Entrepreneurship came naturally to Derek White. At age nine he started a newspaper distribution business with his brother, when their father was out of work. While attending Utah State University in the mid-1990s, White formed an events marketing company that had credit card bank First USA as a client, and that became his entrée into financial services and, ultimately, online finance. Impressed with White’s proficiency at attracting account applications, First USA — subsequently acquired by Bank One Corp. and in turn by JPMorgan Chase & Co. — hired him to start a sports and entertainment division. In 2000, after working with First USA’s Wingspan, touted as the world’s first Internet bank, White went to work with the founders of Juniper Bank, moving to Barclays when the U.K. giant acquired the online upstart in 2005. For London-based Barclays, White spearheaded an emerging-markets expansion strategy in 15 countries, and in 2011 he became chief customer experience officer, launching the Pingit mobile platform. With an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, White, 42, has been Barclays’ chief digital and design officer since 2013, and he has laid out a welcome mat to fintech start-ups. “We asked what we could provide beyond financial and human capital — and it was customers,” he says. “Start-ups’ hardest nut to crack is customers.” Barclays has partnered with the Techstars accelerator in London to “create collisions between brilliant people and the right kind of environment for innovation.” They held their first demo day in London a year ago and one in New York last month, where applications ranged from quantum computing to bond trading to blockchain. Says White, “We’re taking the growth opportunities that we have, the new technology we see, and going out to start-ups asking how they could help us create the future of financial services.”
 1. James Robinson III & James Robinson IV RRE Ventures  2. Jane Gladstone Evercore Partners  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 |