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October 8, 2021

QED Investors names Tommy Blanchard new COO

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- QED Investors, a leading global venture capital firm focused on investing in disruptive financial services companies, today named Tommy Blanchard as its Chief Operating Officer.

Blanchard joins QED from Capital One where he spent a total of 20 years, most recently as managing vice president, business analysis in Capital One’s Commercial Bank.

“Tommy is a consummate professional with remarkable people skills,” said QED Investors ManagingPartner and Co-Founder Nigel Morris. “He has a phenomenal mind when it comes to articulating process and mission. His experience will be invaluable in helping us scale QED.

“Tommy is a trusted and authentic general manager with a world-class reputation for leading cross-functional teams.”

In his most recent role, Blanchard’s responsibilities included data analysis and strategy, process innovation and transformation in cross-team collaboration – all toward driving step function improvements in the sales of treasury management products and services in Capital One’s Commercial Bank.

Blanchard’s previous work at Capital One includes executive leadership positions in talent acquisition, people analytics, co-brand partnerships, loyalty strategies, operations analysis and supply chain management.

“I’m incredibly excited to join QED as they look to scale, building on their best-in-class reputation and enhances their position as one of the premier fintech VCs,” said Blanchard.

"QED has created an amazing track record of investing in the most talented entrepreneurs and their disruptive financial technology businesses across the U.S. and internationally. I’m thrilled to partner with Nigel and work alongside QED's wonderful team members to continue their impressive record of success. By scaling platform operations and improving how we think about process, we will continue to position QED at the vanguard of fintech VC.”

Blanchard holds an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, as well as MS and BS degrees in electrical engineering from Purdue University. He lives in Richmond, Va., and will be based in QED’s Alexandria, Va., office.

Founded in 2007, QED Investors has invested in more than 150 companies, including 21 unicorns, and has $3.8 billion under management. Last month, 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.

Contact 

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

 

 

 

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- QED Investors, a leading global venture capital firm focused on investing in disruptive financial services companies, today named Tommy Blanchard as its Chief Operating Officer.

Blanchard joins QED from Capital One where he spent a total of 20 years, most recently as managing vice president, business analysis in Capital One’s Commercial Bank.

“Tommy is a consummate professional with remarkable people skills,” said QED Investors ManagingPartner and Co-Founder Nigel Morris. “He has a phenomenal mind when it comes to articulating process and mission. His experience will be invaluable in helping us scale QED.

“Tommy is a trusted and authentic general manager with a world-class reputation for leading cross-functional teams.”

In his most recent role, Blanchard’s responsibilities included data analysis and strategy, process innovation and transformation in cross-team collaboration – all toward driving step function improvements in the sales of treasury management products and services in Capital One’s Commercial Bank.

Blanchard’s previous work at Capital One includes executive leadership positions in talent acquisition, people analytics, co-brand partnerships, loyalty strategies, operations analysis and supply chain management.

“I’m incredibly excited to join QED as they look to scale, building on their best-in-class reputation and enhances their position as one of the premier fintech VCs,” said Blanchard.

"QED has created an amazing track record of investing in the most talented entrepreneurs and their disruptive financial technology businesses across the U.S. and internationally. I’m thrilled to partner with Nigel and work alongside QED's wonderful team members to continue their impressive record of success. By scaling platform operations and improving how we think about process, we will continue to position QED at the vanguard of fintech VC.”

Blanchard holds an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, as well as MS and BS degrees in electrical engineering from Purdue University. He lives in Richmond, Va., and will be based in QED’s Alexandria, Va., office.

Founded in 2007, QED Investors has invested in more than 150 companies, including 21 unicorns, and has $3.8 billion under management. Last month, 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.

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.