Investment strategy development is essentially the manipulation of data to test ideas. In 2005, Aku was hiring analysts to expand the global quantitative arm of his employer. While going through résumés, he had an epiphany: If all data manipulation could be done easily and efficiently using a single tool, there would be no need for large teams. By combining the entire data retrieval, storage, and manipulation process into a single efficient tool, investment strategy development could be both accelerated and simplified dramatically. A few years later, he developed this tool using MATLAB and started his own fund.