I’ve been trading for more than 20 years and am a licensed portfolio manager. Option Samurai started as a tool for me while I worked as a portfolio manager and trading options in the stock market after work. I did not have the time to watch markets all day, and I needed a way to quickly focus on what mattered and make decisions efficiently.

The first version of Option Samurai lived in Excel. Pretty quickly, I reached its limits. As I tried to work with more data, better analytics, and move faster, manual workflows broke down, and costs increased. A friend offered to help turn it into something more robust, and once it existed as a proper tool, adding basic access for others was almost an afterthought.

People who knew me started asking to use it. Later, Citi’s Innovation Lab approached me about introducing the product as part of their program. From there, Option Samurai grew gradually, shaped by real needs from people who actually trade the market.

At every stage, the goal stayed the same: save time, make better decisions, and stay flexible as markets change. Those are the same challenges many individual investors face today, and they still guide how Option Samurai is built.