< The 2015 Fintech Finance 35

When RRE Ventures was new, in 1994, so was the commercial Internet. The firm easily commandeered rre.com as its web address and became a fixture in New York City’s venture capital community, which at the time was not nearly in the same league as Boston and Silicon Valley. But New York had something those locales didn’t: a concentration of large corporations, including financial industry giants, with growing appetites for innovation. And RRE had James Robinson III, who retired as chairman and CEO of American Express Co. in 1993 and could both open doors to the Fortune 500 and arrange introductions to technology entrepreneurs with whom he was getting acquainted as an angel investor. Robinson, whose 80th birthday is November 19, raised the investment stakes with RRE, which he, as general partner, co-founded with two managing partners: his son James Robinson IV and Stuart Ellman. James IV and Ellman, now 53 and 49, respectively, were Harvard Business School classmates who started a company that developed a touch-screen ordering system for stadiums that was ten years ahead of its time. Their timing as leaders of RRE’s nine-member investment team has vastly improved. The portfolio is a diversified set of technology, media and consumer plays, including such fintech disrupters as online lender OnDeck Capital, financial management service NerdWallet and a host of Bitcoin/blockchain investments, directly and through a relationship with Digital Currency Group (see Barry Silbert, No. 13). RRE has also invested in Ellman’s specialty of robotics (Jibo) and in space (Spaceflight Industries and Spire Global). “Most everything we look at has a 20-year gestation — we’re even seeing that in digital currency,” says James IV, underscoring the long view and patient perspective informing the firm’s more than $1.5 billion in investments. “If all you do is chase what’s hot, you’ll go wrong.” His father admits to pooh-poohing cryptocurrency, then “doing a 180,” in part thanks to Adam Ludwin, who worked at RRE from 2010 until early 2014. Ludwin co-founded Chain, a blockchain start-up now working closely with, among others, Nasdaq and First Data Corp., a company James III acquired while at American Express. RRE backed Ludwin early, and in September, James III joined Chain’s board.

 
The 2015 Fintech Finance 35

1. James Robinson III & James Robinson IV RRE Ventures 2. Jane Gladstone Evercore Partners Podcast: Opportunistic and Distressed Debt Investing: The Strategies, Stories, and Intricacies Sponsored by Fidelity Investments May 22, 2025 3. Matthew Harris Bain Capital Ventures 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