Return to Blog

June 6, 2024

QED co-founders climb ranking of world’s best investors

By

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

Managing Partner Morris rose 48 spots to No. 50 on the 2024 list – the second-highest climb of any investor returning from the 2023 edition – while Chief Investment Officer Rotman rose 13 places to No. 77.

Rotman was named to the list for the seventh consecutive year, while Morris appeared for the fourth year in a row.

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 18 firms with multiple investors on the list – and the only VC headquartered on the east coast with two Midas List honorees.

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. He is the Chairman of ClearScore and Mission Lane and serves on the boards of Remitly, Bitso, Current and Amount, and he is a board observer for QuintoAndar.

A 30-year financial services and technology specialist, Rotman's most notable investment 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.

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 225 companies, including 28 unicorns. In May 2023, QED closed nearly $1 billion in new funds between an oversubscribed $650 million eighth early stage fund and a $275 million second growth-stage 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, Creditas, Credit Karma, Current, 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 have been named to Forbes’ annual Midas List honoring the best venture capitalists in the world.

Managing Partner Morris rose 48 spots to No. 50 on the 2024 list – the second-highest climb of any investor returning from the 2023 edition – while Chief Investment Officer Rotman rose 13 places to No. 77.

Rotman was named to the list for the seventh consecutive year, while Morris appeared for the fourth year in a row.

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 18 firms with multiple investors on the list – and the only VC headquartered on the east coast with two Midas List honorees.

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. He is the Chairman of ClearScore and Mission Lane and serves on the boards of Remitly, Bitso, Current and Amount, and he is a board observer for QuintoAndar.

A 30-year financial services and technology specialist, Rotman's most notable investment 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.

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 225 companies, including 28 unicorns. In May 2023, QED closed nearly $1 billion in new funds between an oversubscribed $650 million eighth early stage fund and a $275 million second growth-stage 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, Creditas, Credit Karma, Current, 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

No items found.

Test column heading 1

Test column heading 2

Test column heading 3

Test column heading 4

This is a longer lorem ipsum text 1
This is a longer lorem ipsum text 2
This is a longer lorem ipsum text 3
This is a longer lorem ipsum text 4
This is a longer lorem ipsum text 5
This is a longer lorem ipsum text 6
TEst row
TEst row
TEst row
TEst row
TEst row
TEst row
No items found.
No items found.
No items found.
No items found.

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.