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.
GUEST SPEAKERS
Alex Chatzieleftheriou
Co-Founder & CEO, Blueground
Alex Chatzieleftheriou is the Co-Founder and CEO of Blueground, the largest global network of fully furnished, flexible rental properties for 30+ day stays. Since launching Blueground in 2013, Alex has redefined the way people experience living and moving by offering a seamless, tech-powered solution to long-term rentals. Inspired by his own experience working and living in over 15 cities around the world, Alex set out to eliminate the frustrations of the traditional rental process, enabling people to live flexibly wherever life takes them.
Under Alex’s leadership, Blueground has grown into a global brand with a portfolio of over 35,000move-in-ready apartments across 48 cities worldwide. His forward-thinking vision and commitment to innovation have positioned Blueground as a leader in the sector, catering to a growing demand for flexible, tech-enabled living.
Before founding Blueground, Alex worked as a Strategy Consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he advised global businesses on critical strategic issues, and later served as an Associate Principal at Samsung Electronics in Seoul, South Korea. His international experience shaped his passion for creating a better living experience for the modern, mobile professional.
Alex’s entrepreneurial achievements have earned him numerous accolades, including recognition as a “High Impact Entrepreneur” by Endeavor (2015), the Hellenic Entrepreneurship Award (2016), and inclusion in Fortune Greece’s “40 under 40” list (2019). In 2021, he was named EY’s “Dynamically Developing Entrepreneur” in Greece.
Originally from Athens, Greece, Alex currently resides in New York City, where Blueground is headquartered.
Nicholas Desmarais
Chairman & CEO, AppDirect
Nicholas founded AppDirect in 2009, and serves as AppDirect’s Chairman and CEO. Nicolas is focused on the evolution of AppDirect’s business strategy, growth, and innovation roadmap. Before co-founding AppDirect, Nicolas worked at Bain & Company as a management consultant focused on media and business services. Nicolas holds a bachelor’s degree with a double major in economics and political science from Amherst College. In his spare time, Nicolas enjoys outdoor activities and traveling to new countries. LinkedIn
Linda Du
COO, Valon
Linda Du is the Chief Operating Officer at Valon, a cloud-based mortgage servicing platform transforming homeownership through technology. Mortgage servicing, a critical part of America’s financial infrastructure, has historically depended on outdated, complex systems leading to high costs and poor homeowner experiences. Valon has developed the first modern vertically integrated servicing platform in decades that leverages automation to significantly reduce costs and improve the homeowner journey. Previously, Linda was an investor at Samlyn Capital and Two Sigma, and began her career at Goldman Sachs. She holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Harvard University.
Scott Ganeles
CEO, iAltA
Scott Ganeles joined iAltA as CEO in 2024. He was previously Senior Partner at WestCap, joining the company at its inception in 2019. As a key member of WestCap’s Investment Committee, Scott focused on fintech investments, driving operational efficiencies within portfolio companies and coaching entrepreneurs through the various stages of growth. With over 30 years of experience, Scott has established himself as both an entrepreneurial operator and an acquirer of businesses.
Prior to joining WestCap, Scott founded two successful fintech companies. In 1990, he co-founded the Carson Group, the first capital markets analytics firm to apply behavioral insights to senior executives of Fortune 500 companies and leading investment banks. He served as its President until 2000 when it was sold to Thomson Financial for $200 million in 2000. One year later, Scott founded i-Deal, where he became CEO after the company merged with Hemscott to form iPreo Holdings LLC. Scaling to become a global provider of financial services technology, data and analytics, Ipreo was acquired by IHS Markit for $1.9 billion in 2018.
Scott received his undergraduate degree from Brown University, where he played soccer and studied Political Science.
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.
WESTCAP SPEAKERS
Laurence Tosi
Founder
Managing Partner, WestCap
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, Flip, 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 $6B in assets under management and 38 portfolio companies.
Kevin Marcus
Partner
Co-COO and Head of StratOps, WestCap
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.
Jeff Mullen
Partner
Co-COO and Head of Capital Markets & Marketplace Finance
Jeff Mullen became a Partner and member of WestCap’s Investment Committee in June 2021. Before WestCap, Jeff was Treasurer of Airbnb, joining in 2016 as its first Treasurer and building its treasury and insurance solutions teams. Before joining Airbnb, he worked at Goldman Sachs for 16 years in a variety of roles, most recently as a Managing Director in its Investment Management Division. Jeff started his career as a corporate attorney at the law firm, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he worked from 1995 to 2000. He currently serves on the board of directors HelpMeSee, Inc. and the Fabretto Children’s Foundation.
Daphne Tong
Partner
Co-Head of Investments, WestCap
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.
Jaime Hildreth
Partner
Head of Asset Management, WestCap
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.
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 Hunt Club, Flip and Found.
Michael Sotihros
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.
Josh Dart
Partner
Investment Team, WestCap
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.
Jason Mamaril
Founding Partner, CōLab
Jmama is an experienced executive creative director with extensive experience developing comprehensive brand systems and designing for digital platforms. He has set product and brand design language for some of the most well-known names in the Bay Area. He’s a rare hybrid of both worlds of design in that he’s led the way in product design as well as creating brand identities—building beautiful visual stories that stand out, and smart, seamless products that back those stories up. Prior to co-founding CōLab in 2019, Jmama led design for new product launches at Airbnb, having joined the hospitality company in 2014 as one of its earliest designers. Before that, Jmama was a Design Lead at both Square (2012-2014), and at Huge (2010-2012). He started his career as a brand designer at Interbrand (2009-2010), after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University with his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design.
Shep Maher
Managing Director
StratOps, WestCap
Shep Maher is a Managing Director and has spent over 25 years in sales and sales leadership roles. A three-time Chief Revenue Officer in Silicon Valley, Shep adds extensive experience at generating pipeline, driving revenue, and building winning cultures. Shep has led sales and go-to-market efforts for pioneering companies in HR Tech, Communications, FinTech, and HealthTech. He also brings extensive advisory experience to the WestCap team, having served as a go-to-market advisor for innovative companies in a diverse set of industries, including Climate Tech, Data Science, design, InfoSec, CPaaS, and applied AI.
Shep works closely with several portfolio companies on their go-to-market efforts. Shep’s experience allows him to support many different needs – from the strategic to the tactical. Outside of the office, Shep serves his community actively, supporting JUMA Ventures, Women’s Coaching Alliance, The Trevor Project, and the Wounded Warrior Project, to name a few.
Salih Abdul-Karim
Principal Motion Designer, CōLab
Salih is an Executive Creative Director / Principal Motion Designer passionate about the blend of entertainment and technology. He enjoys creating a good old fashioned 30 second commercial but he also bridges the two halves of his career by bringing brand thinking into the way digital products move and feel. Even though Salih’s won awards, given talks, written articles, had Fast Company and Communication Arts write articles about him he keeps his process simple. He’s a “what if” kind of guy who loves doing dope work with interesting clients that have challenging problems.
Between 2003 and 2012, he designed and animated commercials at various design shops, agencies and broadcast networks in New York City. After moving to San Francisco, he spent almost three years at Square as a motion graphics designer on its video team, doing short-form animations and compositing for live-action commercials. Next he spent over six years at Airbnb, collaborating with various teams and using motion / animation to solve product challenges on web and native platforms. He’s part of the four-person team responsible for launching Lottie, an Android, iOS, Web and React Native library that helps designers and engineers add high-quality animation to any web or native product. Since 2018 Lottie has been used by hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide and is now the de-facto standard for animation on native platforms.
Abhilash Nair
Principal
StratOps, WestCap
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 lead 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.
Brian Wakabayashi
Principal
Head of Brand, CōLab
Brian Wakabayashi is Principal and head of the brand at CōLab. Prior to joining WestCap, he spent two decades in the marketing agency world at global shops like McCann, BBDO, and TBWA on clients ranging from Microsoft Xbox, BlackRock, Mars Brands, and Taco Bell.
Allie Haldeman
Vice President
Investment Team, WestCap
Allie Haldeman is a Vice President on the Investment Team at WestCap. She joined in 2021 and is focused on innovation in travel technology and B2B software.
A day of open, engaging talks.
We will share more about our dynamic operational strategies, our collaborative partnerships with portfolio companies, and how WestCap is leading forward in 2024.
