Eric Brachfeld

Managing Partner

Eric has more than 27 years of experience as an investment banker and entrepreneur and has provided financial and strategic advice and structuring transactions for a broad range of companies and investors. Prior to launching Manhattan Venture Partners, Eric was a Partner at Citizen VC, Inc., a financial technology and investment firm, where he led the firm’s investment banking efforts. Prior to Citizen VC, Eric cofounded Gentry New York, which he merged with GSV Financial Group. At GSV FG, Eric was head of investment banking and CEO of Gentry Securities, their broker-dealer subsidiary. Prior to GSV FG, Eric cofounded and led investment banking efforts at Ledgemont Capital Group and Indigo Ventures, firms which raised capital for and invested in early and growth stage companies. Prior to those firms, Eric was an Associate and then General Partner at McFarland Dewey & Co., a boutique investment banking firm. Eric began his career at McKinney Advertising. Eric received a BA in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA, with Honors, from the Stern School of Business, New York University. He holds FINRA Series 7, Series 63, Series 24, Series 79, Series 87 and Series 99 licenses.

Jared Carmel

Managing Partner

Jared Carmel is a co-founder of Manhattan Venture Partners and a pioneer in the ‘Secondary Market’ for pre-IPO technology companies. His primary focus is providing liquidity and diversification for shareholders of illiquid, high profile, venture-backed private companies.

Over the last fifteen years, Jared has worked on a variety of assignments, including early and late-stage venture capital, private investment in public equity (PIPE), M&A projects and secondary direct stock offerings. This has lead to extensive experience in investment banking, business operations, acquisition integration and board work. His involvement in pre-IPO technology investments has helped produce over $1 billion in invested capital to date across some 30+ businesses with >20 liquidity events.

Outside of Jared’s activity in the secondary markets, he also makes opportunistic growth equity investments in traditional venture capital. Some of his more notable investments include Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba, Spotify, Palantir, Lyft, Pinterest, DocuSign, SoFi, Wish, Rent the Runway, MoneyLion, and Flipkart.

Before launching Manhattan Venture Partners, Jared was a co-Founder of Citizen VC, Inc., a financial technology, and investment firm. He oversaw the firm’s secondary direct venture capital activities, including managed funds and brokered transactions. Before founding Citizen VC, Jared was Managing Director, Director of Secondary Markets at Gentry Venture Partners (GSV Ventures now G Squared). During his tenure at, Jared built the firm’s secondary markets practice and led investments into some of the fastest growing and exclusive startups in Silicon Valley. Before Gentry, Jared was a pioneer in the secondary direct venture market sector, originating and funding investments in such companies as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Groupon and Chegg, among others. In 2006, Jared spearheaded the effort to build the New York office of AEFC a late-stage venture capital investment bank. Ultimately, the New York office raised more than $100 million annually to co-invest alongside top VCs, predominantly for TMT and clean technology companies. In 2004 Jared started in banking at Laidlaw & Company, where he focused on alternative investments, as well as primary and secondary offerings for public companies seeking growth capital.

Jared has been interviewed by many leading industry publications such as CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN Money, CNN Tech, MarketWatch, Silicon Valley Business Journal, BuzzFeed News, and The Information.

Mr. Carmel graduated with a BA from the University at Buffalo School of Informatics. He holds FINRA Series 7 and Series 63 licenses.

Bradley D. Fishman

Managing Partner

At Manhattan Venture Partners, Bradley has various responsibilities that include client and business development both on both the buy/sell side as well as working alongside the banking team. Prior to Manhattan Venture Partners, Bradley was a Partner at Citizen VC, Inc., a financial technology and investment firm, where he participated in late-stage secondary venture investments. Before joining Citizen VC, Bradley was Vice President at Gentry Financial Holding Group (n/k/a GSV Financial Group). His roles included raising capital for primary and secondary later stage venture opportunities and advisory assignments the firm undertook. Prior and during his tenure with Gentry, Bradley also served as CEO and Founder of an early stage enterprise/mobile technology startup. Bradley entered the venture space at a boutique venture capital investment bank Advanced Equities Inc. Prior to AEI he began his finance career with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney as a Financial Advisor. Bradley graduated from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland College Park with a BS in Business Marketing and holds FINRA Series 7, Series 66, and Series 31 licenses.

Rashaun Williams

General Partner

Rashaun serves as General Partner of the MVP All-Star Fund.  He brings to MVP extensive investing and corporate finance expertise.  He was a Founding Partner at QueensBridge Venture Fund, which he helped launch in 2013 and managed with other partners including rapper and hip-hop icon Nasir “Nas” Jones.  Queensbridge invested in startups such as Dropbox, Lyft, Seatgeek, Meerkat and General Assembly. Rashaun also manages Value Investment Group, a private investment and consulting firm focused on influencer-backed private equity and value investing, particularly in consumer products, tech, media, entertainment, financial services and infrastructure.

Over the course of his career, Rashaun has held institutional sales and trading roles at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo, as well as serving in a senior capacity in several boutique M&A and corporate finance boutiques. He also founded Dixsville Partners, a private equity fund investing in infrastructure development and mineral companies in West Africa. In addition to his professional activities, Rashaun founded the Kemet Institute, a nonprofit organization that provides workshops in financial literacy and entrepreneurship to children, teens and adults in low income communities. Rashaun is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, Inc. and summa cum laude graduate of Morehouse College. In 2015, he was appointed to the Board of Trustees at Fisk University.  Rashaun holds FINRA Series 7, Series 3, Series 63, and Series 24 Licenses.

Kevin A. Cohen

Partner

Kevin has more than 17 years experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining Manhattan Venture Partners, Kevin was a Senior Vice President at Wedbush Securities Inc. and Head of the Private Company Strategies Group. Kevin oversaw all of the group’s secondary market activities, including brokered transactions, managed funds, and principal investments. Prior to creating the Private Company Strategies group, Kevin was a Vice President in Institutional Equity Sales and Trading at Wedbush Securities Inc. He spent over 10 years as a position trader providing technical and fundamental analysis to the firm’s institutional clients and focusing on technology, social media, gaming and ecommerce. During this period, Kevin also consistently traded the firm’s capital for a profit while providing best execution services to his clients. Prior to joining Wedbush Securities Inc., Kevin was an analyst for Merrill Lynch’s Capital Management Group. The group provided portfolio management services to central banks and sovereign wealth funds with minimum investments of $25 million. Kevin earned his BBA from Washington University in St. Louis. Kevin holds FINRA Series 7, Series 63, Series 65, and Series 55 licenses.

Nicholas Gupta

Partner

Santosh Rao

Head of Research

Santosh has 18 years of experience in Technology/Telecom equity research. Prior to joining Manhattan Venture Partners, Santosh was a Senior Equity Analyst, Managing Director at GreenCrest Capital LLC where he pioneered efforts to publish public-company style, in-depth research reports and valuation analysis on private companies in the technology/social media/telecom sectors. Prior to GreenCrest, Santosh was an equity research analyst covering telecommunications, media and technology stocks at Evercore Partners, Prudential Securities and Broadpoint Capital. While at Broadpoint, Santosh was ranked by Starmine/Financial Times in its annual survey of leading equity analysts in North America. Before moving to equity research, he worked as a Senior Financial Analyst in the Financial Analysis & Reporting Group at PaineWebber and later at Prudential Securities. Santosh has a double undergraduate degree, a BCom in Advanced Accounting & Auditing from Osmania University, India, and a BA in Economics from Rutgers University. He also received an MBA in Finance from Rutgers Business School. Santosh’s work is cited frequently in financial journals and he appears frequently on business networks including CNBC, BNN and Reuters.

William L. Barkow

Senior Managing Director

Karl Bornefalk

Senior Managing Director

At Manhattan Venture Partners, Karl focuses on buy-side and sell-side client and business development across Europe. He is based in London.

Karl started his career in Madrid as part of the launch team for companies in the tech and telecommunication sector,  including FON.com and E-plus. He then founded his first business, MambaIQ, a data-driven social media analysis platform. After exiting that business, Karl co-founded and invested in further companies across Europe and Latin America in the areas of eCommerce, lead-generation and food delivery.

Alongside Karl’s role at Manhattan Venture Partners he is actively advising a portfolio of European tech companies in different capacities, including Jobandtalent.com, Stratio.com and Playtomic.io

Karl graduated with a BA (Hons) in International Business and Entrepreneurship from the European Business School in London and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

Alejandro Creixell

Senior Managing Director

Alejandro Creixell Castañeda has more than 20 years of experience holding senior management positions at financial institutions throughout Latin America. He brings a deep knowledge of financial management and financial markets.

In 1999, Alejandro founded Bulltick Capital Markets (www.bulltick.com) with a selected group of Mexican investors to bring excellence in the American Depository Receipts (ADRs) of Latin American companies that were listed on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ. As a managing partner and head of sales, Alejandro oversaw the development of the company throughout Latin America, opening offices in Argentina and Brazil, and creating new relationships with the most important financial institutions in Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Colombia. Within 5 years of founding, Bulltick was trading more than 50 million ADRs annually, achieving a top-ten market position.

Prior to Bulltick, Alejandro worked at BBVA as an International Financial Advisor in the international markets,  advising on investment and portfolio preparation for clients with assets of more than one million dollars and investments in various international assets. During this time, Mr. Creixell conducted the necessary courses in order to achieve accreditation as a stock exchange agent of the AMIB (Mexican Association of Stockbrokers).

Alejandro has extensive experience in structuring and raising capital in different industries. He is also the founder of Cretum Advisory & Capital Markets (www.cretumpartners.com) and Pretmex Sofom ENR (www.pretmex.com), a non-bank lender to SMEs in Mexico.

Mr. Creixell holds undergraduate degree in Economics  and a master’s degree in Finance with a specialty in business valuation from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He has also completed the Value Investing course at the Business School of Columbia University, and the Business Valuation (Essentials of Business Valuation) course at the New York Institute of Finance.

Jamil Marmarchi

Senior Managing Director

Jamil brings a unique mix of investment banking and hands on operating experience. He began his training at Merrill Lynch International Bank in London in 1993. As a fully registered FSA and Series 7&3 Financial Advisor and having worked both in equity and fixed income sales and strategy, Jamil was selected as one of the founding members of the Merrill Lynch Investment Advisory Group (IAG) in 1996. The Group managed middle market clients (quasi institutional) with over US$5 billion under management and Jamil was responsible for the Fixed Income and Private Equity strategy for the portfolio. In 1998 Jamil was appointed head of the Group reporting directly to the regional manager and supported the roll out of the IAG across Merrill’s offices in New York, Dubai and Singapore. In 2000, Jamil managed his own independent client’s portfolio and became the youngest banker at the time to make Merrill Lynch’s prestigious Chairman’s Club advising on over US$ 1.5 billion in assets. Having allocated capital to the entire spectrum of investment products and services, Jamil began taking special interest in venture capital and private equity – direct investments.

In 2003 after leaving Merrill Lynch, he independently managed and advised a successful monetization of US$ 1.5 billion of US real estate assets for a Middle Eastern client, while investing into a new telecom venture. Kulacom Broadband Investment Company was founded and Jamil operating out of Dubai, UAE attracted a leading telecom management and operating team and secured private funding from the MENA region as well as a JV partnership with one of the world’s leading broadband operators, SK Telecom out of Seoul, S. Korea. In 2009, both the Jordanian Telecom Authority and Korea’s Telecom Commission recognized Kulacom’s network in Amman Jordan as the world’s leading fully independent wireless broadband network. Together with SK Telecom, Kulacom established a full-fledged engineering office in Bahrain to support its regional expansion. Kulacom rolled out networks in Amman, Istanbul and Athens. This was a true VC success story in a highly regulated market in region.

After selling his position to the majority shareholders of Kulacom, Jamil established an investment management and advisory business. The majority of investments were in VC and PE technology businesses. Jamil was the first investor in Gonabit, backing its Dubai based founders. Gonabit was sold after 2 years with over 20X multiple to Living Social, the second largest coupon group buying business. Jamil also worked closely with investment firms in the UK to deliver terms sheets to finance over US$3 billion worth of contracts to Governments in South America for trade and construction finance, secured land and financing to establish an IKEA in Bahrain, advised on the set up and structure of a Singapore REIT for worker accommodation, structured financing for a building in DIFC, Dubai.

In 2016 Jamil was approved by the FCA to acquire a UK FCA regulated investment advisory and management firm. The purpose of this acquisition, is to build a multi-family investment advisory business focused on telecom, media and technology. This is a unique platform working with leading VC investment firms, entrepreneurs and executives.

Pablo Potente

Senior Managing Director

Pablo is an experienced entrepreneur and investor with 15+ years in the Internet space.  He has co-founded 6 profitable Internet companies in both the consumer Internet and enterprise software space, expanding these companies into four different continents worldwide.

Involved in late-stage, Pre-IPO investing since 2014, Pablo has invested and raised capital for equity investments into companies such as Airbnb, Spotify, Flipkart, Palantir Technologies, Lyft, Rent the Runway, SpaceX, Coinbase and Pinterest, among others.

Pablo has also participated as an Angel Investor in 40+ companies. He has several exits under his belt and enjoys using his hands on experience to mentor fellow entrepreneurs when possible.

He is and active member of  EO (Entrepreneurs Organization) where he is part of the Board of the Argentina Chapter  and  is an active volunteer in TECHO (http://us.techo.org/).

Mr. Potente holds a BA degree from the Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Memet Yazici

Senior Managing Director

Memet is an experienced Investor and Advisor.  He has been the Co-founder and Managing Partner of TRPE Capital, an investment firm focused on investing in growing and innovative companies in technology, healthcare, consumer and business services sectors.

Since 2013 he has also acted as an Advisor to One Equity Partners.  Prior to TRPE Capital, Memet was the Co-founder of Rhea Asset Management in Istanbul, where he led the private equity and venture capital investment teams. An active investor in Turkey since 2007, previously he has spent 17 years in the US in various private equity investment management, operating and consulting roles.

Memet served on more than 20 boards including two public companies listed on Borsa Istanbul as well as the Executive Alumni Council at the University of Rochester and the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey.

Mr Yazici is a Kauffman Fellows Mentor and was a charter member of the Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey Advisory Council of the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association.

Memet holds a B.S. degree in Engineering from Bogazici University in Istanbul and an MBA degree from University of Rochester, Simon Business School.

Samuel Kosloff

Senior Vice President

Sam has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry.  Over the course of his career he has worked in both buy side and sell side capacities. Prior to joining Manhattan Venture Partners he was Chief Investment Officer for the Angeliades Family.   Prior to his CIO role he was a Vice President at Credit Suisse. Before joining CS Sam was Head of Corporate Access for the Shafiroff Group at Lehman Brothers. Sam has BA in Political Science from SUNY Plattsburgh and holds Finra Series 7 and 63 licenses.

Michael Linebarger

Senior Vice President

Michael has focused the majority of his career working on private fund raising for high tech, life sciences and alternative energy companies ranging from first rounds of financing to late stage, pre-IPO companies.  Throughout his career Michael has gained valuable insight into the private asset class, specifically the structuring of alternative investment vehicles while also developing essential relationships in the industry.  Prior to joining Manhattan Venture Partners, Michael was a Vice President in the Merchant Capital division within Maxim Group where he primarily concentrated on origination, business development and marketing of early to mid-stage biotech companies.  Prior to joining Maxim Group Merchant Capital, Michael was an associate in the New York office of AEFC, where they raised late stage rounds of financing for companies mainly in the TMT and clean tech space alongside tier-1 venture capital firms. Michael graduated with a BA in Marketing from Kean University and holds a FINRA Series 7 and 66.

John Smilgin

Senior Vice President

John began his career in financial services as a registered representative / retail salesman in the Lehman division of Shearson Lehman American Express in January, 1986 (55 Water Street, NYC). He went on to co-found TIR Securities Ltd. in Hong Kong in 1988; an international brokerage firm that specialized in trading global equities and providing independent investment research to large institutional investors (TIR was acquired by E*Trade in 1999). John served as director of institutional sales in Hong Kong and ultimately as  managing director of TIR Hong Kong. As director of sales, John covered institutional accounts in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and Abu Dhabi . He has been a branch manager with Hoenig & Co. Inc. in Tokyo, as well as SVP / Head of Sales for Hoenig in New York. John has been involved with a number of start-up businesses since re-locating to Seattle, WA in 2004. He holds FINRA Series 7 and Series 63 licenses. John is a graduate of Middlebury College (class of 1983) where he majored in history.

Nissa Tabas

Vice President of Operations

As Vice President of Operations, Nissa assists the MVP team in many facets of business operations including sales, customer support, compliance and back-office operations. Prior to Manhattan Venture Partners, Nissa worked as an Associate at Citizen VC, a financial technology and investment firm and at Gentry Financial Holdings Group (n/k/a GSV Financial Group). Nissa began her finance career as a sales assistant for Lincoln Financial Advisors. Nissa graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a BA in Political Science and holds FINRA Series 7 and Series 63 licenses.

David James

Senior Associate - Corporate Development

David joined Manhattan Venture Partners in June 2016. His focus is domestic and international business development, working collaboratively with MVP’s Capital Markets team. David also supports MVP’s overall sales, marketing and branding efforts including web-based and social media activities.  David graduated from Fordham University with a BA in Finance and a secondary concentration in Alternative Investments. He holds FINRA Series 7 and 63 licenses.

John Lee Jr.

Associate

John Lee Jr. joined Manhattan Venture Partners in June of 2018 after graduating from Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business with a B.S. in Finance, secondary concentration in Alternative Investments, and a minor in Economics. His key roles are concentrating on business development, working closely with MVP’s Capital Markets Team, while supporting overall sales & marketing, operations, and branding efforts. He holds FINRA Series 7 and 66 licenses.

Mario Pérez

Investment Banking Analyst

Mario is Manhattan Venture Partners’ investment banking analyst. He focuses on investment due diligence, deal structuring, quantitative and qualitative analysis, and banking activities. Mario graduated from Fordham University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics. Mario is originally from Miami, Florida and is a native Spanish speaker. Mario holds a Series 79 license.