100 best CEOs disrupting tech! #35 Yuki Sato from EAERA

We talked about sales development with Yuki Sato, the CEO of EAERA. This is a software provider for foreign exchange brokers to ensure they increase their efficiency and profitability.

1. How would you describe your company in an elevator pitch?
EAERA is a software provider for foreign exchange brokers. It offers both back-office and risk management software to supervise the company’s operations. EAERA was founded in 2017 with its headquarters in Montenegro.

For over five years we’ve been providing solid technology solutions to stock, foreign exchange, energy, precious metals, and CFD brokerage firms. The brokers’ market is highly saturated with competition mainly based on price (lower spreads and fees), therefore, it is difficult to attract new customer segments with outdated and non-beginner-friendly trading platforms.

EAERA One, our newest product, is a one-stop, all-inclusive technology package for a brokerage that includes:

CRM Platform
Back office Platform
Risk Management Platform

With this software package, our clients are able to get their business up and running in 2 weeks. The platform is cost-effective, simple to set up, and protected by cutting-edge technology.

There are no hidden costs: everything you need to successfully manage your brokerage business is already included as we believe in transparent pricing in the industry.

2. What are you the best at?
Our strengths are knowledge and technology.
Our professional background in the financial markets has given us insight into the needs and obstacles that brokerage companies encounter on a daily basis. This motivates us to continue researching and developing new solutions to aid brokers in their operations.
Our IT team is composed of outstanding and passionate young people who help us realize our mission with great performance. Our team’s abilities, together with our vision and knowledge, have led to the creation of a platform that we are very proud of today.

3. What customer acquisition strategy did you use to find your first customers?
We have built strong business connections with people in the industry as our founders have worked in different Forex companies for years before launching this enterprise. As a result, the initial clients came from personal relationships. And, as is usually the case, happy customers are the best advertisement, so we began receiving requests from other businesses very soon.

4. What are your customers saying about your product?
Most of the feedback from our clients is about the platform’s simplicity of use and the wide range of options it provides so that it can perfectly fit their business specificities.

5. What are your proud achievements so far?
We started the company with three people and built it from the ground up. We consider it a company strength that we gained discipline, humility, and courage through our setbacks and accomplishments.
Today, we have four offices, based in Montenegro, Japan, Vietnam, and Cyprus. Our system has assisted 13 businesses in successfully managing their operations, and we now have over 25,000 traders in our database. We collected $571,000in revenue in 2020, and last year we concentrated our efforts on the project you will soon hear about.

We are proud to be among the first companies in this industry in Montenegro, and our mission is to develop the Fintech industry here and provide the young generation with knowledge and career opportunities in this field.

In addition to our technology upgrades and the amazing team, we have managed to assemble over the years, one of the confirmations of our success came last year through a project we had with Deloitte. We were semifinalists of the PowerUP program after being selected among a few hundred companies in the Balkans region. This is a growth program for innovative SMEs and startups from the Western Balkans, realized by the representatives of The World Bank, European Union, Western Balkans Enterprise Development, and Innovation Facility and Deloitte. We were delighted to have the opportunity to present our company and vision, to connect to all participants and organizers, and to learn so much from them.

6. What is the next big thing in your industry?
The fintech industry is growing rapidly. There are so many challenges to be faced, so basically, the sky is the limit.
In the digital economy, speed and scalability are important for new enterprises and financial innovation, especially given the competitive market and winner-take-all dynamics.

For technology companies and traditional financial institutions, launching new fintech firms, open-source software, serverless architecture, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) have become must-haves.

The serverless architecture eliminates the need for businesses to run their own servers, freeing up time and resources for customers and operations. SaaS allows businesses to use the software as needed without having to own or maintain it. Charges are connected to executed software code and are not created round-the-clock, independent of business requirements, in a serverless architecture. It also encourages flexible scaling, which reduces idling and waste while increasing development efficiency.
This type of business operation is definitely something that can change the brokerage industry.

7. What are your plans for next 6-12 months?
As I previously stated, the brokerage market lacks SaaS, and our strategy is to bring it in. We’re working on modifying our system to become an ERP SaaS platform, and we aim to propose it to the brokers in the next 12 months.