Two small steps for Quantopian. One giant leap toward opening its hedge fund to outside investors.

Quantopian announced on Friday that Derek Meisner (right) had joined the company as general counsel and chief compliance officer to help build what Quantopian CEO John Fawcett called a “compliance and operational infrastructure” as the company prepares to take its hedge fund to the public. Meisner called it a “rare opportunity” and arrives at the company after serving as chief counsel and CCO for Boston-area alternative investors, RA Capital Management and Regiment Capital Advisors. Previously, Meisner spent four years as a branch chief for the SECs Division of Enforcement. He holds a bachelor’s degree from University of Michigan and earned his law degree from the American University, Washington College of Law.

Pictured (left to right): Co-founders: CEO John Fawcett and CTO Jean Bredeche demonstrated Quantopian Live Trading at FinovateSpring 2013 in San Francisco.

The executive onboarding continued this week as Quantopian added Jonathan Larkin (circle right) as its first chief investment officer. Larkin comes to Quantopian after serving at Hudson Bay Capital Management as a portfolio manager, and at BlueCrest Capital Management as global co-head of equities. He also has a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In an interview with Financial Times, Larkin compared startups like Quantopian to hedge funds in their early days and said he plans to bring growth-accelerating “institutional experience” to the company.

A platform for quantitatively oriented investors and traders who build and share trading algorithms, Quantopian announced a hedge fund it had launched back in October 2014 will be opened to outside investors. The hedge fund trades are based on algorithms created by Quantopian members and part of Larkin’s job will be to help choose which algorithms are used in the fund.

Founded in June 2011 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Quantopian demonstrated its Live Trading platform at FinovateSpring 2013. The company has raised $23.8 million in funding, most recently a $15 million Series B in October 2014. Quantopian, which went live in Australia in March, was named to the inaugural Forbes Fintech 50 in December of last year, along with 19 fellow Finovate alums.