Top 50 Emerging Leaders 2021 continued (in alphabetical order by CVC unit): Luis Valdich, managing director and venture investing lead in New York City, Citi Ventures
Luis Valdich is managing director and venture investing lead for Citi Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of US-based financial services corporation Citigroup. In this role, he identifies and executes investments in financial technology developers in the US and Europe alongside teams based in New York and London.
“I enjoy partnering with entrepreneurs and Citi businesses enterprise-wide to help build great companies while helping our franchise thrive in the new financial services paradigms,” Valdich said.
Valdich joined Citi Ventures’ New York City office in 2015, where he leverages the unit’s “best of both worlds” CVC model that mixes strategic investing and venture capital in a bid to form synergistic collaborations between entrepreneurs and the firm’s executive team and customers.
He has led investments in Clarity Money, a personal finance management app developer that was acquired by investment banking group Goldman Sachs in April 2018, business financial management software developer HighRadius, cross-border e-commerce payment technology developer PPro, accounting software developer ScaleFactor and motorsports-focused automated loan software developer Octane Lending.
Consumer data software provider Second Measure, freelance worker management technology developer HoneyBook, financial advice provider SmartAsset and Contguard, a supply-chain shipment monitoring and business intelligence services provider, are also among Valdich’s investments.
Before Citi Ventures, Valdich founded and managed financial services firm JPMorgan Chase’s strategic investments group for almost eight years, where he invested in more than 30 companies. They included Square, Markit, Tradeweb, Bats/DirectEdge (acquired by Cboe Global Markets), Air Lease Corp, LME (acquired by HKEX), ClearXChange (acquired by Early Warning and renamed Zelle), Symphony Communications and Avant.
He began his investing career as a principal at internet and telecommunications firm SoftBank for four years from 2000. Valdich holds an MBA from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from Franklin & Marshall College.
