3i Member Spotlight

Our latest Member Spotlight podcast features David Blumberg, Founder, and Bruce Taragin, Managing Director of Blumberg Capital, a seed-stage venture firm with nearly three decades of investing together and early bets on Nutanix, Braze, and DoubleVerify. In conversation with 3i Members Co-Founder and Chairman Mark Gerson, David and Bruce unpack what it takes to build an enduring venture partnership...

Our latest Member Spotlight podcast features Mark Edelstein, Chief Executive Officer of Auramet. His career spans global commodities markets, entrepreneurship, and investing. After immigrating to the U.S. from South Africa in the 1980s, he spent 15 years in commodities before co-founding Auramet in 2004, building the business into a global precious metals trading platform. In conversation with 3i...

Our latest Member Spotlight podcast features Lisa Morris, Founder of Road Concierge and Managing Director of AKS Family Partners. Her career spans Broadway, entrepreneurship, and investing. After touring internationally as a performer, she identified a gap in entertainment travel and built Road Concierge from the ground up, bootstrapping the company without outside capital and selling it in 2012....

Dan Novaes is the Founder & CEO of Mode Mobile, an earning-technology company that has facilitated nearly $1B in earnings and savings to users through everyday smartphone activity. A lifelong entrepreneur, Dan began identifying arbitrage opportunities at an early age and went on to build multiple profitable consumer businesses before graduating high school. Prior to Mode Mobile, Dan founded and sc...

Greg Friedman is the Founder and CEO of Peachtree Group, a real-estate investment firm focused on acquisitions, development, and lending across commercial real estate with a strong hospitality footprint. Since launching Peachtree in 2007, Greg has overseen more than $11 billion in real-estate investments and built one of the country’s most active private-credit and loan-acquisition platforms. He h...

Mitch Caplan brings over 30 years of experience leading innovation across the financial‑services industry. He co-founded Telebanc, the first branchless bank in the U.S., and scaled it from $50 M to $5 B in assets before striking a $1.8 B sale to E‑Trade that was negotiated and announced in just nine days. The deal formally closed the following January. He then served as CEO of E‑Trade, cutting $1 ...

Benji Shomair is an entrepreneurial operator and investor who spent over a decade at Facebook (now Meta), where he built and scaled multiple billion-dollar global businesses across ads, messaging, and commerce. Most recently, he served as VP of Commerce Business at Meta, leading the commerce experiences team and shaping how billions of users engage with shopping on Facebook and Instagram. Benji ha...

What do BlackBerry, Swiffer, Impossible Burger, Sonos, and Febreze have in common? They were all named by one man—David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding, the agency behind more than 100 iconic brand names. Fast Company calls Lexicon “the most envied branding agency in the world.” A 3i Member since 2024, David has spent decades naming companies—from Silicon Valley startups to global giants like...

A 3i Member since 2024, Ankur Bansal is the President of HomeLight Inc. He brings over a decade of experience as a founder, operator, and investor in the technology space. Ankur began his career in private equity before launching SnapSaves, a receipt-scanning cashback app that was acquired by Groupon in just 11 months. He later served as a founding executive at SnapTravel (now Super.com ), where h...

A 3i Member since 2022, Adam H. Schwartz is a Partner and Portfolio Manager at First Manhattan, where he has worked since 2001. Adam played a pivotal role in launching the FM First China Funds in 2009—First Manhattan's China-focused investment vehicles—and regularly travels to China to collaborate on research, portfolio management, and due diligence. He holds a BA in Economics and International Re...

Craig Weiss is a leading Entrepreneur, Investor, and an Author. Currently, he is the Managing Partner of Flagstaff Ventures, where he brings entrepreneur-focused perspective to the venture capital field as one of the few institutional investors to have both built a unicorn as a CEO and also identified and invested in an early-stage startup that has achieved unicorn status. Craig has been a 3i Memb...

Zoë, formerly the Senior Vice President of AI at Citi, is a distinguished leader in the AI field with over 12 years of experience. At Citi, she spearheaded the adoption of agentic AI across the firm, enhancing various business processes. Prior to this, as a Staff Applied Scientist at Etsy, she led initiatives in personalized search and discovery. A graduate of NYU with a deep background in AI, Zoë...

Peter Boockvar is the Chief Investment Officer at The Bleakley Group and publisher of The Boock Report. He is a trusted voice in financial media, regularly contributing to CNBC. Prior to joining Bleakley, Peter was the Chief Market Analyst at The Lindsey Group, a macroeconomic and market research firm founded by former Federal Reserve Governor Larry Lindsey. Earlier in his career, he worked as a M...

Mawi Asgedom is a world-renowned speaker, bestselling author, and entrepreneur. After fleeing Ethiopia as a child and spending years in a refugee camp, Mawi overcame incredible challenges to graduate from Harvard University, where he delivered a commencement address to 30,000 people. Driven by his passion for social-emotional learning (SEL), Mawi founded Mawi Learning in 1999, transforming educati...

Ed Newman is a Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where he leads the firm’s Corporate Strategy business in North America and the private equity and M&A team in the Midwest. With over a decade of experience, Ed specializes in corporate strategy, portfolio management, and shareholder value creation. He has co-authored influential reports, including “Ten Lessons from 20 Y...

3i Member Ted Seides, CFA, is the Founder of Capital Allocators LLC, an ecosystem that encompasses podcasts, gatherings, and advisory services for managers and allocators. In this special edition podcast episode, we spotlight him on the launch of his new book, Private Equity Deals. In Private Equity Deals, Ted provides insights into the conversations that typically happen behind the closed doors o...

Dave Balter is a serial entrepreneur with a distinguished track record of impacting various industries. He founded BzzAgent, which was acquired by Dunnhumby, and Smarterer, which was acquired by Pluralsight. His current venture, Flipside Crypto,  powers growth for blockchains.  Dave's career includes executive roles at prominent global organizations and venture investments as a partner at True Ven...

In this episode of our Member Spotlight podcast, Mark Gerson interviews Jon Weber, founder of Jon F Weber & Co., LLC, exploring the intricacies of corporate boards and the role of board members. Jon, a seasoned Board Member, Advisor, and Executive with over 20 years of experience, shares his insights from working with top institutional investors like Goldman Sachs, Icahn Enterprises, and Elliott I...

Igor is the CEO of Market Prophit and the Co-Founder and CEO of RWA.Holdings, a next-gen exchange for cryptocurrencies and all global tokenized Real World Assets (RWA). He has been an investor and trader of cryptocurrencies since 2016, specializing in Bitcoin mining, blockchain and Web 3.0 companies, disruptive energy technology, AI, machine learning, and fintech. Igor spent his career on Wall Str...

Kristine Thompson is a CEO, investor, entrepreneur, and board director from Trinidad & Tobago. She has held regional CEO positions for various companies in the Caribbean, including a regional snack manufacturer, a private equity energy fund and Canadian-based golf brand Cabot’s world class golf course and luxury real estate development on the island of Saint Lucia. In 2012, she co-founded Yay! Ent...

Samy Bahra is the Co-Founder and Former CTO of Backtrace I/O, a turn-key debugging platform that stabilized large-scale companies' software with clients including Amazon, Cisco, Verizon, and more. Backtrace was purchased by Sauce Labs in 2021. Samy is also the founder of the Concurrency Kit project, which several leading technology companies rely on for scalability and performance. Additionally, h...

Mitch Julis, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Canyon Partners, leads one of the world's largest and most successful multi-strategy hedge funds. Established in 1990, Canyon Partners specializes in value-oriented and event-driven investments. Before establishing Canyon, Julis held positions as a portfolio director and practiced bankruptcy and creditors’ rights law. His scholarly work on bankruptcy and...

Alicia Levine is the Head of Investment Strategy and Equity Advisory Solutions at BNY Mellon Wealth Management. She is a prominent market commentator, frequently appearing on CNBC and Bloomberg News. Additionally, she is a member of the Investment Committee for the National Academy of Design. Alicia earned a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy from...

Craig Weiss is a leading Entrepreneur and Investor, esteemed by both Goldman Sachs as a top 100 innovator and acknowledged by Forbes as a Disruptor. He is currently the Managing Partner of Flagstaff Ventures, where he brings entrepreneur-focused perspective to the venture capital field as one of the few institutional investors to have both built a unicorn as a CEO and also identified and invested...

Billy Libby is the Co-Founder & CEO of Upper90, a leading private credit firm that provides senior secured asset-backed facilities to technology companies with positive unit economics and collateral. Additionally, he is a Co-Founder and Board Member of 3iMembers. Before starting these new ventures, he served as the Head of Quant Execution and Market Making Sales at Goldman Sachs and as Managing Di...