Atomico hires Revolut and Uber executive, Don Hoang

Source: Atomico

Atomico partners with the most ambitious founders on their scale up journey.

Our difference is hands-on support from the world’s best talent to set up a new generation for success.

We’re always looking for industry leaders to help founders navigate hyper growth, and we’re delighted to welcome Don Hoang as our newest Partner. Don will lead investments across both the Venture and Growth stages with a core focus on earlier stage companies. He will also lead Atomico’s investments in the next frontier of fintech and mobility - sectors we’re enormously excited about.

Atomico has a track record of partnerships in both sectors, with fintechs including Klarna, Stripe, Habito and LendInvest, as well as SheeldMarket in the crypto sphere. Mobility remains a major focus for Atomico, with early investments in moonshots Lilium and Vay, as well as travel comparison and booking service Omio, and delivery services Zapp and Wolt, amongst others.

Don will continue to build on this track record. His 20 year career spans both operating and investing roles ranging from startup, to growth, pre-IPO, and public companies. As VP Global Business at Revolut, Don led the firm’s profitability and strategic initiatives through a period of intense growth, helping drive Revolut’s rise to its current $33bn valuation. Prior to this, Don was Director of Business for Uber. He was responsible for Uber’s commercial efforts, covering the firm’s presence in over 45 countries and 120+ cities, and helping raise over $3.5 billion in growth capital for the company. In addition, Don has been a prolific angel investor in the US and European ecosystem as part of Sequoia’s Scout Program. In his earlier career, he was a private equity investor with Terra Firma.

Don will work closely with existing Partner Terese Hougaard, who has a background in fintech investing after working with Stripe and Robinhood at Google’s CapitalG.

Fintech was originally touted as the unbundling of services - think Wise for international money, Stripe for payments processing, and Klarna for consumer payments. The second generation of fintech rebundled these services into neobanks, with the enormous popularity of Revolut, Monzo, N26 and others catching the zeitgeist of millennials from 2016.

Atomico is seeing a third generation of fintech emerge which will radically transform the financial services sphere. This presents an enormous opportunity - the 50th largest bank is worth nearly $50 billion, with trillions of dollars in value yet to be created by fintech start-ups. But most importantly, consumers are ready for change. Talented founders from previous generations of fintech are emerging, and benefitting from the progressive regulatory environment that trailblazers like Stripe, Klarna and Wise have built. This is enabling the next generation of founders to progress into new and revolutionary technologies, built on decentralised finance, entirely away from the old systems, for a gen Z (and beyond) audience.

When Atomico started 16 years ago, the question was, “what will be the next $1bn company from Europe?” The ecosystem has expanded massively since then and we know that great companies can come from anywhere. The question today is “what will be the next $100bn company from Europe?” I’m excited to partner with founders that push the boundaries of what is possible to make that happen. I’ve been exceptionally impressed with the Atomico team. As a firm built by founders for founders, backed up with real operational support, they’re offering something special. I wanted to be part of that.

Don Hoang, Partner

The son of Vietnamese refugees, Don’s parents left the country during the Vietnam War. Don grew up in California, studying first at UCLA and later Stanford for his MBA, where he was Co-President of the Student Body.

Don encapsulates Atomico’s principles. He believes strongly in being a partner to gamechangers, with a vision for how technology can change the world for the better.

Comments: (0)