Boston Consulting Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Private-equity gains in the consumer-and-retail sector have been strong in the U.S., according to a Cambridge Associates report this year that tracked internal rates of return from companies that received initial investments from 2000 to 2016. Why don’t we do this with you?’” he says. Rob Arnott, founder and chair of Research Affiliates, “The data itself is extremely hard to pull together,”, The Case for Alternative Investments in Target Date Funds, Modern Slavery Act Transparency Statement. “There are 400 popcorn companies in the U.S. all trying to be the next Orville Redenbacher — all privately held,” Kroner says. By way of comparison, its discretionary venture fund — a $125 million pool called CircleUp Growth Partners that finished raising capital last year — will hold about 35 companies. Founders Rory Eakin, Ryan Caldbeck; Operating Status Active; Last Funding Type Debt Financing; Also Known As CircleUp Growth Partners; Legal Name CircleUp; Related Hubs CircleUp Portfolio Companies; Company Type For Profit; Investor Type Private Equity Firm, Venture Capital Investment Stage Early Stage Venture Number of Exits 5; Contact Email info@circleup.com; Phone … Obviating the need to travel lowers the cost of deal sourcing, an important feature of Helio but not the only advantage CircleUp sees in the technology. “They’re on the verge of doing something truly revolutionary, and I want to be a part of it,” he says. Ryan Caldbeck says Clayton expressed interest in CircleUp because he saw it to be a disruptive technology. Sign in. All rights reserved. “Tech venture is a gamble,”says Caldbeck. “I could show up to that cocktail party every day for the rest of my life. View Ryan Caldbeck’s profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. In a nutshell, CircleUp—launched in April 2012—allows consumer product companies to raise money from accredited investors; it allows retail companies and the people who would like to invest in those companies to evaluate each other and to interact through a private network; and, through a partnership with a registered broker-dealer, it facilitates funding the transactions via its site. What CircleUp is doing can’t be done sitting alone at a computer at home, says Kroner: Quantifying the investment process in private markets looks like a long shot because the data is not widely and easily available. CircleUp co-founders Rory Eakin and Ryan Caldbeck didn’t set out to tackle the funding gap that plagues female entrepreneurs (in 2016, only 2 percent of venture funding went to women). Ryan Caldbeck is the founder and CEO of CircleUp, a San Francisco-based investment platform that harnesses the power of data to provide capital and resources to emerging consumer brands. “I’ve talked several times before about building a systematic fund in the private markets,” he wrote over Twitter. But others — including prominent industry veterans — are not so sure quants will transform private markets anytime soon. It might not be the right way to find the company.”. CircleUp, co-founded with Rory Eakin, started by building an algorithm to evaluate consumer retail companies that applied for an investment from the firm. The line can be blurry. Co-founder and CEO Ryan Caldbeck stepped down, giving way to President Nick Talwar. At BGI he oversaw asset allocation (which included global macro, active currencies and active commodities), fund of hedge funds and client solutions. “Helio is a collection of algorithms and data sets which go out into the world, find, and evaluate companies,” says Caldbeck. In early October, Ryan Caldbeck, a Stanford University–educated investor with a penchant for tweetstorms, started his windup. Caldbeck’s idea for systematic investing strategies traces back to his first private equity job more than a decade ago. CircleUp, in seeking to figure it out first, could emerge at the center of disruption in private capital. One of the worst parts of fundraising is a lack of feedback from potential investors. Ken Kroner, the CEO of startup Pluribus Labs and former head of scientific active equities at BlackRock, says he’s struck by the overlap between what CircleUp is seeking to accomplish and what he was attempting as a quant 20 years ago. 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