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November 1, 2023

QED named to Inc.’s 2023 list of founder-friendly investors

QED Investors has been named to Inc.’s annual Founder-Friendly Investors list, honoring the venture capital firms with the best track record of success backing entrepreneurs.

The list recognizes firms that remain actively involved with the businesses in which they invest, and that have earned the trust of the entrepreneurs they support to help drive growth.

“It’s a terrific stamp of approval from our portfolio companies to again be named to Inc.’s list of founder-friendly investors,” said QED Investors Managing Partner, Nigel Morris. “‘Founder-friendly’ means different things to different people. Frank Rotman and I built QED on the premise of using our decades of combined experience as operators to provide entrepreneurs with the best advice they can get. That ethos permeates throughout our team, and it’s why we’re laser-focused entirely on fintech and only fintech – a specialist niche we know as well as any other VC in the world."

QED has exclusively invested in fintech since its inception in 2007 and has played a crucial part in the growth of some of today’s fintech behemoths including Credit Karma (QED led its Series A round in 2009), Remitly (QED led its Series A in 2014), Nubank (QED participated in its Series A in 2014) and AvidXchange (QED participated in its Series B in 2014).

“To us, ‘founder-friendly’ doesn’t mean giving term sheets at the highest valuations or simply funding companies whenever a CEO reaches out. It means being a diligent partner, often for eight or 10 years, and working hands-on in a consigliere role to help founders navigate the pitfalls they may not even know exist.”

QED has been a leader in the fintech investing community throughout fintech’s evolution, having guided and grown these companies and others through the ecosystem’s boom. QED has invested in more than 200 companies across 18 countries worldwide, backing a total of 29 unicorns, the majority of which were at the pre-seed, seed or Series A stage.

To compile the list, Inc. spoke directly with venture-backed entrepreneurs. Founders filled out a questionnaire about their experiences partnering with private equity, venture capital, and debt firms and shared data on how their portfolio companies have grown during these partnerships.

To see the complete list, click here.


QED Investors has been named to Inc.’s annual Founder-Friendly Investors list, honoring the venture capital firms with the best track record of success backing entrepreneurs.

The list recognizes firms that remain actively involved with the businesses in which they invest, and that have earned the trust of the entrepreneurs they support to help drive growth.

“It’s a terrific stamp of approval from our portfolio companies to again be named to Inc.’s list of founder-friendly investors,” said QED Investors Managing Partner, Nigel Morris. “‘Founder-friendly’ means different things to different people. Frank Rotman and I built QED on the premise of using our decades of combined experience as operators to provide entrepreneurs with the best advice they can get. That ethos permeates throughout our team, and it’s why we’re laser-focused entirely on fintech and only fintech – a specialist niche we know as well as any other VC in the world."

QED has exclusively invested in fintech since its inception in 2007 and has played a crucial part in the growth of some of today’s fintech behemoths including Credit Karma (QED led its Series A round in 2009), Remitly (QED led its Series A in 2014), Nubank (QED participated in its Series A in 2014) and AvidXchange (QED participated in its Series B in 2014).

“To us, ‘founder-friendly’ doesn’t mean giving term sheets at the highest valuations or simply funding companies whenever a CEO reaches out. It means being a diligent partner, often for eight or 10 years, and working hands-on in a consigliere role to help founders navigate the pitfalls they may not even know exist.”

QED has been a leader in the fintech investing community throughout fintech’s evolution, having guided and grown these companies and others through the ecosystem’s boom. QED has invested in more than 200 companies across 18 countries worldwide, backing a total of 29 unicorns, the majority of which were at the pre-seed, seed or Series A stage.

To compile the list, Inc. spoke directly with venture-backed entrepreneurs. Founders filled out a questionnaire about their experiences partnering with private equity, venture capital, and debt firms and shared data on how their portfolio companies have grown during these partnerships.

To see the complete list, click here.


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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.