Manhattan Beach's B Capital Group Has a New General Partner
Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.
B Capital Group, a Manhattan Beach-based growth-equity firm with over a billion and a half dollars in assets under management, has added Gabe Greenbaum as a Los Angeles-based general partner at the firm. Greenbaum, who was previously at Pritzker Group Venture Capital and OCA Ventures, said the move will mean the firm will invest more in Southern California.
"I do want to really spend a lot of time investing in the Southern California ecosystem, bringing additional awareness to the dynamic founders that are here," Greenbaum said. "And we'll also plan on hiring additional talent to be here in Southern California to help us."
Despite its local leadership, the only Southern California company B Capital Group has invested in so far is Bird Rides.
B Capital Group writes checks in the $10 million to $60 million range for Series B, C and D stages focusing on B2B startups in enterprise technology, consumer enablement, fintech, insurtech, transportation, industrial and healthcare.
Greenbaum, also an investor in dot.LA, will also focus on deals in Chicago and New York, cities where he previously worked. He will be the firm's seventh general partner.
"I can't tell you exactly what the percentages will be, but I anticipate a good portion of my time will be spent in Southern California," he said.
B Capital Group was founded in 2014 by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who's based in Singapore, and Raj Ganguly, a former Boston Consulting Group (BCG) investor who lives in Manhattan Beach.
B Capital Group closed its second fund with $822 million in capital commitments in June, which was more than twice as big as its $360 million debut fund. BCG was an anchor investor in both funds and a central selling point of B Capital Group is that startups get an inside track to BCG's lengthy roster of blue chip corporate clients.
Speaking the day after the election, Greenbaum said with so much uncertainty and the usual holiday lull, he expects a slower pace of dealmaking until the end of the year.
"I think in Q1 we'll have a lot more clarity, and I think that's where you'll see firms begin to be probably a bit more aggressive again once there's a little bit more visibility into who's in office, who's controlling Congress, who's controlling the House, and also where we are with COVID," Greenbaum said. "That being said, there's still investments being done up and down the stack."
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Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.
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