CircleUp Adds Jake Cabala, Former Managing Director of Park Hill Group, To Lead Institutional Business

SAN FRANCISCO, May 24, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CircleUp Network Inc - Today, CircleUp announces the appointment of Jake Cabala as its Head of Institutional Business. Jake brings nearly a decade of expertise in asset placement at Park Hill Group, a leading global asset advisory and fundraising firm, which has raised in excess of $260 billion for nearly 200 funds. The move comes on the heels of significant milestones for CircleUp, including the launch of a pioneering early-stage index fund, the announcement of machine learning algorithms for evaluating early-stage consumer companies, and a $30M fundraise from financial industry experts such as Jon Winkelried, former President of Goldman Sachs and John Powers, the former CEO of the Stanford Endowment.

"Simply put, Jake is one of the best in the business when it comes to private equity placement for some of our nation's most prominent institutional investors. Park Hill Group is an undisputed leader, and Jake has an exceptional track record," said Ryan Caldbeck, CEO and co-founder of CircleUp. "Jake's excitement to join CircleUp is a nice demonstration of the interest from institutional investors in accessing early-stage consumer and retail. It's also a signal of the industry's inevitable migration to Marketplace Investing, where data and machine learning play a vital role in identifying and evaluating the best deals. Jake will have a dramatic impact on our vision to help more entrepreneurs thrive, by providing Limited Partners with unparalleled access and diversification in the early-stage private market."

At CircleUp, Jake will help lead the development of a series of custom fund products that enable institutional investors to capitalize on the early-stage consumer asset class, which has tailwinds of innovation and historically strong returns. The custom funds will utilize the Classifier, CircleUp's machine learning technology that analyzes emerging companies based on 92,000 data points to assess performance and opportunity, enabling access to companies earlier than is possible for traditional private equity funds. The Classifier looks broadly and deeply at public, semi-public and private information, including historical financial information, brand, product, leadership and competition. It can be trained to hone in on specific criterion within consumer products and retail, based on varying institutional preferences.

"After nearly a decade of examining thousands of private equity firms and gaining a clear understanding of what fund attributes Limited Partners value most, I'm very excited to join CircleUp," said Jake Cabala, Head of Institutional Business at CircleUp. "We have a unique team with deep expertise in investing, the consumer industry, data science and compliance - combined with a track record of excellent performance - and a strategy focused on early-stage consumer, a sector with tremendous wind at its back. What excites me most, however, is our specific approach to marketplace investing that leverages machine learning to analyze mountains of data and identify and underwrite investments in ways not possible through traditional, manual methods. I'm convinced our approach will set a new standard for private equity."

Jake joins CircleUp on May 23, 2016. For more information about CircleUp, please visit circleup.com.

About CircleUp

CircleUp is the largest investment marketplace for consumer brands. It is powered by the Classifier, a machine learning algorithm that selects early-stage brands by analyzing an average of 92,000 data points per company. CircleUp is backed by Union Square Ventures, Canaan Ventures, Collaborative Fund, QED Investors, GV, and former leaders of Goldman Sachs, Thomson Reuters the Stanford Endowment and financial institutions.

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