By admin 
The story of a stereotypical startup founder has a well-known arc: Drop out of faculty, launch a startup, elevate billions, go public, after which journey off into the sundown as an angel investor in your 40s. That’s not Thijn Lamers. A former govt on the $60 billion fintech big Adyen, Lamers, who’s in his 50s however declined to specify his precise age, introduced on Tuesday he’s now president and cofounder of stablecoin startup Noah. “I get a lot vitality from constructing,” he mentioned. “I really feel like I’ve the vitality of [when I was] 25.”
Lamers’s announcement coincided with information that Noah has raised $22 million in a seed funding spherical led by LocalGlobe, a veteran enterprise capital outfit in Europe. Different members embrace Felix Capital, FJ Labs, in addition to angel traders like Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale and Alexander Matthey, a former CTO at Adyen.
Noah cofounder and CEO Shah Ramezani, a 33-year-old former UBS analyst, declined to reveal the valuation for the startup however did say, in a nod to Lamers’ many years of expertise, “there was a Thijn premium.”
The pair be part of a crowded discipline. Stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to real-world belongings just like the U.S. greenback, have grow to be a buzzy know-how amongst VCs. Buyers have piled right into a suite of startups who promise to make use of the digital tokens to hurry up cross-border transactions and scale back charges from banking transfers.
Even giant fintechs like Stripe and Large Tech stalwarts like Meta are taking notice. And with a gangbuster IPO from stablecoin issuer Circle, others could also be trying to replicate its success.
Nonetheless, Lamers and Ramezani consider they’ve an edge. “I’d say crucial factor in funds, and that’s why a dropout from MIT [finds it] onerous to compete, is the community,” Ramezani mentioned.
His remark underscores how fintech giants construct aggressive moats by means of relationships with regulators, prospects, and banking companions. And Lamers, who led international gross sales at Adyen, actually brings a community with him, together with relationships with former executives at Large Tech companies like rideshare big Uber. “Every little thing is credibility,” Lamers mentioned.
In actual fact, probably the most profitable tech founders are, on common, 45 years previous, based on a 2018 analysis from Harvard Enterprise Evaluate.
Investor to cofounder
Lamers, who left Adyen in 2018, initially met Ramezani as an investor, not a cofounder. In 2022, Ramezani started exploring the right way to use cryptocurrencies for funds. He first toyed round with Bitcoin earlier than he determined to lift cash for a startup that sells entry to an API, or software programming interface, which lets software program builders simply switch funds with stablecoins.
“We’re actually constructing ‘Noah’s ark’ to save lots of everybody from the mass foreign money inflation,” Ramezani mentioned, explaining the reasoning behind his startup’s title.
Lamers turned so considering Ramezani’s enterprise that, as an alternative of simply investing, he joined as cofounder in June 2024. Now, the pair have grown Noah’s product choices to let customers convert between 50 currencies and switch cash between 70 nations in real-time—versus ready maybe days for financial institution wires to clear. Up to now, the corporate has processed greater than $1 billion in transaction volumes, based on Ramezani.
“This man has a lot vitality, I’m, like, really blown away,” mentioned Ramezani, in reference to his cofounder. “Thijn is absolutely like a beast.”
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com