About Bionic Turtle

Bionic Turtle was founded by David Harper, CFA, FRM, CIPM and is owned by Investor Alternatives, LLC. We launched in 2004 and offered our first total multimedia exam aid for the Financial Risk Manager (FRM) certification exam in 2005. Since launching, we’ve seen >100% annualized growth with a nearly 100% customer satisfaction rate. In 2006, we became an Approved Provider of Professional Development (PD) programs, a designation granted by the prestigious CFA Institute.

About David Harper, CFA, FRM, CIPM

David spent ten years as a management consultant, with three top-tier firms, to executives, CFOs and Boards on strategy, transactions, performance measurement, and incentives. His industry foci were financial services and technology. His clients included (in reverse chronology) management and/or Boards at Barclays Global Investors, American Century Investments, KMV (now Moody’s KMV), Amazon.com, Levis, Times Mirror, Procter & Gamble, Illinois Central, Provident Investment Counsel, Zions Bancorp, Countrywide, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Conexant, Edison International, 3Com, Quantum, and Western Digital. Also, several internet startups professional services firms, investment management (including hedge funds and fund of funds) and REITs.

For several years, David has been a regular contributor to investopedia.com. He launched their newsletter along with Investopedia’s co-founders, designed the analytical methodology (e.g., red flag identification) and constituted the initial portfolios (core growth, undiscovered value and thematic technology) which returned +35% annualized since inception (the newsletter was folded into forbes.com after their acquisition of investopedia). He is the author of one of investopedia’s most popular tutorial series on Advanced Financial Statement Analysis (used in three college curricula) and is currently authoring an upcoming, comprehensive series on exchange traded funds (ETFs).

David combines a practical background in actual corporate transactions with extensive academic training. He has published on option pricing models (his early specialty was the development of option pricing models under FAS 123R), transaction valuation, and intangibles valuation. He occasionally consults on advanced analytical issues. In September of 2006, he assisted Lipis Consulting in an expert support role. His valuation model helped the plaintiff win a $30+ million judgment in a high-profile case.

He is also keenly interested in technology and himself developed the first Bionic Turtle platform. He learned the EE CMS (PHP based), Abobe tools (illustrator and photoshop), and object-oriented flash/flex in order to realize the vision. (He has sinice delivered a few seminars on using flash and flash-like tools to deliver elearning). Recently, owing to growth, he has turned web development over to real professionals. The current site was designed by the fabulous and remarkably talented Lea Alcantara.

David’s education:

• Charted Financial Analyst (CFA)
• Financial Risk Manager (FRM)
• Certificate in Investment Performance Measurement (CIPM)
• BA, Economics, UC Berkeley, 1989

Why I started Bionic Turtle

"I sat for the FRM because I was keenly interested in risk. As I looked at the training choices for a candidate, I perceived only two: either on-site classroom instruction or self-study. Classroom instruction has advantages that can’t be replaced, but it is also expensive, synchronous, and requires travel. At the other end, the quality of self-study varies. Too often, providers do little more than copy source material wholesale and recycle stale questions.

I thought I could do better for customers. Specifically, by emphasizing the asynchronous, multimedia capability of a well-crafted screencast. And by gradually complementing text with visually-based mnemonics. Our package does includes study notes (with the learning outcomes carefully embedded) but we are always trying to improve on "mere text" in the pursuit of better learning. For example, our Basel map is an attempt to orient a new learner to a dense, voluminous framework with a single visual map. And it’s a now a crowd favorite (this customer last year called it brilliant. She passed the exam.) that’s been requested by even non-candidates.

I am thrilled by the internet’s opportunity to disrupt traditional exam prep. Information may be free, but tangle skill transfer is the opposite of free. Traditionally, barriers to higher-order learning were high—not only expensive but also inconvenient. But these barriers are eroding in real-time. The exciting endgame will be a level playing field where external circumstances (geography, capital, access) are not barriers to actionable learning, only individual motivation and imagination."