Lamers’s announcement coincided with news that Noah has raised $22 million in a seed funding round led by LocalGlobe, a veteran venture capital outfit in Europe. Other participants include Felix Capital, FJ Labs, as well as angel investors like Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale and Alexander Matthey, a former CTO at Adyen.
Noah cofounder and CEO Shah Ramezani, a 33-year-old former UBS analyst, declined to disclose the valuation for the startup but did say, in a nod to Lamers’ decades of experience, “there was a Thijn premium.”
Still, Lamers and Ramezani believe they have an edge. “I would say the most important thing in payments, and that’s why a dropout from MIT [finds it] hard to compete, is the network,” Ramezani said.
His comment underscores how fintech giants build competitive moats through relationships with regulators, customers, and banking partners. And Lamers, who was executive vice president of global sales at Adyen, certainly brings a network with him, including relationships with former executives at Big Tech firms like rideshare giant Uber. “Everything is credibility,” Lamers said.
“We’re really building ‘Noah’s ark’ to save everyone from the mass currency inflation,” Ramezani said, explaining the reasoning behind his startup’s name.
Lamers became so interested in Ramezani’s venture that, instead of just investing, he joined as cofounder in June 2024. Now, the pair have grown Noah’s product offerings to let users convert between 50 currencies and transfer money between 70 countries in real-time—as opposed to waiting perhaps days for bank wires to clear. So far, the company has processed more than $1 billion in transaction volumes, according to Ramezani.
“This guy has so much energy, I’m, like, actually blown away,” said Ramezani, in reference to his cofounder. “Thijn is really like a beast.”
