Redwood Growth Partners is founded by a prior entrepreneur and backed by a group of seasoned investors with expertise in investing and in operating companies across a diverse set of industry sectors.
Arun Shekar – Founder
Arun has extensive experience with consulting, sales, business development, and growth across multiple businesses. His most recent role has involved strategy and product management in an eCommerce logistics firm where Arun helped grow a business unit with $100 Million in revenues through organic and inorganic growth initiatives. This has involved creating pricing strategies, avenues for product partnerships, and strategies to create a corporate venture fund.
Prior to this Arun was a serial entrepreneur, and a management consultant. He had founded 2 companies – a retail data analytic startup, and a consulting firm for early stage companies. Arun is currently an advisor for multiple technology startups in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Arun holds an MBA from the University of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business with a focus on entrepreneurship and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
Arun enjoys hiking, playing volleyball, and playing poker. He is also a musician with interest in percussion instruments. He regularly makes time to help early stage entrepreneurs.
Institutional Investors
Argo Management Partners founded by Mr. John T. Fitzgerald, is a private investment firm that has acquired or made direct investments and follow-on acquisitions in 14 operating companies utilizing the Search Fund model. Mr. Fitzgerald is Chairman of Hunter MFG, LLP, and serves on the board of directors of Oak Patch Gifts , Progressive Bronze Products, Atlas Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: AFH), and 1347 Capital Corp (NASDAQ: TFSC).
Aspect Investors is an investment firm with a unique approach to investing in private companies. Aspect partners with leading entrepreneurial CEOs who seek to acquire and operate growing, profitable private companies. The firm has deep expertise in search funds and related acquisition vehicles and is led by Andy Love, a former search funder/CEO himself who co-founded and led one of the most successful search funds to date, VantageCap Partners/Behavioral Health Group, and who has personally invested in and advised dozens of search funds and their acquisitions.
Relay Investments is a private equity funds focused on banking talented, young and aspiring entrepreneurs, who plan to acquire a small or medium sized business (SME), the firm is based in Boston.
Search Fund partners is a private equity firm dedicated to sourcing opportunities through the search fund model. The firm works closely with entrepreneurs to help them find and built great business.
TTCER is an investment partnership between the founding team of Asurion which includes Kevin Taweel, Jim Ellis, Bret Comolli, and Gerald Risk. Since co-founding Asurion in 1994, the company has grown from 40 to 16,000 employees, becoming the world’s largest provider of technology protection services, partnering with the world’s top companies and brands and serving over 275 million customers.
Individual Investors & Family Offices
Mr. Winchell has focused on private equity investments with Leucadia National Corporation, the Channel Investment Group, Generation Ventures, The Fremont Group and Partner Ventures for the past 32 years. Mr. Winchell is also an is an adjunct professor at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, one of Europe’s leading business schools, where he teaches highly rated courses on Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Acquisition (Search Funds).
Mr. Winchell graduated from Dartmouth College in 1975 with high honors in English and Economics as a Rufus Choate Scholar where he was awarded the Henley Economics Prize. He received his MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 1979 and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Mr. Brad Brown is the managing director of Bradford Brown Capital Partners, a private investment partnership that focuses on search funds and profitable small-cap companies. Prior to that, he was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, the world’s leading consultancy, where he led several practices over time in the areas of Digital, Big Data Analytics, and FinTech. He has over a dozen years of experience in small cap growth investing and has acquired over 30 operating companies across many different industries. He focuses his board work on tech-enabled companies, and is on the board of five companies: Blue Sky Network, ISI Telemanagement, Attainia, CloudX, and D2C Brands. Mr. Brown brings a unique mix of advisory expertise with growth capital. He works closely with op-co CEOs as an Active Board Member.
Mr. Brown is a graduate of Dartmouth College, receiving his bachelor of arts degree, cum laude. He received an M.S.E.E. in Computer Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A., with distinction, from the Wharton School.
Mr. Doug Tudor is an active investor with diverse experience in operating, acquiring and scaling high-growth businesses. He is Managing Partner of Ravenscourt Partners, a private investment firm focused on teaming with executives to build leading middle market, technology-enabled service companies. Ravenscourt invests in business opportunities with compelling value propositions, strong growth potential and top management teams. He spent nine years as a senior executive at Asurion, the leading global provider of technology protection services, which grew from $225 million to $4.8 billion in revenue during his tenure. Prior to that, he raised a search fund and was co-founder and President of Clear Creek Environmental.
Mr. Tudor received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Brown University and a Masters of Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Fargo Investments is the family office of Bradford Freeman and Ronald Spogli, co-founders of the private equity firm Freeman Spogli & Co.
Mr. Mahesh Rajasekharan is President and Chief Executive Officer of Cleo, a global software company that delivers B2B-led cloud integration solutions to help companies discover and create value across their multi-enterprise ecosystems. An experienced business leader, Mr. Rajasekharan has expertise in business strategy, operations, sales and marketing, supply chain management, SaaS technologies, enterprise software, consulting services, private equity, acquisition integration and P&L management. Since joining Cleo in 2012, he has built the company into a global integration software leader, overseen tremendous revenue and geographic expansion, and shaped the company’s reputation through thought leadership, product innovation and customer-service excellence. Prior to leading Cleo, he served as Chief Operating Officer at SumTotal Systems, where he led the dramatic turnaround of this $100 million multinational software company. Previously, Mr. Rajasekharan led the High Tech Industry Sector at i2 Technologies, where he managed global sales and a $60 million P&L. He serves on the Board of Directors for Cleo, Omatic Software and Banyan Software, and is on the Advisory Board for StartupWind, a social ideation network.
Mr. Rajasekharan holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University, an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Texas Tech University, and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Anna University, India. He also earned an MBA in Finance, Strategy, and Marketing from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, where he graduated No. 1 in his class.
Mr. Mike Rozenfeld is the CEO of Attainia, the world’s most widely used equipment planning, budgeting, and tracking system software for healthcare equipment. Previously, Mr. Rozenfeld was the Managing Director of Prometheus Health Partners. Prior to founding Prometheus Health Partners, he was a Vice President with The Channel Group LLC, a healthcare venture development and management firm. Prior to The Channel Group, Mr. Rozenfeld led business development activities at AT&T ForHealth, the mobile and digital health division of AT&T. Mr. Rozenfeld started his career as a management consultant with McKinsey & Co in New York, where he was a member of the Corporate Finance practice. He has a record of successful sourcing, evaluation, investing, and deal execution in a wide range of asset classes including public market equity and private equity.
Mr. Rozenfeld holds a BBA (magna cum laude) from the Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan with emphasis in finance, accounting, and corporate strategy.
Mr. Michael-Kevin (M-K) O’Connell joined M2O, Inc. as a Managing Director in 2009. Prior to joining M2O, he was a Manager with L.E.K. Consulting. During his tenure there, he led project teams across a diverse range of industries and business issues. Before L.E.K., he worked in commercial real estate as the Director of Research for CB Richard Ellis in New England.
Mr. O’Connell received his B.S., magna cum laude, from Boston College and his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he was the recipient of the Thomas P. Gerrity Leadership Award.
Mr. Peter Schober has been in venture capital since the mid-1980s. He founded and runs Milk Street Ventures, a firm that specializes in secondary transactions involving the acquisition of stakes in venture-backed technology companies near liquidity events. Earlier in his career, Mr. Schober started and ran the international investment activity of Boston-based M/C Partners with an office in London. He helped develop business plans and recruited senior management teams for several sizeable telecommunications startups with recurring revenue models. He also co-founded MVP Ventures, investing in a wide range of sectors, including information technology, communications, hospitality, and industrial.
Mr. Schober earned a Bachelor’s degree in International Economics from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. As a Fellow at Penn’s Joseph H. Lauder Institute, he also received an M.A. in International Studies.
Mr. Ted McCarthy has extensive search fund experience, including acquiring, operating and successfully selling Sensorex, a water quality sensor manufacturer, to a publicly traded strategic acquirer in 2012. Earlier in his career Mr. McCarthy worked in Citigroup’s consumer business in New York, Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles. He has served on the boards of several private companies and charitable organizations.
Mr. McCarthy received a BSME from Villanova University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Mr. Tushar Shah co-founded and is a Managing Partner of Kinderhook Partners, an investment partnership focused on making long-term investments in public and private companies started in 2003. Prior to Kinderhook, Mr. Shah was a Principal at Geocapital Partners, a venture capital firm, and prior to that, a strategy consultant with the Monitor Group. He has been a director of a number of public and private companies.
Mr. Shah is also a CFA charterholder and received a B.A. in Economics from Williams College.
Mr. Thorndike founded Housatonic Partners in Boston in 1994 and has been Managing Director since that time. Prior to that, Mr. Thorndike worked with T. Rowe Price Associates where he did investment research in the nascent field of business services and Walker & Company, where he was named to the Board of Directors. Mr. Thorndike is a renowned investor, and the author of the book “The Outsiders”. He is a Director of Access Information Management; Alta Colleges; Continental Fire & Safety Services, LLC, Carillon Assisted Living, LLC; Liberty Towers, LLC; OASIS Group Ltd.; White Flower Farm, Inc., and a Trustee of Groton School and the College of the Atlantic.
Mr. Thorndike is a graduate of Harvard College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.