive.
She's also still putting in long hours -- 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. -- and paying herself what she needs to live on and little more.
UP CLOSE
NAME: S. Lee Clifford
AGE: 57
TITLE: President, CEO and majority owner
EMPLOYER: SFB Market Research Inc.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: President and CEO, Lee Clifford & Associates Inc.; founder and host, "The Dear Maddy Show"; manager, Philadelphia Stock Exchange; project manager, program analyst, The Franklin Mint.
EDUCATION: Palmyra High School.
HOMETOWN: Pontiac, Mich.
CURRENT HOME: Mullica Hill
COMPANY: SFB Market Systems Inc.
LOCATION: Thorofare
PRESIDENT AND CEO: S. Lee Clifford
TYPE OF COMPANY: Options data management software developer.
2006 REVENUE: Would not disclose.
EMPLOYEES: Eight.
BIG DEVELOPMENT: The company has increased the number of customers of its SymbolMaster options database to 11 from three and is talking to eight more potential customers for it.
Source: SFB Market Systems
http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2007/08/13/focus3.html?page=1
This post is an opinion and should not be considered reason to buy or sell any security, or to besmirch, belittle or berate any person, religion, cult, creed, race, sex, political party, company or company representative of any age or appearance.
