At Citigroup headquarters in New York, stress tests, capital and leverage are high on the boardroom agenda. The metrics are different in Palo Alto, California, at Citi Ventures, the $1.9 trillion-in-assets banking company’s strategic investing unit and window on all things emerging and disruptive. To see the future is to know the players: Last year Citi Ventures logged 1,000 meetings — 200 more than in 2012 — vetted 620 start-ups and invested in eight. “The level of disruption is profound and pervasive and reaching across every industry,” says CEO Deborah Hopkins, a veteran technology and strategy executive who established the Silicon Valley outpost in 2010 and has been Citigroup’s chief innovation officer since 2008. “A big part of what our team is now focused on is helping our businesses understand all that and synthesize it into actionable insights.” Recent portfolio investments Ayasdi, Datameer and Platfora have the big-data-analytics theme in common. Among other holdings: e-payments sensation Square. Citi offers “companies that have potential for scale” what conventional venture firms cannot by “moving them into proof of concept and hopefully commercialization,” Hopkins, 59, explains. In her spare time she hosts events to promote women’s entrepreneurship, part of a personal campaign: “We’re looking to figure out how to change numbers that are staggeringly small.”
11
Deborah Hopkins
Chief ExecutiveOfficer
Citi Ventures
Last year: 14
The 2014 Tech 50