Eli Koven

Head of Ops & GTM @_momentHQ | previously @usealloy @NEA @GoldmanSachs | @VanderbiltU alum

[Moment @_MomentHQ]

Fresh @_MomentHQ swag drop on the heels of one of our biggest new joiner quarters 💥

[Moment @_MomentHQ]

Two minutes left in the science bowl, down twenty points.

Ten seconds left in your last byoyomi period.

Realizing you won't make the next ICM payout, and needing to find the right spot to get it in.

Five seconds before the open, the morning after tariffs were announced.

One week out from launching a multi-asset class UMA platform for an enterprise client.

Math and science competitions, Go (represented Chicago and Boston), poker (236th of 10,000 at the World Series of Poker), trading, and now Moment. For Henry Li, they all come down to the same thing: rational thinking and sound judgment in high-stakes environments, and the focus to sustain it over long stretches.

Which is also a pretty good description of trading. He spent seven years at DRW: first trading equity and index options, then building the quant infrastructure underneath them as the team scaled from 10 to 100.

So when Moment came along, it became his next obsession. He wasn't looking to leave; our first two cold emails went unread. But the third named the people he'd be working with, including Anish Karyat, who had spent 20 years at Jane Street and Citadel. That got him on a call. From there, he ran it like a research project: 50+ hours of diligence, 20 with people inside Moment and 30 with anyone outside who'd give him an additive and honest read.

His final meeting was with our co-founder Ammer. It was scheduled for an hour, ran to two, and picked back up Saturday morning for another three. By the end, he was convinced the founders were all-in, and had huge ambitions. On his way out, he grabbed a copy of The Mamba Mentality from the lobby and finished it that afternoon.

What clinched it was the caliber of the team and the stakes of building the infrastructure the largest financial institutions run on. "A lot of companies have smart people, but not a lot have exceptional people. I feel like I'm working with world-class athletes training for the Olympics."

Henry found his crowd. And seeing Roshan in the office, a founding engineer he hadn't seen since the two competed in the Ocean Science Bowl in high school, felt like the universe agreeing.

[Ammer Soliman @ammersoliman]

Today, @_MomentHQ and @tryramp are announcing our partnership to make institutional cash management accessible to every finance team.

For years, embedded fintech products have offered basic cash storage that works for early-stage companies but fail as businesses scale. On the other hand, banks offer direct access to fixed income SMAs, but do so without the sexy UX embedded fintechs have. The result is that most businesses either leave money on the table or spend significant time and resources to do something about it.

Through our partnership, the same fixed income system that powers trading and portfolio management for firms managing over $10 trillion in assets is now fully embedded directly inside Ramp, giving 70,000+ finance teams institutional tools to optimize yield through a platform they already love and use every day.

This has been years in the making — thank you to all of those at Ramp for connecting the dots so early and to @apexfintech for helping us deliver a world-class solution.

Read the full announcement here: https://t.co/8HZEQEJsGn

[Moment @_MomentHQ]

Series C week round up 🎥🚀

Thank you to @business, @NYSE, @Nasdaq, and others for the coverage.

Now back to building.

[Bloomberg @business]

Moment, the fintech founded by a cohort of former Citadel Securities quantitative traders and researchers, raised $78 million after signing partners Edward Jones, LPL and Hightower Advisors in the past year. https://t.co/0G3apjVRPJ

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

@chiefofstuffs 🤝🤝🤝

[Dylan Parker @djacksonparker]

Moment has raised a $78M Series C, led by @IndexVentures.

Agents are coming to investment management.

And firms managing $10T in assets are building that future with us.

https://t.co/RaDt8Yknim

[Moment @_MomentHQ]

Smart treasury is coming.

Our COO & Cofounder, @ammersoliman had the chance to share the stage with William Capuzzi, Karl Yang, (@chiefofstuffs) and our moderator Dave Wieseneck (@daveweez) yesterday to unpack how technology and great infrastructure is reshaping treasury management, from enabling self-driving money to unlocking access to institutional-grade yield.

Huge thanks to our partners @tryramp and @apexfintech for co-hosting with @_MomentHQ last night and a huge thank you to all the finance leaders and attendees who came out to connect and share ideas!

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

@victorcardenas @base Huge!!

[Dylan Parker @djacksonparker]

First tweet ever. Hopefully the Series C won’t be the second.

@_MomentHQ has raised a $36M Series B led by @indexventures to automate the $150T fixed income market.

We're also announcing our partnership with LPL Financial, the largest broker-dealer in the U.S.

Our team automated bond trading at Citadel and Jane Street - now we’ve assembled a world-class team to power every mission-critical workflow in fixed income.

Thanks @PaigeSmithNews for the write-up in @business, and to @a16z, @lightspeedvp, @Venrock, @neo & @contrary for the continued support.

And welcome, @janatindex to the board.

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

@djacksonparker @_MomentHQ @IndexVentures LFG!!!

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

@djacksonparker @_MomentHQ @IndexVentures LFG!!!

[Moment @_MomentHQ]

We're stoked to have co-hosted a terrific dinner with executive leaders from global wealth platforms at SAGA NYC! 🏙️

We discussed key themes shaping wealth management today including:

1. The evolving role of financial advisors in an AI-driven landscape
2. How digital transformation and automation are expanding into new asset classes
3. The impact of technology and data on workflows and portfolio strategies

Thanks for joining us, and we can't wait for the next one! 🥂

@_MomentHQ members in attendance included: Dylan Parker, @ammersoliman, Anish Karyat, Bill Buzaid, and @EliKoven

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

@singareddynm ❤️🙏🏻

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

@GilFeig Ellie for me every time

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

@TeddyNwachuku @BlackOreAI @oakhcft @a16z @foundersfund @khoslaventures @generalcatalyst Fantastic opp!

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

@singareddynm 🔥

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

@RyanZauk @OMERSVentures Let’s go!! Congrats!

[Alloy @usealloy]

As @AlexH_Johnson puts it, FIs have been too focused on "real-time transactional fraud detection (watching your stuff)" instead of "identity-based fraud detection during account onboarding (watching the front door)." Read the full deep-dive 👇 https://t.co/khm1L05hls

[Eli Koven @EliKoven]

It's gotten much harder to tell from the outside how private start-ups are doing, esp given the lack of fundraises.

When the market rewarded growth at all costs, LinkedIn headcount growth was a solid proxy for most companies on whether a company was doing well (at a minimum by ZIRP standards)

This is likely still the case for fast HC growers or 70%+ reductions but is an increasingly moot indicator excluding the barbells (e.g. Meta adding $1T in market cap in ~12 months while reducing HC 20%)

Caught up with someone last week at a ~50-person start-up that had shrunk HC modestly over the last year and I was shocked to learn they did ~$100m revenue in the prior year (I would've guessed ~$25M)