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The 2015 Tech 50: Mazy Dar

The OpenFin CEO debuts on this year’s Tech 50 ranking at No. 46.

46
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.”

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”


The 2015 Tech 50

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

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