Meet the Team
Chief Executive Officer
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Scale and organizational governance freak.
Sam joined the military to pay his way through school at the University of Texas, where he studied Finance and Public Policy. He’s worked with and led crack teams on some of the most difficult and sensitive financial and organizational problems facing the nation at places like the Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Defense, Treasury Department, Charles Schwab Bank & Trust, Army Futures Command, and Army Working Capital Fund.
When Sam dressed up for career day in elementary school he didn't dress up as an astronaut - he went as the NASA Administrator.
Chief Launch Officer
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Full-bore startup exec & go-to-market leader.
Following his service in the British Army, Sam plowed through the marketing profession with unrelenting determination and focus. The depth and breadth of experience he’s been able to gather makes him one of the most dangerous marketers on the planet. He’s worked in-house, in agency, as a solo consultant, board advisor to numerous brands, an angel investor, and a C-suite executive. He’s also worked on projects across every channel imaginable, tying in PR, outbound, platform network development, PPC, SEO, content marketing, podcasts, guerilla and event marketing, as well as across all flavors of delivery and industry in Saas, B2B and B2C services, and consumer products.
Sam’s default is to be on the growth offensive by driving new ways of thinking about product, people and process.
Chief Technology Officer
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Wunderkind of systems and applied mathematics.
Michael was siphoned off from the herd in high school and had a special math teacher who taught a small class many years ahead of their peers. He studied electrical engineering as an undergrad and got a masters in architecture, computer systems and embedded systems. He started out at General Motors as a software developer before joining IBM as a logic design engineer. On an average day, he’s doing anything from building ETL data pipes, performing systems acquisitions and integrations, and setting up full scope onboarding for new units. He pushed a personal $50+ million in trade volume through a momentum algo he wrote in his spare time.
We think Michael’s spirit animal is Peter Drucker. If effectiveness is a martial art, Michael’s got the double-black dragon belt.
Chief People Officer
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Absolute master of building high performing teams.
Nathan brings experience both in world-class enterprises and startups. He spent nearly a decade at Microsoft, where he not only served as a functional HR leader, but also was responsible as an executive for leading large teams through difficult projects. In addition, he has deep experience working with successful startups as the head of people operations. His approach to crystal-clear culture articulation and developing an environment of exceptional teamwork and performance is a cornerstone of the team’s success. Nathan took the tiny skeleton of an idea and turned it nuclear by shepherding the original co-founders to a team of 20 (now nearly 50) in a matter of weeks.
Nathan believes in the unconventional and the contrarian as a source of inspiration.
Chief of Staff
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Communications veteran with an eye for seeing around corners.
Jillian spent nearly 15 years in corporate communications and public relations, working with many Fortune 50 companies and global brands both in top-ranked agencies and in-house. In the ultimate COVID pivot, she decided to realize her dream of entrepreneurship and take her love of writing, messaging strategy and business to new heights. Having lived and worked in some of the most dynamic cities in the world, including Boston, New York and Tokyo, Jillian brings a diverse, global perspective and has seen what can be realized when you embrace the unknown.
When she’s not writing or crunching scenarios in her head, she’s chasing her two kids and dog Bowser, who was lovingly named for the Nintendo character—not Sha Na Na.
Advisory Board
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Former Director of Human Resources, Microsoft
VP of Human Resources, First Interstate (3,000+ employees)
Steve cut his teeth as a private equity operator, went on to Microsoft, then successfully scaled up several companies as their HR lead, including recently as a key executive delivering on a massive expansion of First Interstate Bank, which, thanks in large part to Steve, now operates with the support of several thousand employees. Steve was most recently inaugurated the board at nth Venture as its first member and a bona fide mentor to the team.
Steve is at home operating where culture, strategy and talent intersect, bringing high-value human capital and talent management expertise.
Advisory Board
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25+ years of experience in the financial markets
Jay Heller is currently head of capital markets for one of the largest global securities marketplaces, where he manages and leads a team for all capital markets strategy and listing transactions. Prior to that, Jay was head of institutional trading and sales for American Capital Partners and held trading and financial analyst roles at Pershing, NDB Capital Markets and Allmerica Financial. Jay is known for his strong analytical and problem-solving skills within the capital markets, as well as his ability to work across silos to improve performance.
Advisory Board
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Professor of Entrepreneurship and former Dean at the Hult International Business School
Instructor of Entrepreneurship at Harvard and Stanford Universities
Former start-up entrepreneur. Most recent acquired by Google.
Ted spent 20 years in Silicon Valley in a career of successively smaller high-tech venture-backed start-ups in mobile consumer electronics and software. From the company spokesman at Palm, makers of the PalmPilot, during its IPO to WIMM, which was acquired by Google to start its smartwatch software, many of these ventures succeeded. Several failed. These failures (or “near successes”) propelled him into academia to understand, research and teach the next generation of global business leaders how to design and launch companies more successfully with less investment and risk. He holds a PhD in entrepreneurship from Case, an MBA from Wharton, an MA in international economics from Johns Hopkins, a BA triple major in biology, government and sociology from Cornell, and a farrier’s certificate from the Oklahoma School of Horseshoeing. When not teaching or consulting, Ted lives with his wife Laura and dog Monster outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Advisory Board
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Former Chief Technology Officer, Sears
Former #3 Employee at Amazon India
Mo's background spans a considerable depth and breath in enterprise systems and product development. He started during the very early days of Deloitte's consulting practice, was the number three hire in India for Amazon, held very key roles in a couple Swiss pharma operations including Roche, he served as the CTO on the Sears rescue team where he stayed for over four years and siphoned off a highly profitable unit, joined a start up and took their tech capabilities from a couple guys issuing laptops to enterprise-level best practices and enabled massive product delivery improvements. He joined as the second board member for nth Venture, where he's played an invaluable role in product development and puts on a clinic for dummies on demand on everything from HRIS integrations, replicable data analytics, and data lake development.
Mo is always looking for ways to determine how technology could be used to solve complex business challenges.
Advisory Board
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Distinguished Senior Lecturer of Finance, University of Texas
Former President of the Texas MBA Hedge Fund
Sandy started his career as an attorney both at a large firm and as a prosecutor before he took a leap of faith to make a pivot, get an MBA, and try his hand at the markets. He did just that and eventually became the President of the MBA Fund at McCombs (one of the best business schools on the face of the planet, mind you), where he spent 12 years and oversaw minor episodes like the GFC without losing his - and Bill Power's - shirt. He has been a teacher - or more specifically Distinguished Senior Lecturer, Provost's Teaching Fellow, and Senior Fellow - at the University of Texas for over 20 years. Nearly every year he's selected by the students for some incredible award - even though he wrote the book the class uses.
Sandy brings a wealth of both rigorous academic and operational finance expertise, having been responsible for approximately $1.6 billion of assets and the development of hundreds of sharp young minds.
Board of Directors
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Neil serves on the Board of Directors for IOU Financial (IOU.V) (where he also serves on the Audit Committee), Nextivity, Finitive and SALT Blockchain (Chairman of the Board and Chair of the Audit Committee), and nth Venture’s portfolio unit, Falconer. Until its sale to Enova, he served on the Board of Directors for OnDeck (ONDK) where he chaired their Audit Committee, served on the Risk Committee and was the company’s Financial Expert. He is a former board member of Cloud Lending, TodayTix, Patch of Land and the Wilmington Funds.
He was President and CIO of SF Capital Group for the past 10 years, where he oversaw all investments, direct private investing, asset allocation, tax, estate planning, performance reporting and operations for a billion-dollar multi-generational family office. At SF Capital he invested in over 30 direct debt and equity investments in emerging technology companies with a focus on FinTech.
Prior to joining SF Capital Group, Neil spent five years as Chief Investment Officer and President of Wilmington Trust Investment Management, a $40 billion investment management firm, where he was responsible for the firm’s investment management, brokerage and mutual fund group. He was also President, CEO and Chairman of the Wilmington Funds, a $10 billion mutual fund family. Prior to Wilmington Trust, Neil served for eight years as a Partner at KPMG LLP and National Partner in Charge of KPMG’s Investment Consulting Practice, representing over $100 billion in assets. Neil also spent over a decade at Kidder, Peabody & Co. where he ran the managed money area, co-founded the Analytical Investment Strategies Group, was a senior portfolio manager for Kidder Peabody Asset Management and the Kidder Peabody Asset Allocation Fund and ran the firm’s PRIME Asset Consulting Group. Prior to Kidder, he developed a multi-factor security selection system currently employed by several investment management firms. He started his career developing financial futures and options contracts for a commodity exchange.
Neil holds an MBA in Finance and a BS in Management from New York University. A member of the New York Society of Security Analysts, he became a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) in 1993. Neil is an Adjunct Professor at Rutgers Graduate Business School where he teaches Portfolio Theory.
Portfolio Business Leaders
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Portfolio Board Members
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