Today, I’m honored to share that my longtime friend, mentor, and business partner, Dan Schulman is joining Valor Capital Group as our newest Managing Partner. Dan will be spending two to three days a week with Valor. While it’s rare to have the good fortune to partner with your mentor, in many ways this marks a culmination of decades of collaboration together.
Dan needs no introduction for those who have been in the tech industry at any point over the past thirty years. Most recently, Dan made an indelible mark as the CEO of PayPal for nine years, doubling the company’s market cap, tripling revenues from $9B in 2015 to $30B in 2023, quadrupling EPS from $1.25 to over $5, and quintupling payment value from $250B to $1.3 Trillion.
Since founding Valor in 2011, and pioneering the first U.S. & LatAm cross-border venture fund, the opportunity for building and investing in the tech ecosystem that bridges the Americas has only grown by leaps and bounds.
The rising geopolitical shifts and opportunities for re-globalization are changing the market landscape in unprecedented ways. For instance, the fintech center of gravity is moving from developed markets to countries like Brazil where the public sector is driving innovation and technology to be more inclusive, which has the potential to ultimately retool global payments and financial services infrastructure. Another example, the increased U.S. and China tensions are driving nearshoring opportunities in Mexico, fueling an industrial and digital revolution, which reinforces the importance of interconnectivity and alignment across the Americas trade ecosystem. This is all taking place during one of the most transformative tech cycles with AI and blockchain impacting all businesses and societies in fundamental and profound ways.
At Valor, we are macro-sensitive and micro-focused investors. We believe these tech and regulatory movements are creating strong tailwinds for entrepreneurs and are the driving force behind our firm. The LatAm region accounts for 8 percent of the world’s population and 8 percent of the world’s GDP, half that of China, and leads the U.S. in sheer numbers of internet and smartphone users.
Given this backdrop, there is no better time to be growing our partnership and capabilities to help our founders and investors capture this opportunity, and there is no better person than Dan to help us do it. Dan brings an incredible track record of driving innovation, leading startups to Fortune 100 companies, and defining new forms of capitalism by investing in the financial wellbeing of his employees.
I experienced this firsthand when we first met back in the mid-90s as we were building Net2Phone, the pioneer internet telephony company that challenged the legacy communications industry. Dan, then President of AT&T’s Consumer Division led AT&T’s commercial partnership and investment in Net2Phone and joined the board of our company. Ultimately, his partnering approach and foresight paid off for both companies, as Net2Phone went public on the NASDAQ and shortly thereafter was acquired by AT&T. I learned an enormous amount from Dan about strategic partnering, corporate governance, and leadership.
This was just the beginning of a long relationship with Dan as he went on to lead important companies including Priceline, Virgin Mobile, Sprint Nextel, American Express, and PayPal. Around the time that Dan stepped into the Group President role at Amex, Cliff Sobel and I were founding Valor. While others weren’t yet convinced of the opportunities we saw in Brazil and across Latin America, Dan believed in our vision and the potential of the region. We worked closely with Dan and his teams at Amex and Paypal to support their expansion into LatAm. Dan’s conviction in the region led him to drive PayPal’s partnership and $750M investment in MercadoLibre.
As a reference point, venture capital was virtually non-existent in the region when we started our firm. We have seen a 20x growth in venture funding in the last decade and reaching escape velocity. We are proud at Valor to have helped shape the tech and venture ecosystem in the region and many of our portfolio companies and funds performance can be used as a validator for institutions looking to invest in the asset class. Valor has invested across 6 funds in more than 120 companies throughout the Americas, including one in every five LatAm unicorns from an early stage like Gympass, Stone and Cloudwalk, as well as U.S. founded, category defining companies to support their expansion in the region like Coinbase, Viagogo, and Sprinklr.
Dan is deeply passionate about working with entrepreneurs and helping them unlock their potential. Having spent his career scaling global businesses, he’ll be an immense asset to a next generation of entrepreneurs scaling their businesses globally. Dan will be based out of Palo Alto, alongside our long term partner Antoine Colaço, increasing our presence in Silicon Valley. He will support our firm to scale, be involved in strategy, new investments and decision making, and work with select founders and portfolio companies.
Looking ahead, as macroeconomic and geopolitical shifts are set to supercharge the opportunities across the Americas, we have never had more conviction in the opportunity before us. Joined by incredible leadership like Dan, we are doubling down on our mission to be the bridge across LatAm and global tech markets to fully unlock the potential of the Americas tech ecosystem.