Meet the speakers
You will hear from the team who is leading the charge in building a new kind of investment firm with a unique operating model.
WESTCAP SPEAKERS
Laurence Tosi
Managing Partner, Founder
Over 25 years, L.T. has established a career as a distinctive operator, serial entrepreneur, and forward-looking investor. As an operator, L.T. has served in executive-level roles at leading, global institutions Airbnb (CFO, Head of Payments, Customer Experience & Corporate Development), Blackstone (CFO, Management and Risk Committee Member, Head of the Innovations Fund and Blackstone Treasury Solutions Fund), and Merrill Lynch (COO, CFO, Risk Committee, Head of Corp. Dev. and eCommerce).
As an entrepreneur, L.T. was a founding partner or early investor behind several tech-enabled, disruptive businesses across e-commerce, private markets technology and cyber-security. As a founder and investor, L.T. created industry changing platforms Ipreo, TMC Bonds, TheMarkets.com, iLevel and CNBC.com, and was an early investor in Addepar, Airbnb, FLYR, GoodLeap, Hopper, iCapital, Point, Skillz and StubHub. L.T. is the Managing Partner and Founder of WestCap, an operating equity investor in technology companies that he originally formed in 1997 as Weston Capital Partners, and now has $5.3B in assets under management and 38 portfolio companies.
Josh Dart
Partner, Investment Team
Josh joined WestCap in 2019 to lead investments broadly in Real Estate Technology and adjacent sectors. Prior to joining WestCap, Josh spent 9+ years at global real estate investment and management firm Tishman Speyer, where he focused on acquisitions, dispositions, development, deal structuring and asset management. During his time at Tishman Speyer, Josh worked on and led the capitalization, acquisition, development and disposition of over $7B of Class A commercial and residential properties while also evaluating several real estate technology investments. Josh earned a dual BBA in Finance and Real Estate from the University of Wisconsin where he graduated with Distinction.
Jaime Hildreth
Partner, Head of Asset Management
Jaime is a Partner, Head of Asset Management, and a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. She is an accomplished corporate finance and portfolio operations executive with extensive experience advising private equity, venture capital, and private portfolio companies on financial reporting best practices, operational effectiveness, and technology initiatives. Prior to joining WestCap, Jaime was Managing Director, Head of Strategy for Private Capital Markets at Ipreo, a Blackstone FinTech portfolio company. At Ipreo, Jaime supported the acquisition of iLEVEL, a Portfolio & Risk Management software she incubated with L.T., expanding the offering by launching a valuation workflow technology (iVAL) and a data analytics business for Limited Partners (Private Market Connect).
Jaime joined Ipreo from Blackstone where she was a Senior Vice President of Private Equity Valuations, responsible for fair valuing and portfolio monitoring over $90 billion of assets within the Private Equity segment, including Core Private Equity, Tactical Opportunities, and Energy Partners. Jaime joined Blackstone from a portfolio company, previously owned by General Electric. At GE, Jaime participated in its Corporate Audit Staff and Financial Management Program.
Kevin Marcus
Partner, Co-COO,
Head of StratOps
Kevin Marcus joined WestCap as a Partner in October 2020 to lead the firm’s Strategic Operators group. Kevin has a distinguished career building and operating highly successful financial technology businesses. Most recently, Kevin served as co-founder, President, COO and board member of Ipreo, helping to create a diverse, global enterprise known for its operational excellence, innovation and winning culture. Along the way, he architected and integrated numerous acquisitions and oversaw successful outcomes for four distinct ownership groups, culminating in the sale of the business in 2018, to IHS Markit for just under $2B. He began his career at the financial data and advisory business, The Carson Group, where he helped scale a startup into a fast growing, highly sought-after business that was eventually acquired by Thomson Financial. Kevin stayed on as President of the Corporate Group at Thomson Financial, where he led the integration and strategic transformation of several disparate businesses.
Allen Mask
Partner, Head of CōLab
Allen Mask is an investment Partner at WestCap as well as Managing Partner of CōLab, WestCap’s internal creative studio. He joined our teams in 2020 to emphasize the role of product, brand and marketing as key drivers of investing and value creation. Before joining WestCap, Allen held several executive positions across Wall Street and Silicon Valley, including Sonos, where he was on the management team as Chief of Staff to the CEO and Vice President of Marketing, Intelligence and Partnerships as well as Research and Development. Before Sonos, Allen founded the Product Marketing team at Airbnb where he was also a General Manager on Magical Trips, the initiative that led to Airbnb Experiences. Allen started his career in the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs and is also a Google alumnus, having worked in a variety of sales, brand management and business development roles across Search, YouTube, Android and Google Play.
Allen represents WestCap on a variety of non-profit and commercial boards, including serving as WestCap’s Director at Preply, Found and Hunt Club
Michael Sotirhos
Partner, Head of Capital Formation & Strategy
Michael Sotirhos is a Partner and Global Head of Capital Formation and Strategy based in New York. He sits on the firm’s Management and Investment Committees and oversees all facets of WestCap’s fundraising activities. Prior to joining WestCap in 2023, Michael was a Senior Managing Director in the Institutional Client Solutions Group at Blackstone where he helped build and lead the firm’s Private Equity Investor Relations and Business Development team. Over his 13 years at the firm, he helped spearhead the launch of several new product lines, coordinated the onboarding of new business units and managed coverage for key institutional relationships across North America. Prior to joining Blackstone in 2010, Michael spent nine years as a Partner at Atlantic Pacific Capital, Inc., a placement firm focused on raising capital for a broad array of Alternative Investment firms and strategies from institutional investors worldwide. While serving in the firm’s London and Greenwich, CT offices, he was involved in all facets of APC’s fund raising activities from business development, origination and marketing strategy to account coverage responsibility in the US, Canada and the Middle East. Prior to joining Atlantic Pacific, Michael was in the Private Equity Placement Group at Merrill Lynch & Co., based in London, where he raised capital from investors across Europe and the Middle East.
Daphne Tong
Partner, Co-Head of Investments
Daphne Tong became a Partner and member of WestCap’s Investment Committee in June 2021. She is Co-Head of Investments alongside L.T. and leads WestCap’s investment team. Prior to joining WestCap, Daphne was Co-Head of the Funds and Co-Investment Group in the Americas for the Private Equity arm at GIC, a leading global investment firm established to manage Singapore’s foreign reserves. Daphne led their private markets investing efforts through the execution of co-investments and direct investments in companies, as well as private equity fund commitments. Previously, she was a Principal at The Blackstone Group’s Private Equity division, leading investments across a range of industries from 2006 to 2015. She started her career in Healthcare Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs in New York City.
Karn Dasgupta
Principal, Investment Team
Karn Dasgupta is a Principal on the Investment Team, based in London. Joining in early 2022, Karn leads European investment coverage. Most recently, Karn was on the Investment team at Providence Equity Partners, conducting due diligence on new investment opportunities across the TMT sectors, and supporting portfolio company management teams with numerous acquisitions, organic capital allocation decisions and other operational initiatives.
Abhilash Nair
Principal, StratOps
Abhilash Nair leads technology and AI at WestCap. After completing his PhD in physics at Michigan State University, he completed a fellowship in AI at Insight Data Science which spurred his interest in machine learning and language models. Prior to joining WestCap, he has led advanced AI initiatives at TD Ameritrade and FICO, focusing on building platforms at scale. His background as a teacher fuels his passion for breaking down complex technical topics for both technical and non-technical audiences. At WestCap, he drives innovation across the portfolio, leads our CTO network, builds internal AI capabilities, and helps us navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Omar Raucci
Principal, Investment Team
Omar is a Principal on the Investment Team at WestCap, where he focuses on FinTech, Real Estate Tech, and B2B Software. He is involved in several of WestCap’s portfolio companies including Qualia, Valon, and NYDIG. Omar joined WestCap in 2021 following his MBA at Harvard Business School. Prior to WestCap, he worked at the Olayan Group and JPMorgan. Omar holds a BA in Economics from Georgetown University.
William Pearce
WestCap Advisor & Product Manager, Google Enterprise AI
Will is the Product Manager for Google’s internal Applied Machine Learning team. Previously he was the Product Manager on Gmail’s Machine Intelligence team. Prior to Google, Will was Head of Product at Parakweet Labs – a Natural Language Understanding start-up in the Bay Area.
GUEST SPEAKERS
Nate Baker
CEO & Co-Founder, Qualia
Nate Baker is the co-founder and CEO of Qualia. Nate oversees the company’s strategic vision and executes on Qualia’s mission to provide a seamless real estate closing process for all. Since founding the company in 2015, Nate and his team have expanded Qualia’s platform and services to all 50 states and seen the company valued at over $1 billion. Qualia is on track to become the real estate industry’s default closing transaction platform, with over one million real estate professionals using Qualia to deliver a seamless, secure, and differentiated closing experience for their clients.
Josh Crossick
Chief Product Officer, Preply
Josh Crossick is the Chief Product Officer at Preply, where he leads the company’s product strategy, roadmap, and cross-functional execution across learner and tutor experiences. As CPO, he plays a key role in shaping Preply’s vision for the future of language learning – one empowered by AI, personalization, and meaningful human connection. Josh brings more than two decades of experience in product, strategy, and operations. Before joining Preply, he served as Chief Product Officer at Letgo and Chief Product Officer at Hotels.com within Expedia Group. Josh holds a Masters of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge.
Frederic Lalonde
CEO & Co-Founder, Hopper
Frederic Lalonde is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hopper, a global travel platform that powers Hopper’s mobile app and HTS partners’ direct channels. Hopper uses data to bring transparency, flexibility and cost-savings to travelers globally. The company has also developed several unique fintech solutions that address everything from pricing volatility to trip disruptions.
The Hopper platform serves hundreds of millions of travelers and continues to capture market share around the world. The Hopper app has ranked as the #1 travel app in over 55 countries and has ranked as one of the top 10 travel apps in over 120 countries. It has received accolades such as Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company in Travel, SKift IDEA Awards, and Forbes Fintech 50 2022. Through HTS (Hopper Technology Solutions), Hopper supercharges its partners’ direct channels with its travel agency and travel fintech offerings.
Fred previously co-founded Newtrade Technologies, which was acquired by Expedia in 2002. As a VP at Expedia, Frederic was responsible for developing the Direct Connect product strategy and signing up over 10,000 hotels to the Expedia platform, including major brands such as Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Carlson, Cendant and Choice Hotels. He later moved on to participate in various Expedia M&A activities, including the acquisition of Hotels.com, TripAdvisor and eLong. In 2023, Fred co-founded Deep Sky, a Montreal-based gigaton-scale carbon removal project developer, removing billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere and permanently storing it underground.
Stu Solomon
CEO, HUMAN
Stu Solomon brings extensive experience to his role as CEO of HUMAN. His industry experience most recently as the President of intelligence provider Recorded Future (acquired by Mastercard), combined with executive and C-suite leadership roles at Optiv (acquired by KKR), iSIGHT Partners (acquired by FireEye), and Bank of America, as well as a Board member and investor across the security landscape, equips him with deep industry insights and client intimacy. A proud graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, and the Rutgers School of Law, Solomon continues to serve as a Brigadier General with the distinct honor of Commanding the Delaware Air National Guard as the Assistant Adjutant General – Air, where he has honed his technical skills and a strategic and mission-driven focus during a more than 30-year active duty and reserve component military career, aligning seamlessly with HUMAN’s DNA, core values and vision.
Andrew Wang
CEO & Co-Founder, Valon
Andrew Wang launched Valon in 2019 to revolutionize mortgage servicing with modern technology and customer-focused solutions. As CEO, he leads the company’s mission to deliver transparency, efficiency, and care for homeowners nationwide.
Previously, Andrew was a Principal at Soros Fund Management (2015–2019), where he specialized in mortgage-backed securities and structured products.
He began his career in Goldman Sachs’s Structured Finance group in 2014.
He holds both a B.A. and M.S. in Computer Science from Harvard University.
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