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The 2015 Tech 50: Jock Percy
The Perseus CEO debuts at No. 50 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.
In 2010, its first year of operation, Perseus was a boutique, serving a handful of customers who had caught on to a bespoke, managed telecommunications service model that may have been slightly ahead of its time. The following year, recalls founder and CEO Jock Percy, proprietary traders started climbing aboard, drawn to the LiquidPath network’s low latency and market-access connectivity. A steady stream of exchanges, investment banks and hedge funds — and a small but growing number of media, e-commerce and gaming companies — followed. If Perseus, which has its headquarters in New York, hadn’t quite established itself as a Wall Street name, that changed in April, when Goldman Sachs Group bought a minority stake for $20.5 million. It was more than just an image booster, says Percy, 41, who placed so much stock in the power of his brand that he dropped “Telecom” from the company’s name some months before. The funding will enable Perseus to complete a 28-location expansion of LiquidPath in one year, instead of the original plan for five years. Three cities added in the first quarter — Johannesburg, Istanbul and Santiago — are representative of Perseus’ global reach. Percy says his main competition is do-it-yourself networking, which is increasingly ripe for outsourcing as firms come to the conclusion that their competitive advantages lie elsewhere. With a Ph.D. in political economies from the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, Percy has an intellectual and professional fascination with Bitcoin. He announced early last year that Perseus would accept Bitcoin payments. In May 2014 the company launched a digital currency initiative, offering its “Wall Street–grade” infrastructure as an alternative to Mt. Gox and other platforms that did not serve Bitcoin well.
See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”
 1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange  2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp.  3. Phupinder Gill CME Group  4. Lance Uggla Markit  5. Robert Goldstein BlackRock |
 6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg  7. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group  8. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures  9. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments  10. Adena Friedman Nasdaq OMX Group |
 11. David Craig Thomson Reuters  12. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings  13. Michael Spencer ICAP  14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.  15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing |
 16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets  17. Christopher Perretta State Street Corp.  18. Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group  19. Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co.  20. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co. |
 21. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets  22. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings  23. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings  24. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp.  25. Frank Bisignano First Data Corp. |
 26. John Marcante Vanguard Group  27. Joseph Squeri Citadel  28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group  29. Claude Honegger Credit Suisse  30. Chris Corrado MSCI |
 31. David Gledhill DBS Bank  32. John Bates Software AG  33. Michael Cooper BT Radianz  34. Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group  35. Sunil Hirani trueEX Group |
 36. Hauke Stars Deutsche BÖrse  37. Brian Conlon First Derivatives  38. Jim Minnick eVestment  39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais  40. Tyler Kim MaplesFS |
 41. Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp.  42. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix  43. Sebastián Ceria Axioma  44. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America  45. Stephane Dubois Xignite |
 46. Mazy Dar OpenFin  47. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software  48. Mas Nakachi OpenGamma  49. John Lehner BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group  50. Jock Percy Perseus |