< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud

At Citigroup headquarters in New York, stress tests, capital and leverage are high on the boardroom agenda. The metrics are different in Palo Alto, California, at Citi Ventures, the $1.9 trillion-in-assets banking company’s strategic investing unit and window on all things emerging and disruptive. To see the future is to know the players: Last year Citi Ventures logged 1,000 meetings — 200 more than in 2012 — vetted 620 start-ups and invested in eight. “The level of disruption is profound and pervasive and reaching across every industry,” says CEO Deborah Hopkins, a veteran technology and strategy executive who established the Silicon Valley outpost in 2010 and has been Citigroup’s chief innovation officer since 2008. “A big part of what our team is now focused on is helping our businesses understand all that and synthesize it into actionable insights.” Recent portfolio investments Ayasdi, Datameer and Platfora have the big-data-analytics theme in common. Among other holdings: e-payments sensation Square. Citi offers “companies that have potential for scale” what conventional venture firms cannot by “moving them into proof of concept and hopefully commercialization,” Hopkins, 59, explains. In her spare time she hosts events to promote women’s entrepreneurship, part of a personal campaign: “We’re looking to figure out how to change numbers that are staggeringly small.”

 
The 2014 Tech 50

1 Dave Cross	1	3 IAN CURCIO 2011	4 FayFoto/Boston	5 Teri Pengilley
Thomas Secunda Bloomberg	Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange	Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.	Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments	Lance Uggla Markit
6	7	8 Photographer:Charlie Simokaitis	9	10 Mark McQueen
Robert Goldstein BlackRock	David Craig Thomson Reuters	Phupinder Gill CME Group	Anna Ewing NASDAQ OMX Group	R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group
11	12	13	14	15 Christopher Elston
Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures	Dan Mathisson Credit Suisse	Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings	Michael Spencer ICAP	Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
16	17	18 Todd Plitt	19	20
Joe Ratterman BATS Global Markets	Dominique Cerutti Euronext	Ron Levi GFI Group	Gaurav Suri D.E. Shaw Group	Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
21 Larry Lettera/ Camera 1	22	23	24 XT	25
Lou Eccleston S&P Capital IQ	Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets	Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings	Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings	Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group
26 Production	27 Wayne R. Martin	28	29 Thorsten Jansen	30 Adam B. Auel
Christopher Perretta State Street Corp.	Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co.	Peter Carr Morgan Stanley	Hauke Stars Deutsche Börse	Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp.
31	32	33 Paul Elledge	34	35 Stephen Brashear
David Gershon SuperDerivatives	Chris Corrado MSCI	Joseph Squeri Citadel	Tanuja Randery BT Global Services	John Bates Software AG
36	37	38	39 Photo Credit: Kevin Irby	40
Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group	David Gledhill DBS Bank	Simon Garland Kx Systems	Cristóbal Conde FinTech Innovation Lab	Jeff Parker EidoSearch
41	42 Jeff Smith Photo	43	44	45
Kim Fournais & Lars Seier Christensen Saxo Bank	Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates	Tyler Kim MaplesFS	Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp.	Jim Minnick eVestment
46	47	48 tomohisa ichiki	49 David Poultney	50 A.E. Fletcher Photography
Steven O’Hanlon Numerix	Sebastián Ceria Axioma	Yasuki Okai Nomura Research Institute	Niki Beattie Market Structure Partners	Mas Nakachi OpenGamma