< The 2015 Fintech Finance 35

While running OUYA, a set-top-box and game-console company he co-founded in 2012, Roy Bahat says he “saw lots of problems” in the way venture capital worked. “It’s still very clubby and secretive,” the 38-year-old observes. “I’d spend weeks trying to get a meeting.” He set out to do things differently as head of Bloomberg Beta, the $75 million early-stage fund that he helped Bloomberg LP set up in San Francisco in 2013. Openness and diversity are Bloomberg Beta’s credos. The fund posts its “operating manual” — and runs its website — on open-source GitHub, and two of the firm’s six partners are women. Bahat brought another, opportunistic insight to Bloomberg Beta: “The basic machinery of business” was crying out for improvement, he says. “We’ve had so many changes in our personal lives, but the changes haven’t transferred across to the work realm.” Although Bloomberg LP is a financial technology powerhouse, it gave Bloomberg Beta a broad, explicitly nonfintech mandate; Bahat describes the fund’s investment targets as “companies that make work better, from data infrastructure to business applications to professional media and news.” Bahat says the 50-plus checks the fund has issued meet that criterion, though some portfolio companies, such as Seattle-based predictive analytics developer Context Relevant, sell to Wall Street and have technology that is of interest to Bloomberg itself. “The one thing we’re focused on more than anything is machine intelligence, and processes where person and machine work in tandem,” Bahat says. “The Bloomberg terminal is a great example of that happening in the securities industry.”

 
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 Market Volatility May Boost Distressed Credit Opportunities Sponsored by Fidelity Investments May 12, 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