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May 4, 2023

QED co-founders again named among world’s best investors

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ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- QED Investors co-founders Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman were today named to Forbes’ annual Midas List honoring the best venture capitalists in the world.

Rotman was named to the list for the sixth year in a row, while Morris appeared for the third consecutive time.

Produced in partnership with TrueBridge Capital Partners, the Midas List is the definitive ranking of the top 100 tech investors.

QED was one of just 16 firms with multiple investors on the list – and the only VC with two Midas List investors based on the east coast.

Morris led QED's early investment into Brazilian neobank Nubank, where he sat on the advisory board. The company went public in December 2021 at a $41 billion market cap. Morris is the chairman of ClearScore and Mission Lane and serves on the boards of Remitly, Bitso, Amount and Current. He is also a board observer at Quinto Andar.

“After more than 13 years of up-and-to-the-right euphoria in the private markets, the wheat is now being separated from the chaff. Building generational, transformative businesses is about layering art on top of science,” Morris said.

“We have the scars on our back to help us shepherd our founders through this tumult while living up to our brand promise to provide the best advice in fintech. Having multiple investors on the Midas List again this year is a testament to the hard work of the entire QED team as well as the trust that our Limited Partners have shown in us.”

A 30-year financial services and technology specialist, Rotman's biggest score to date has been Credit Karma, which was acquired by Intuit for $7.1 billion in December 2020. His portfolio includes more than 20 investments, including SoFi, Roofstock, Flywire and Provide.

“My personal investing philosophy is that great businesses need to be built on top of foundationally good businesses,” Rotman said. “Going directly from ‘zero’ to ‘great’ is a fantasy standard that inexperienced founders and investors chase. An important role that I play is to help founders become better asset allocators and systemically de-risk businesses instead of trying to big bang their way into greatness.”

A company is considered for VC deal attribution on the Midas List if it has exited in the past five years at more than $200 million or is a private, unexited company valued at more than $400 million.

Before launching QED in 2007, Morris and Rotman were instrumental in taking Capital One public and scaling it to a decacorn in the public markets. Morris was the co-founder, chief operating officer and president of Capital One, while Rotman was the company’s first chief credit risk officer.

QED has invested in more than 200 companies, including 28 unicorns. In September 2021, QED announced it had closed a substantially oversubscribed $1.05 billion fund, including $550 million in QED Fund VII for early stage investments and $500 million in a new Growth Fund.

About QED Investors

QED Investors is a global leading venture capital firm based in Alexandria, Va. Founded by Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman in 2007, QED Investors is focused on investing in disruptive financial services companies worldwide. QED Investors is dedicated to building great businesses and uses a unique, hands-on approach that leverages its partners’ decades of entrepreneurial and operational experience, helping companies achieve breakthrough growth. Notable investments include AvidXchange, Betterfly, Bitso, Caribou, ClearScore, Current, Creditas, Credit Karma, Flywire, Kavak, Klarna, Konfio, Loft, Mission Lane, Nubank, QuintoAndar, Remitly, SoFi, Wagestream and Wayflyer.

Contact

Ashley Marshall
Director, PR and Communications
QED Investors
(518) 577-9984

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- QED Investors co-founders Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman were today named to Forbes’ annual Midas List honoring the best venture capitalists in the world.

Rotman was named to the list for the sixth year in a row, while Morris appeared for the third consecutive time.

Produced in partnership with TrueBridge Capital Partners, the Midas List is the definitive ranking of the top 100 tech investors.

QED was one of just 16 firms with multiple investors on the list – and the only VC with two Midas List investors based on the east coast.

Morris led QED's early investment into Brazilian neobank Nubank, where he sat on the advisory board. The company went public in December 2021 at a $41 billion market cap. Morris is the chairman of ClearScore and Mission Lane and serves on the boards of Remitly, Bitso, Amount and Current. He is also a board observer at Quinto Andar.

“After more than 13 years of up-and-to-the-right euphoria in the private markets, the wheat is now being separated from the chaff. Building generational, transformative businesses is about layering art on top of science,” Morris said.

“We have the scars on our back to help us shepherd our founders through this tumult while living up to our brand promise to provide the best advice in fintech. Having multiple investors on the Midas List again this year is a testament to the hard work of the entire QED team as well as the trust that our Limited Partners have shown in us.”

A 30-year financial services and technology specialist, Rotman's biggest score to date has been Credit Karma, which was acquired by Intuit for $7.1 billion in December 2020. His portfolio includes more than 20 investments, including SoFi, Roofstock, Flywire and Provide.

“My personal investing philosophy is that great businesses need to be built on top of foundationally good businesses,” Rotman said. “Going directly from ‘zero’ to ‘great’ is a fantasy standard that inexperienced founders and investors chase. An important role that I play is to help founders become better asset allocators and systemically de-risk businesses instead of trying to big bang their way into greatness.”

A company is considered for VC deal attribution on the Midas List if it has exited in the past five years at more than $200 million or is a private, unexited company valued at more than $400 million.

Before launching QED in 2007, Morris and Rotman were instrumental in taking Capital One public and scaling it to a decacorn in the public markets. Morris was the co-founder, chief operating officer and president of Capital One, while Rotman was the company’s first chief credit risk officer.

QED has invested in more than 200 companies, including 28 unicorns. In September 2021, QED announced it had closed a substantially oversubscribed $1.05 billion fund, including $550 million in QED Fund VII for early stage investments and $500 million in a new Growth Fund.

About QED Investors

QED Investors is a global leading venture capital firm based in Alexandria, Va. Founded by Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman in 2007, QED Investors is focused on investing in disruptive financial services companies worldwide. QED Investors is dedicated to building great businesses and uses a unique, hands-on approach that leverages its partners’ decades of entrepreneurial and operational experience, helping companies achieve breakthrough growth. Notable investments include AvidXchange, Betterfly, Bitso, Caribou, ClearScore, Current, Creditas, Credit Karma, Flywire, Kavak, Klarna, Konfio, Loft, Mission Lane, Nubank, QuintoAndar, Remitly, SoFi, Wagestream and Wayflyer.

Contact

Ashley Marshall
Director, PR and Communications
QED Investors
(518) 577-9984

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01

Settlement Collapse

Value transfer moves from days - corresponding banking, T+1 securities - to seconds. Working capital tied up in float is released.

02

Cost Collapse

Marginal transaction cost approaches zero: fractions of a cent, versus 1-6% on card and corresponding rails.

03

Programmability

Money becomes an object that carries logic - escrow, splits, rebates, compliance - executed by code, not back offices.

Pure infrastructure with no revenue accrual

Layer-1 chains and general-purpose middleware — outside our circle of competence and typically outside our stage.

Speculative asset creation

NFT platforms, memecoins, prediction markets styled as products — mapping to none of the five functions; structurally uninvestable for us.

Three structural truths cut across all five functions.

(a)

Regulated-first wins

The 2020/21 cycle proved permissionless purity does not survive contact with real financial regulation. GENIUS, MiCA, CLARITY and the UK/Singapore regimes are producing founders who start from “how do we get licensed” and build backwards — precisely the founder profile QED has always preferred.
(b)

Incumbents upgraded, not disintermediated

JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are jointly building a tokenized-deposit network; Visa launched a stablecoin platform in July 2026; 140+ businesses signed an open stablecoin standard. Banks migrate — and new-generation infrastructure companies own the picks and shovels of that migration.
(c)

Emerging markets feel it first

Every function improves most where the fiat experience is worst: cross-border payments, dollar access, investment product availability, working-capital finance. Those are exactly the geographies where QED has fintech ventures’ deepest footprint. Our geographic distribution is not incidental to the tokenization thesis — it is the thesis.

Trade & working-capital finance

Finkargo( LatAm import finance) and OatFi(B2B working-capital infrastructure) sit directly on flows whose logical settlement layer is stablecoin.

Collateralized digital-asset lending

Tokenized Treasuries, equities and stablecoin holdings as instant, programmable collateral.

On-chain private credt

Maple, Centrifuge and emerging institutional protocols - credit funds migrating to programmable rails.

Why QED is advanced

Credit is QED's craft: distinguishing lending businesses from fintechs pretending to be one, charge-offs earned from charge-offs deferred. On-chain credit is a straight-line extension, not a stretch.