He held the financial system together on 9/11. Now he's writing first checks to scientists building in labs.

The story of Pamir Ventures begins twenty five years ago, in a Federal Reserve building, with a decision that couldn't wait for certainty.

Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., former Fed Vice Chair, former CEO of TIAA ($1.3T AUM), current Alphabet board member, has spent a decade quietly backing early stage startups. Now he's formalizing that work into Pamir Ventures, a $60M pre seed fund built to be the first check into technical pioneers redefining markets. The story is not about the fund. It's about what happens when someone who has governed the world's biggest systems decides to help build the companies that will replace them.

Blink Moments

The morning of September 11, 2001, Roger Ferguson was the only Federal Reserve Governor in Washington when the planes hit. The question was existential: keep the banking system fully open, or pull back, with incomplete information, no playbook, and the clock running. They kept it open. The system held.

Ferguson calls these “Blink moments,” inflection points where waiting for certainty is itself the wrong decision. It turns out early stage startups are almost entirely made of them. That realization is what pulled him from the top of the pyramid to the foundation.

A Solo Habit Becomes a Firm

In 2010, a 21 year old college dropout named Grant Verstandig walked away from Brown University after a string of knee surgeries and founded a health technology company called Audax Health. He had no degree, no track record, and an idea most investors wouldn't touch. Roger Ferguson, then running TIAA, one of the largest financial institutions in the world, wrote one of the first checks and joined the board. It was a Blink moment. The data said wait. Ferguson moved.

Audax Health became Rally Health. UnitedHealth Group's Optum unit acquired it in 2014. The bet paid off, but more importantly, it changed how Ferguson thought about where real value gets created. Not inside the system. At the edges of it. In labs, in dorm rooms, in garages. He kept investing. Quietly. Personally. For more than a decade, while most of his peers drifted toward advisory roles, think tanks, and late stage boards, Ferguson moved toward pre seed.

Not inside the system. At the edges of it. In labs, in dorm rooms, in garages.

Then came the Blink moment that turned a solo habit into a firm.

Ferguson was introduced to Dr. Milad Alucozai, a neuroscientist, Business Insider Top 100 Seed Investor, and co founder of Revalia Bio, through one of his existing co founders. Ferguson became one of Revalia's earliest investors and joined the board alongside Alucozai. What started as a professional relationship became a genuine friendship. Ferguson spent time getting to know Alucozai, his journey, how he thought, what he'd built. In him, Ferguson saw the other puzzle piece: someone who had built a career taking raw science, spinning it out of the lab, and turning it into real products with real revenue. Where Ferguson read the macro environment and saw regulatory inflection points before founders did, Alucozai could sit across from a scientist and tell whether the work was a genuine breakthrough or a glorified science project.

Then came Anand Subramanian. Ferguson had been looking for a third dimension, an institutional investor who had also been an operator, someone who could bring the rigor of having actually built and scaled the infrastructure that markets run on. Subramanian, co founder of EquiLend, a platform processing $25B+ in daily volume, was exactly that.

The differentiation is real: a macroeconomist who sees regulatory inflection points before founders do, paired with a scientist who has built his career turning science projects and ideas into real products, and an operator who has actually scaled institutions. Rarely does a seed fund have this breadth and combination of expertise at this stage.

A macroeconomist who sees regulatory inflection points before founders do, paired with a scientist who turns science projects into real products, and an operator who has actually scaled institutions.

It just happens that all three are seasoned investors whose combined track record places them in the top 5% of U.S. early stage funds at 4.8x TVPI.¹ The portfolio includes companies now backed by Sequoia, Insight Partners, a16z, General Catalyst, and Sam Altman.

Twenty five years ago, Ferguson kept the financial system running when no one had the playbook. Pamir Ventures is the bet that in the face of AI the next generation of founders won't have one either, and that the right partner at the right moment is what makes the difference.

¹ Based on Cambridge Associates and PitchBook Q1 2025 benchmarks, Vintage 2019 to 2021, gross basis. Reflects the combined pre Pamir track record of the founding partners. Past performance is not indicative of future results.