Guillaume Pousaz turned his online payments business into one of the world’s biggest startups inside a decade. He’s now building up his personal investment firm at a similar clip.
Zinal Growth, the family office of Checkout.com’s founder and chief executive officer, was set up around early May, according to a registry filing. It’s since invested in e-commerce startups Ziina and Wayflyer, as well as blockchain firm Snickerdoodle Labs, according to CB Insights and Crunchbase.
Guillaume Waser, who previously worked for venture capital firm Swiss Startup Group, joined in June as managing partner, according to his LinkedIn profile. Pousaz, 40, has a net worth of about $8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Waser and a Checkout.com spokesman for Pousaz declined to comment.
Family offices are rapidly proliferating, driven by surging fortunes in technology and finance. Roblox Corp. co-founder David Baszucki set up one in California last year ahead of the online gaming platform’s public listing in March, joining other Silicon Valley billionaires including Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt in establishing firms to manage their personal investments.
Pousaz is diversifying his wealth as Checkout.com tripled its valuation this year to $15 billion in a fundraising round led by Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management. Like many investment firms for the ultra-rich, Zinal Growth focuses on technology.
Pousaz grew up in Switzerland and went to university in Lausanne before quitting his studies and moving to California following the death of his father from pancreatic cancer. He worked in the U.S. for a payments-processing firm before launching London-based Checkout.com in 2012.
Checkout.com’s investors also include Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and DST Global. Pousaz told Bloomberg in January that an initial public offering in 2022 is a possibility, though he stressed that the company has no firm plans for a listing.
—With assistance from Katie Roof and Matthew Leising.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
