The story of a stereotypical startup founder has a well-known arc: Drop out of school, launch a startup, increase billions, go public, after which experience off into the sundown as an angel investor in your 40s. That’s not Thijn Lamers. A former government on the $60 billion fintech large Adyen, Lamers, who’s in his 50s however declined to specify his actual age, introduced on Tuesday he’s now president and cofounder of stablecoin startup Noah. “I get a lot power from constructing,” he stated. “I feel like I have the energy 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 embody Felix Capital, FJ Labs, in addition to angel buyers 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 area. Stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to real-world property just like the U.S. greenback, have develop into 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 Huge Tech stalwarts like Meta are taking discover. And with a gangbuster IPO from stablecoin issuer Circle, others could also be trying to replicate its success.
Nonetheless, Lamers and Ramezani imagine they’ve an edge. “I would say the most important thing in payments, and that’s why a dropout from MIT [finds it] hard to compete, is the network,” Ramezani stated.
His remark underscores how fintech giants construct aggressive moats by means of relationships with regulators, prospects, and banking companions. And Lamers, who led world gross sales at Adyen, actually brings a community with him, together with relationships with former executives at Huge Tech corporations like rideshare large Uber. “Everything is credibility,” Lamers stated.
In reality, essentially the most profitable tech founders are, on common, 45 years previous, in line with a 2018 evaluation from Harvard Enterprise Overview.
Investor to cofounder
Lamers, who left Adyen in 2018, initially met Ramezani as an investor, not a cofounder. In 2022, Ramezani started exploring easy methods to use cryptocurrencies for funds. He first toyed round with Bitcoin earlier than he determined to boost cash for a startup that sells entry to an API, or utility programming interface, which lets software program builders simply switch funds with stablecoins.
“We’re really building ‘Noah’s ark’ to save everyone from the mass currency inflation,” Ramezani stated, explaining the reasoning behind his startup’s identify.
Lamers turned so fascinated with Ramezani’s enterprise that, as a substitute 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 international locations in real-time—versus ready maybe days for financial institution wires to clear. Thus far, the corporate has processed greater than $1 billion in transaction volumes, in line with Ramezani.
“This guy has so much energy, I’m, like, actually blown away,” stated Ramezani, in reference to his cofounder. “Thijn is really like a beast.”
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
