# Valar Ventures

Valar Ventures is a Venture Capital based in New York, United States.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Venture Capital
- **Headquarters:** New York, United States
- **Region:** North America
- **Address:** New York, NY, United States
- **Founded:** 2010
- **Assets under management:** Undisclosed
- **Website:** www.valar.com
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/valar-ventures-management-llc
- **Wikidata:** Q17747112

## Regulatory record

- **CRD number:** 162251
- **SEC file number:** 802-76015
- **Registration status:** Registered
- **Reports private funds:** Yes
- **IAPD record:** https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/162251

## About

Valar Ventures is an exempt reporting adviser based in New York, NY. It focuses on seed-stage investments in the United States. The firm has offices in San Francisco and New York.

## Sectors

- FinTech
- Enterprise Software
- AI/ML

## Offices

- San Francisco, CA, United States

## People

- Peter Thiel — Co-Founder
- Andrew McCormack — Co-Founder and Partner
- James Fitzgerald — Co-Founder and Partner

## Questions

### Who runs investment decisions at Valar Ventures?

The three co-founders — Peter Thiel, Andrew McCormack, and James Fitzgerald — share partnership authority. McCormack and Fitzgerald handle day-to-day deal execution from the New York office, while Thiel participates in strategic investment committee decisions. The firm has maintained this concentrated decision-making structure across all fund vintages since 2010.

### Does Valar Ventures invest only in FinTech?

FinTech is the overwhelming focus, but the firm also selectively backs enterprise software companies that serve financial institutions or operate adjacent to payments and banking infrastructure. The mandate is deliberately narrow — Valar explicitly avoids consumer social, hardware, biotech, and clean energy. Its portfolio concentration in financial software is among the highest of any venture firm its size.

### What is Valar Ventures' geographic focus?

Valar deliberately avoids the hyper-competitive US early-stage market, instead targeting Europe, Latin America, Canada, and New Zealand. The firm's most notable successes — TransferWise (UK), N26 (Germany), Xero (New Zealand), Bitso (Mexico) — all originated outside the United States. The thesis holds that the best FinTech founders abroad are undercapitalized relative to their Silicon Valley peers, creating an arbitrage opportunity.

### What is Valar Ventures' known posture on leading versus co-investing?

Valar prefers to lead or co-lead seed and Series A rounds, almost always requiring a board seat. The firm will syndicate with local investors in the target geography but insists on terms that give it meaningful governance rights. This posture makes Valar a high-touch, relatively concentrated investor — it holds fewer portfolio positions per fund than most comparably sized venture firms.

### Where does Peter Thiel's investment capital come from?

Thiel's wealth originated from two catalytic events: the 2002 sale of PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion, where Thiel was co-founder and CEO, and his 2004 angel investment of $500,000 in Facebook, which yielded approximately $1 billion when he sold the majority of his stake around the 2012 IPO. Subsequent returns from Palantir, where he co-founded and served as chairman, further deepened the capital base available for Valar Ventures commitments.

## Related profiles

- [Val'Angels](https://altss.com/profile/val-angels)
- [Valcreate Investment Managers](https://altss.com/profile/valcreate-investment-managers)

---

Last updated: 2026-08-14T12:30:00.000Z

Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/valar-ventures

Maintained by Altss — https://altss.com — methodology: https://altss.com/methodology