The Side Project That Wouldn’t Stay a Side Project

Adrien Navarre learned early that the fastest way for him to understand something was to build it himself.

From middle school through high school, he was already working on his own projects outside of school, not because he was trying to be rebellious, but because he believed doing was the best teacher. He gravitated toward project based learning before he ever had language for it. “Going out and doing things was always the best way to learn new skills,” he says. That instinct became the foundation for everything that followed.

He grew up in a household where building a business was normal. His parents were self employed, and being surrounded by that environment shaped how he thought about work from an early age. Watching them run their own company showed him something most people do not see up close. Skills could scale. Time could be multiplied. “If I’m really good at something,” he explains, “then I should scale that and try to multiply it by getting other people to start doing those things for me.” That idea stayed with him and later became central to how he approached growth.

Adrien never felt drawn to mastering a single task in isolation. What interested him was turning skills into systems that other people could learn and apply. He paid close attention to how his parents interacted with employees and how they built leverage through people. Over time, he began asking himself a simple question. If he could hire a certain number of people, how could he transfer valuable skills to them in a way that created value for everyone involved. That question quietly shaped his approach to business long before he started his own company.

TickerTrends began as something much smaller than it is today. At the time, Adrien was working full time as a software engineer at a robotics company. Finance had always been a personal interest, and in his free time he found himself building tools to better understand financial markets. What started as a side project grew organically. “I was building out this software just as a fun side project that I was personally very interested in,” he says. Even if he had a choice of how to spend his free time, that was what he wanted to work on.

The idea behind TickerTrends was straightforward but technically demanding. The company collects large amounts of digital data and uses it to forecast reported metrics from public companies. Adrien explains it in practical terms. They purchase datasets that reflect what consumers are looking at, buying, and engaging with online. Hedge funds and asset managers then use that data to better understand how companies are actually performing in near real time. Over time, the business expanded beyond that core use case into asset management, including launching a hedge fund, and into other applications like marketing insights and competitive analysis.

What made the project stick was not just the idea, but how naturally it fit into Adrien’s interests. “Whatever you end up doing by default in your free time tends to be the thing that you should pursue,” he says. Financial markets had always captured his attention. He spent hours researching companies, products, and brands simply because he enjoyed it. Turning that curiosity into a business felt like a natural progression rather than a calculated move.

Early traction came from sharing what he was building publicly. Adrien wrote blog posts, made YouTube videos, and talked openly about the tools he was creating, even when very few people were watching. “I just produced content online about what I was creating,” he says. That visibility connected him with venture capital and industry leaders who saw the work and reached out. Eventually, that exposure led to funding and the opportunity to pursue TickerTrends full time.

Raising capital brought a new set of challenges. After securing external funding, Adrien entered one of the most difficult periods of the business. The pressure was immediate. There was money in the bank, but no clear path yet to scalable or profitable growth. “I had this clock ticking,” he recalls, “counting down of running out of money, not making enough revenue, not finding a good product market fit.” That period lasted nearly two years.

Those months required constant questioning. Adrien tested ideas, gathered feedback, and pivoted repeatedly. Each decision carried weight. He had to move quickly while preserving the quality of the product. The stress came not only from the risk of failure, but from needing to challenge his own assumptions again and again. What eventually helped him break out of that cycle was guidance from someone who had built a similar business at massive scale. Meeting regularly for coffee and hearing firsthand advice from someone who had done it before changed how he approached the problem.

Scrappiness defined the earliest days of building the team. Before there were employees or funding, Adrien hired four interns during one summer. It was just him and the interns working together wherever they could. Sometimes they worked out of his house. Other times they met in rented conference rooms. Resources were limited, but momentum mattered more. “If you’re confident in what you’re working on and why the other person would want to work with you,” he says, “people get excited about what you’re doing and want to help.”

That confidence allowed him to build before everything was fully formed. He focused on using resources efficiently and creating environments where people could contribute meaningfully, even without traditional structures in place. Over time, those early efforts laid the groundwork for a more formal organization.

Looking ahead, Adrien sees TickerTrends continuing to expand across both data and asset management. He believes the cost of collecting and processing data will keep decreasing, making infrastructure and integration the real advantage. Owning the full pipeline, from data collection to insights to application in financial markets, is what he believes sets the business apart. His long term vision is to dominate the data industry while also becoming one of the leading asset managers, even if parts of the business operate as loss leaders along the way.

When offering advice to aspiring founders, Adrien emphasizes consistency and visibility. “Start pursuing the thing that you’re interested in,” he says, and keep showing up for it. He encourages people to talk publicly about what they are building, even if the audience is small. Some of the most important relationships in his career came from videos that only received a few dozen views. One of those viewers became his first venture capital investor. Others became collaborators and mentors.

The best advice he received early on focused on pricing and feedback. When debating how much to charge for an early version of the product, a friend told him to charge as little as possible and focus on getting people to use it. That approach created a group of engaged users who provided invaluable feedback. “The feedback is the most valuable element early on,” Adrien says. That insight allowed the product to improve and eventually support much higher pricing with confidence.

Adrien continues to build TickerTrends the same way he has always learned. By doing the work. By staying close to the details. By sharing progress openly and letting feedback shape direction. The company exists because of that approach, and it continues to grow because he has never stopped trusting it.

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