< The 2015 Fintech Finance 35

Five-year-old Valar Ventures Management takes its name from Middle-earth (home to the Valar, the godlike creatures in The Lord of the Rings), but it is an occupant of what general partner Andrew McCormack calls the Peterverse — the sphere of high-tech investing icon Peter Thiel, whose claims to fame include co-founding PayPal in 1998 and data analytics pioneer Palantir Technologies in 2004. Thiel also co-founded and remains a close adviser to New York–based Valar. “Because of a lot of the things that he’s done, we end up seeing a lot of fintech,” says McCormack, 39, who left Yahoo in 2000 for PayPal ahead of its IPO and 2002 sale to eBay. After helping to launch Thiel’s Clarium Capital Management hedge fund firm and taking a side trip into the restaurant business, McCormack in 2008 joined holding company Thiel Capital, whose chief operating officer and general counsel, former Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom attorney James Fitzgerald, is Valar’s other founding partner. Valar seeks out technology innovators that McCormack describes as “undervalued by their geography” — meaning, they are outside Silicon Valley. The firm’s first investment, in 2010, was in New Zealand accounting-software-in-the-cloud service Xero. More-recent ones include peer-to-peer currency marketplace TransferWise, also backed by Andreessen Horowitz (see Marc Andreessen, No. 12); Berlin mobile bank Number26; and, outside fintech, photography site EyeEm Mobile. Along with Citi Ventures (see Vanessa Colella, No. 17), Valar in September closed a $4 million seed round for Trading Ticket, an enabler of stock trades through websites and apps, whose CEO, Nathan Richardson, is a former general manager of Yahoo Finance. “What they’re doing is particularly timely in this world of ad blockers and diminished ability to monetize content through advertising,” McCormack says.

 
The 2015 Fintech Finance 35

1. James Robinson III & James Robinson IV RRE Ventures 2. Jane Gladstone Evercore Partners 3. Matthew Harris Bain Capital Ventures The Rise of Oil Options: Why More Traders Are Getting Involved Sponsored by CME Group May 19, 2025 4. Steven McLaughlin Financial Technology Partners 5. Jonathan Korngold General Atlantic

6. Richard Garman & Brad Bernstein FTV Capital 7. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park Anthemis Group 8. Thomas Jessop Goldman Sachs Group 9. Meyer (Micky) Malka Ribbit Capital 10. Hans Morris Nyca Partners

11. Maria Gotsch Partnership Fund for New York City 12. Marc Andreessen Andreessen Horowitz 13. Barry Silbert Digital Currency Group 14. Jay Reinemann Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria 15. Mariano Belinky Santander InnoVentures

16. François Robinet AXA Strategic Ventures 17. Vanessa Colella Citi Ventures 18. Alan Freudenstein & Gregory Grimaldi Credit Suisse NEXT Fund 19. Justin Brownhill & Neil DeSena SenaHill Partners 20. Rodger Voorhies Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

21. Michael Schlein Accion International 22. Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates 23. Rumi Morales CME Ventures 24. Mark Beeston Illuminate Financial Management 25. Vladislav Solodkiy Life.SREDA

26. Fabian Vandenreydt Innotribe SWIFT 27. Derek White Barclays 28. Alex Batlin UBS 29. Jeffrey Greenberg & Vincenzo La Ruffa Aquiline Capital Partners 30. P. Howard Edelstein REDI Holdings

31. Nektarios Liolios Startupbootcamp FinTech 32. Roy Bahat Bloomberg Beta 33. Andrew McCormack Valar Ventures 34. Lawrence Wintermeyer Innovate Finance 35. Janos Barberis FinTech Hong Kong