The 2015 Tech 50: Mazy Dar

< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

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Mazy Dar
Chief Executive Officer
OpenFin
PNR

Start-ups may have advantages in terms of invention and agility, but “getting big banks and trading institutions to work with you is a challenge,” says Mazy Dar. “The bar is especially high when you’re a small firm addressing a mission-critical part of the infrastructure.” Dar, 39, has been toiling since 2010 as CEO of OpenFin, developing a new, financial-services-focused approach to desktop programming, and 2015 is shaping up as its breakthrough year. The 20-employee, New York–based company in April raised $3 million from Bain Capital Ventures, Pivot Investment Partners, Nyca Partners and 20 individuals, including ex-CEOs Cristóbal Conde of SunGard Data Services and Thomas Glocer of Thomson Reuters. At the time of the funding, 11 top banks and trading platforms were using OpenFin’s patent-pending software, which is an implementation of the HTML5 language based on the Google Chromium open-source browser project. Dar expects to have all “majors” on board by year-end. OpenFin addresses firms’ desire for simplified installations and upgrades and maximum performance — the speed and analytics demanded by traders — across all browsers and devices, while leveraging the latest advances coming out of Silicon Valley. “The ability to build once and run everywhere — with better user experience, performance and security, extending to mobile and tablet devices — is huge for this business,” says Dar, who was chief strategy officer of credit-derivatives-trading pioneer Creditex Group before its 2008 sale to Intercontintental Exchange, and then an ICE executive committee member. “It is a problem for any firm in the financial industry to deliver continuous innovation, and we solve that with a focus on capital markets.”

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The 2015 Tech 50