I wish this post can be a starting point for debating about some fundamental aspects of a business area like the one in which Quantiacs operates.
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How do you protect the IP of a strategy's author? How can a quant who spent hours and hours developing a good strategy be sure that you won't look at its code?
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Is the 10% on the net profits just for 1 year? What happens if you use more than 1 year?
I fear that issues like the ones above(expecially the IP related one) could prevent top notch authors from participating in the competition.
I also have the feat that the business could not be sustainable in the long term. Quantopian, which seemed to have a business model really similar to Quantiacs, has closed down and from rumors, opinions I gathered here and there I.P. protection was the main issue for talented authors.
I think you will have to give ground on this front, maybe by accepting somehow signals generated by cloud systems set up by authors or other systems that can 100% safeguard the I.P.
And the fact that you end paying royalties after one year is also crucial. If I designed a very good, long term strategy why shouldn't I get rewarded long time?
