Zach: I’ve spent the last 10+ years in financial services and startups but, even before then, I was always very  entrepreneurial. In lower school, I sold baseball cards. In middle school, I resold wholesale candy. Post-grad, I moved to San Francisco to try my hands at a dating app startup (very cringe in hindsight), which didn’t make it. After that, I started my professional career working in Investment Banking, focusing on software/services M&A transactions and capital raises.

Once I started my journey as an investor, I joined the AngelList ecosystem as an LP to invest in startups. I couldn’t believe the platform provided access to generational companies like Notion, Cruise, etc. I eventually joined a growth fund before starting my own syndicate and venture firm, Calm Ventures. Since 2020, we’ve put together 450 SPVs, including over 100 SPVs in the last 12 months.

Alex: I spent 8 years operating across two early stage startups in the healthcare tech space. First, I joined as employee #11 at a data analytics company as their first business development/sales hire and the other as the first employee, pre-launch for Market Access Transformation. We grew the business profitably, sold a piece to private equity after 5 years of operation, and then, about a year later, we sold the company outright for a nine figure exit.

I started investing as an angel and looked to write small checks into a number of early stage startups and eventually became an LP in a couple syndicates, including Jason Calacanis’, which was where I learned about SPVs and how they operate.

The more I learned about syndicates, the more I gravitated towards this investment strategy. I liked the deal-by-deal flexibility for those running SPVs and the optionality for really getting to decide where to allocate funds. After about a year of angel investing, I started doing it on my own before finding my way to AngelList, where I ended up partnering with Bryan Rosenblatt, who went on to become a partner at Craft Ventures. We later agreed to partner, with me operating Riverside Ventures, which I’ve now been doing for about 4-5 years.

Josh has deep roots in fund administration. He began his career consulting at KPMG and then transitioned to become an early employee and leader at Strata (fund administrator), where he helped build the company to 250 employees servicing clients with over $100B in AUM. Strata was acquired by a global fund administrator, Alter Domus, in 2021. During his time at Strata and Alter Domus, Josh led teams that provided top-tier fund admin services to clients with funds ranging from $10M to $1B in AUM, reaching a client base of over $40B in AUM spanning across venture, private equity, hedge funds, real estate, and fund of funds.

With a diverse background of serving funds across the private markets, Josh has played a key role in driving forward company-wide initiatives outside of fund administration, including investor services, recruiting, SOC1 compliance, client relations, people and culture development, systems integration, and more.

I’m excited to join Belltower as CEO. I’ve long believed the combination of great technology with expert service providers is the key to providing top tier fund administration services to the venture space. I look forward to working with Avlok and the best-in-class teams at Belltower and AngelList in our mission to help founders, fund managers, and investors power the startup economy.