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PEAKSPAN PRINCIPLES
Expert Assistance
PeakSpan is exclusively focused on business software companies. We invest in companies that serve the full spectrum of buyers from very small businesses to large enterprises and we spend all of our time in the same territory as our entrepreneurs. It’s our ambition to be true domain experts and thought partners in the categories that inspire us. All of our research, network development, and learning is focused on the sectors our entrepreneurs live and breathe in. As a result, we bring a rich portfolio of assets and experience to the table that are relevant to all of the companies that we partner with. We deliver this expertise “without the ego” and pride ourselves on a collaborative approach to working with entrepreneurs and other stakeholders. Our commitment to specific sector focus and collaboration is designed to promote a highly transparent relationship to help our companies make great choices.
Purpose-built for Growth
PeakSpan’s mission is to support best-in-class software businesses that are looking to scale and capture a unique market opportunity. We focus solely on growth-stage companies and as a result believe that our expertise is relevant to all of our companies. We also understand and appreciate the journey involved in building a software business and look to play an active role in helping our entrepreneurs reach their goal. It’s our ambition to provide leverage to our teams on any tactical or strategic front where our engagement can be valuable – from identifying and attracting talent to assisting with the acquisition of a game–changing product addition. With decades of collective experience across dozens of investments in business software we’ve seen and learned a lot and can help our companies navigate their growth successfully.
Commitment to Every Investment
“Win Some, Lose Some” is not a page in the PeakSpan playbook. We make a limited number of investments and don’t think about the companies we partner with as being a “deal” or a name in a broader portfolio. We also don’t pursue “growth at all costs”, but rather encourage our companies to invest in programs that build a foundation of repeatable and scalable success. We are committed to working with our entrepreneurs to drive prudent growth and responsible value creation with every investment we make. We appreciate and respect the commitment and investment that our entrepreneurs and other stakeholders have made in their businesses and look to protect this value and build on it as opposed to rolling the dice. We believe that resilient growth and value creation are the key to success and look to partner with entrepreneurs that share this philosophy.
OUR APPROACH
Meet The Team
Phil Dur
Phil has been a software investor for 15 years and has served on the boards of over twenty growth stage companies in his career. Before co-founding PeakSpan, Phil worked at Investor Growth Capital for ten years as a leader in the software investment team. More
Prior to joining IGC, Phil also worked at Morgan Stanley Venture Partners (the firm’s expansion and growth stage fund) as part of the technology investment team and started his career at Morgan Stanley Capital Partners (the firm’s private equity fund) focusing on, among other things, investments in software and other technology areas. Phil is a graduate of Princeton University and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and also served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve for seven years. Phil enjoys cooking (a graduate of the Peter Kump School and L’Escoffier de Gastronomie but still a very humble student), tennis, running, and spending time with his wife and two children enjoying everything Northern California has to offer.
phil@peakspancapital.com
P: 650.337.6001
Brian Mulvey
Brian has been partnering with software entrepreneurs for over a decade and served on the boards of eight companies. A lifelong tech enthusiast, he takes great satisfaction in meeting with passionate entrepreneurs who share the same vision on how new markets More
/ technologies will unfold. Before co-founding PeakSpan, Brian worked at Investor Growth Capital for seven years as a leader in the software investment team. Prior to IGC, he worked with Summit Partners – first in the firm’s Boston office, then in London to help Summit launch their European operation. Prior to Summit, Brian started his career at Shawmut Capital, a growth firm focused on financial technology. He received a B.S. in Finance and Strategic Operations and Management from Boston College, where he graduated cum laude. A big believer in the benefits of globalization, Brian has lived in the US, the UK and Paraguay. He now resides in New York City where he enjoys the constant flow of discoveries the city offers and spending time with family – particularly free throw battles against his son… despite an ever increasing pace of losses…
brian@peakspancapital.com
P: 212.899.9801
Matt Melymuka
Matt has been working with growth-stage technology businesses his whole career. Before co-founding PeakSpan, Matt worked for Greycroft Partners’ Growth Fund, where he focused on emerging growth-stage software investments. Prior to Greycroft, More
Matt worked with Phil and Brian for three years on Investor Growth Capital’s software investment team, where he was involved with seven software portfolio companies. Prior to joining IGC, Matt was a team member in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Investment Banking Group at Piper Jaffray & Co., where he worked with expansion-stage businesses on a variety of advisory and capital markets transactions. He holds a B.S. in Finance from Georgetown University, where he graduated cum laude. Matt enjoys snowboarding, tennis and is an avid traveler. He now lives in New York City with his wife, where they face the constant struggle of being die-hard Boston sports fans living behind enemy lines.
matt@peakspancapital.com
P: 212.899.9802
Jay Lance
Jay has worked broadly in the private equity industry since 2006. Before joining PeakSpan, Jay was employed by The Carlyle Group, in their Global Market Strategies group, where he primarily focused on distressed and mezzanine debt strategies. Prior to Carlyle, More
Jay worked at Ernst & Young LLP, where he was the lead manager on four clients in the asset management practice, including one of Ernst & Young’s Office of the Chairman Accounts. During his tenure at Ernst & Young, Jay was hand-picked to participate in a firm shared resource exchange with the Sao Paulo and Rio, Brazil offices in an effort to bring the firm’s best practices and knowledge to newly developing areas. Jay is a Certified Public Accountant in New York and is a CFA® charterholder. Jay graduated magna cum laude from Pace University, where he received MBA’s in Accounting and Financial Management along with a BBA in Accounting. Jay resides in Northern New Jersey with his wife and enjoys playing sports as well as other outdoor activities. A new hobby in recent years has been collecting and acquiring a taste for fine wine as well as dabbling in aspects of the wine making process and teaching wine education at Sannino Vineyard on weekends.
jay@peakspancapital.com
P: 212.899.9803
Vikas Kumar
Vikas comes to PeakSpan from Selective Intellect, a software development firm he founded and ran for nine years, to help organizations, such as the Department of Defense, DARPA and financial trading firms, to solve complex problems around systems engineering, More
high-performance computing, cybersecurity and others. He has a Bachelors and Masters in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay, India. Vikas is a car enthusiast and loves reading about cars, and driving the ones he has in his spare time.
vikas@peakspancapital.com
P: 212-899-9805
Phillip Cunningham
Phillip joined PeakSpan in 2017 from the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Banking Division where he was responsible for M&A financial advisory services and equity financing transactions for late stage software companies. Prior to Goldman, More
Phillip was an officer in the United States Air Force and served as a developmental test engineer on the B-2 Bomber and Global Hawk. He has a B.S. in Operations Research from the United States Air Force Academy and an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.
phillip@peakspancapital.com
P: 650.337.6002
Jack Freeman
Jack joined PeakSpan Capital in 2016. Prior to joining PeakSpan, Jack was a team member in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Investment Banking Group at Macquarie Capital where he evaluated principal investing opportunities, provided M&A advisory More
services and worked on a number of capital markets transactions with growth-stage technology businesses. During his tenure at Macquarie, he split his time between the Technology-Enabled Business Services team in Los Angeles and the Technology team in New York. Prior to joining Macquarie, Jack worked for Stackpop, an early-stage startup where he was the team’s second business development hire and helped build out a SaaS-based cost management platform to help CTOs and IT teams buy and manage their internet infrastructure. Jack holds a B.A. in Economics from Middlebury College; and prior to Middlebury, he played division I soccer for Seton Hall University. Jack now lives in New York City. When not playing soccer, Jack enjoys basketball, running and is a (self-proclaimed) biking enthusiast.
jack@peakspancapital.com
P: 212.899.9804
Sanket Merchant
Sanket joined PeakSpan in 2016 and has focused his entire career on the software industry with a particular passion for emerging-growth B2B software businesses. Before joining PeakSpan, Sanket worked in the Technology, Media and Telecom Group at Houlihan Lokey, More
where he focused exclusively on M&A and private financing transactions. Prior to Houlihan Lokey, Sanket was a consultant in the Global Banking and Brokerage Group at FactSet Research Systems, where he partnered with investment banking, private equity and venture capital clients. Sanket holds a B.B.A. in Finance with a minor in Economics from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Sanket is a huge University of Colorado and Colorado sports fan (Go Broncos!), and enjoys traveling and spending weekends exploring San Francisco and the Bay Area with his girlfriend.
sanket@peakspancapital.com
P: 650.337.6003