Investment partners
Everest Capital has committed capital from a world-class team of entrepreneurs, operators and investors with an outstanding track record in growing businesses. Below you can find selected bios of investor team.
Frank Kenny
Frank Kenny is an experienced venture capital investor. He founded Delta Partners in 1994, having previously worked in the VC industry with Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. in Boston from 1983 to 1993.
He was on the Board of many private technology companies in the US and was on two NASDAQ Boards, Abacus Direct Corporation and Vivid Technologies Inc. from 1989 to 1999. Frank currently serves on a number of private Boards, including Advanced Surgical Concepts, Neoss and Miracor.
Frank holds a B. Comm. and M. Econ. Sc. from University College Dublin and an MBA from University of Chicago.
Simon Webster
Simon is an investor and entrepreneur who raised in London the first search fund outside of the US. Through the search fund model, he acquired RSL in 1995 and became its CEO. Over a 10-year period Simon expanded the organization organically as well as through acquisition, resulting in a quasi-tenfold sales growth. He led the sale of the business in 2005 and remained CEO until 2007 achieving top quartile returns for his investors.
Simon is a passionate believer in the search fund model. He has helped to expand knowledge of the model through activities at London Business School, INSEAD and IESE Business School. He teaches the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition and Search Fund courses at both LBS and Cambridge Judge.
Simon is now a mentor to search funders as well as being an investor with over 20 search fund investments, and is also Co-founder and Partner of Ivy Partners - a privately held investment firm that seeks to acquire and actively manage established private companies in the United Kingdom. He is the Chairman of R Link Ltd (trading as R Healthcare) and Director of ESMS Global Limited (a Contract Research Organisation servicing the pharmaceutical sector).
Simon holds and MBA degree from London Business School and is a graduate of Nottingham Trent University.
Rob Johnson
Rob Johnson is a successful entrepreneur and venture capital investor, currently he is a Visiting Professor in the Entrepreneurship Department at IESE Business School. From 1990 he was on the faculty of London Business School for ten years, where he designed and taught a course on entrepreneurial finance. He also founded the International Search Fund Center at IESE Business School.
He has served as a director, and in several cases as chairman, of many private companies and has been actively involved in those companies from their early financings through to successful trade sales and IPOs. Rob serves on the advisory board of Palamon Capital Partners in London and the boards of several search fund companies. His areas of specialization include financing new ventures, the private equity industry, and search funds.
Rob holds a Bachelor of Arts from Davidson College, a Master in Christianity and Interreligious Dialogue from the University of London and an MBA from the Darden School, University of Virginia.
William N. Thorndike
Mr. Thorndike founded Housatonic Partners, a leading US middle market private equity firm with offices in Boston and San Francisco, in 1994. At Housatonic, Mr. Thorndike was the pioneering institutional investor in search funds starting in 1995 and played a central role in refining search acquisition criteria. He has been investing as an individual in search funds for over 25 years and has invested in over 100 companies that originated out of search funds. He has served as a Director at roughly a quarter of them.
He is a Director of Banyan Software, Inc.; Carillon Assisted Living, LLC; CONSOL Energy, Inc. (Chair) (NYSE: CNX); Everarc Holdings, Inc. (Co-Chair) (LSE: EVRA); Lincoln Peak Holdings, LLC; QMC International, LLC; ZircoDATA; and several other companies. Mr. Thorndike is a Trustee of WGBH and College of the Atlantic.
Mr. Thorndike is a graduate of Harvard College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the author of The Outsiders.
Bill Egan
Bill is a founder and General Partner of Alta Communications and Marion Equity Partners, Massachusetts-based venture capital firms. He founded Alta’s predecessor firm, Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. in 1979, and has identified and backed several of America’s leading growth companies in the information technology, life sciences, and communications industries. Prior to founding Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co., Bill was a Partner at TA Associates. He began his career as a Manager of Venture Capital for New England Enterprise Capital Corporation.
He is past President and Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, a Trustee of Fairfield University, a Member of the Board of Overseers of The Wharton School and a Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Board of CRH plc, and a number of privately held companies.
Bill is also an owner of the Boston Celtics professional basketball team. Bill received a degree in Economics from Fairfield University and an MBA from the Wharton School.
Alisher Ashurov
Alisher Ashurov is a Managing Partner of Abbey Road Capital, a private investment firm focusing on financial and business services companies in the US and Europe. He has a special interest in payments, business-to-business marketplaces and networks, and all kinds of aggregation, consolidation and brokerage service companies in a variety of industries.
Prior to founding Abbey Road Capital, Alisher was a member of the Executive Team at FleetCor Technologies, Inc., which was initially a private equity backed (Summit Partners, Bain Capital) and is now a publicly traded specialized B2B payments company. During his decade-long career at FleetCor, the company’s valuation increased from $0.5bn to over $14bn at a 45% compound annual growth rate. Alisher contributed to this value creation by leading over 20 acquisitions and partnerships deploying $1bn as well as managing and growing several of FleetCor’s businesses.
Alisher holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School and a bachelor degree from Emory University.
Ruiz Family
Felipe Ruiz Lopez & Rafael Ruiz Hernandez have a family business background in Spain and the Canary Islands, with several businesses in their portfolio, including a large beer-brand and oil and gasoline distribution assets. Felipe has been a professor of Business Administration at Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales (ETSII) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), since 1976, and a member of the MIT Sloan EMSAEB Board since 2012. Rafael started his career in investment banking at Citi Bank, and is now leading his family’s offices in public equities and search fund investments, mainly across Europe and Latin America.
José Martin Cabiedes
José Cabiedes is a successful venture capital and search fund investor. He is co-founder of Cabiedes & Partners SCR, seed investor in the Spanish ICT sector since 1998 for companies such as Olé-ADQ, MyAlert, Privalia, Trovit, BlaBlaCar, Tiendeo and Kantox, among many others.
He is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at IESE Business School and a Board member at the media group EuropaPress.
José holds an MBA degree from IESE Business School and Industrial Engineer degree from Comillas Pontifical University (ICAI).
AI Global
AI Global is an international investment group with interests in multiple asset classes, including search funds, private equity (growth capital/equity), real estate, and late-stage ventures around the globe.
José Moreno is the Managing Partner of the firm. Previously, José was a Junior Partner in ECM Corporate Finance, a Spanish boutique that provides financial advisory services to CFOs and CEOs of small and medium-sized companies as well as family businesses on financial planning, special situations, fundraising and IPO processes. He also worked in several technology start-ups in Germany and Spain and began his career as a Business Analyst at British American Tobacco (BAT) based out of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
José holds an MBA degree from IESE Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Electronic and Computer Engineering from Tecnológico de Monterrey. He is also an alumnus of the CEMS-MIM program (Bocconi & HEC Paris).
Istria Capital
Istria Capital is the first European vehicle to invest in search funds globally.
Istria supports talented, highly committed entrepreneurs throughout their journey to acquire and grow profitable companies and has invested in more than 50 search funds across several countries. Currently present in Spain, France, Germany, UK, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Morocco, Mexico, Brazil, Canada and the US.
Istria Capital is led by Simón Bores and Ignacio Olavarría, experienced search fund investors and INSEAD MBA graduates.
Enrico Arietti
Founded in 2020, SFClub is the first Italy based professional search fund investment vehicle, investing all across Europe.
SFClub has been created by Enrico Arietti. Enrico is a partner at Oaklins Italy and a promoter of Industrial Stars of Italy. He closed 20+ M&A deals in Italy and abroad and listed and successfully reached the business combination of 4 SPACs. Before creating SFClub Enrico worked for Bain & Company in Italy and in the USA.
Enrico holds an MBA degree from INSEAD and is a Chartered Accountant.