Honoree Profiles: Gabino Roche Jr. ’98 and Stephe...
Gabino Roche Jr. '98
CEO & Founder Saphyre
Stephen Roche
President & Co-Founder Saphyre
Following successful corporate careers in finance and technology, twin brothers Gabino and Stephen Roche launched Saphyre, an innovative and disruptive financial technology (fintech) venture, in 2017.
Since then, the Stillman School -educated siblings have embarked on a nonstop mission to revolutionize the way brokerage firms, custodian banks, investment managers and other financial companies manage the manual- intensive process of managing client trading accounts. Saphyre's key to success is its patent-approved AI technology that digitizes and speeds the pre-trading space, while providing trading and post-trade benefits for financial institutions at the same time. The company, which holds 105 patents, has dramatically increased the efficiency of back-office operations that formerly were accomplished with faxes, emails, phone calls and spreadsheets. Saphyre, based in Hoboken, N.J., secured $18.7 million in Series A funding in 2022, and clients and investors include JP Morgan and Blackrock.
Gabino and Stephen, who are first-generation Americans, credit much of their entrepreneurial passion and drive to growing up in an entrepreneurial family of Cuban immigrants. After high school, the twins attended the Stillman School, where Gabino studied business technology and Stephen majored in marketing. The brothers have maintained strong ties with Stillman. Gabino is a longstanding member of the Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship's Board of Advisors. He frequently serves as a judge for the university's annual Pirates Pitch Startup Competition as well as serves as a mentor to student entrepreneurs.
Prior to founding Saphyre, Gabino devoted his career to building technology solutions for Fortune 500 companies as well as for startup financial ventures. One of his most formative experiences, Gabino recalls, was working at McKinsey & Company, where he became skilled at delivering products faster to market. That experience prepared him for a role at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), where he served as a managing director of application development to help the NYSE's startup division work towards a $1 billion revenue goal. Later, Gabino worked as a senior vice president at JP Morgan executing transformation programs in business operations and overseeing technology and operational process initiatives. JP Morgan's senior management then asked Gabino to assume a product leadership role at Clarient; a fintech startup consortium comprised of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, State Street Global Advisors, Credit Suisse, Barclays Capital and the Depository Trust Company (DTCC). While there he oversaw an $80m budget and, with his team, assisted in the transformation of the company's operations, technology, and product in under six months to meet market deadlines. While at Clarient, Gabino gained valuable insights that led to the founding of Saphyre.
Before co-founding Saphyre, Stephen gained fifteen years of business development experience in the information technology industry, helping to streamline complex global information technology infrastructure in more than fifty locations for Fortune 1000 companies. Among his accomplishments while working as a client solutions executive at AT&T, Stephen managed relationships and closed multi-million dollar business deals with firms that included the New York Yankees, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Red Bull Racing, AXIS Capital and Volvo Cars. Stephen was recognized with awards for his outstanding sales performance while at AT&T.
Gabino and Stephen are frequent guest speakers at global fintech industry conferences, and they have been featured on the covers of industry magazines, including FinTech Magazine and CIO Views Magazine. As leaders in their industry, Gabino and Stephen are widely quoted in the fintech trade press.