This content is from: Portfolio
The 2015 Tech 50: Mazy Dar
The OpenFin CEO debuts on this year’s Tech 50 ranking at No. 46.
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.”
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 |