Our Investors

Edison Ventures

Established in 1986, Edison partners with entrepreneurs, service providers and other financing sources to build successful companies. Edison provides capital and value-added services to late stage ($5 to 20 million revenue), information technology businesses.  Initial investments range from $5 to 10 million. Edison typically serves as the sole or lead investor.  In addition to providing expansion capital, Edison funds management buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.

Strategic Investor

American City Business Journals is the nation's largest publisher of metropolitan business newspapers. American City metropolitan business newspapers reach 4 million readers each week with exclusive, in-depth coverage of their business communities. The loyalty of these readers testifies to American City's commitment to top-quality journalism, unexcelled service for advertisers and readers, and active business community involvement.

Richard Tahta

Rikki Tahta co-founded Covestor with a group of entrepreneurs who believe that salaried fund managers have no monopoly on investment talent and shouldn't have a lock on the rewards that come with investment success. Rikki has held a number of senior roles in Finance and Information Services. Previous start-ups include ARK Information (acquired by Thomson Financial), WebTrack (acquired by Jupiter Communications - later public on NASDAQ), Steelhead Systems (acquired by Merrill Lynch) and Bookpages (acquired by Amazon.com). Other positions include Chase Capital Partners (private equity) and Thomson Financial (Securities Data Corporation). Rikki lives in New York and loves fishing.

Simon Murdoch

Simon set up online bookstore Bookpages in 1996 and sold it to Amazon in 1998. As VP Europe for Amazon, he managed huge growth from start-up through to multimillion turnover and hundreds of staff. In 2000 Simon co-founded and became a partner of Episode 1 Partners, an early stage technology VC which managed the $100m Chase Episode 1 Fund. Episode 1 invested in nine businesses, notably the successful Betfair.com. As an Angel investor, he has invested in Shazam, been chairman of Video Island (now merged with and renamed LoveFilm), Zoopla! (where he is currently a director) and Shutl (currently chairman). Recently, Simon founded and funded FriendsAbroad.com, a social network for developing language skills and contacts abroad which was successfully sold to Lesson Nine GmbH, operators of language learning site Babbel.com. Simon is currently CEO of StormForward, an e-commerce conversion consultancy which helps online retailers to increase their online sales and profits

Gary Mueller

Gary Mueller is founder and Chairman of ISI Emerging Markets, one of the most widely-used-on-line business information service of emerging markets. In 1999, Euromoney Institutional Investor, purchased ISI and the company operates as an independent subsidiary. In June 2000, Mr. Mueller was appointed to the parent company's Board of Directors. Mr. Mueller is also a Chairman of Euromoney subsidiary, Information Management Network and runs Euroweek and structured Finance International, two international finance publications. Prior to starting ISI, Mr. Mueller did research at Harvard University on economic and democratic reform in the former Soviet bloc, and then worked for KPMG's privatization group in Poland. Mr. Mueller serves on the Board of Directors of Endeavor, a non-profit organization suporting entrepreneurship in emerging markets, and the Board of Advisors of the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School.

Roland Beaulieu

Roland Beaulieu has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry. He served as Chief Operating Officer of CCBN and was also the head of CCBN's Institutional Management Group, which successfully launched "StreetEvents," a corporate reporting tool which became the defacto standard of Wall Street institutions. Before his tenure at CCBN, Roland spent 13 years in a variety of positions at Thomson Financial. He served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Trading Service Division, and played a key role as Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in building the technology behind Thomson's First Call. Most recently, Roland was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at GrandBanks Capital and formerly the Chief Executive Officer of NewRiver, Inc.

Tom Aley

Tom Aley is a venture investor and startup advisor. Previously, he served as SVP and Managing Director of Dow Jones' Business and Relationship Intelligence group. Tom joined Dow Jones when it acquired a company he co-founded, Generate Inc. With over 20 years experience in the information, software, and media industries, Tom has a proven track record of driving sales and building and investing in successful companies. Prior to founding Generate, Tom was a Partner at Reed Elsevier Ventures, the venture arm of the $8 billion media company where he co-led investments. Earlier, Tom was executive vice president at Stonepath Group, a VC firm, where he co-led the company's initial public offering. Previous to Stonepath, Tom co-founded OneZero Media and served as executive vice president of sales. Prior to OneZero, Tom was a founding director at ZDNet, where he launched and managed the company's e-commerce business unit, Computershopper.com. Prior to ZDNet, Tom headed eastern regional sales at Shiva Corporation. Tom serves on the Outsell Content Board, and also on the board of the Jericho Road Project. Tom has served on boards of iPhrase, Nextpage, the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX), SIIA, and Northeastern University's High Technology MBA Program.

Darr Aley

Darr has 20 years of experience building companies in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer technology, software, and Internet segments. Darr joined Dow Jones when it acquired Generate, the company he co-founded. Darr helped direct corporate development and M&A at Amazon.com. He led and managed negotiations for several retail and technology acquisitions including Amazon's expansion into China. Prior to this he was hired out of Accenture by Amazon to help build their e-commerce ASP Services business, focused on selling Amazon's best in breed retail solutions to F500 global retailers. This grew to become a $700M business unit for Amazon over the last four years. As an entrepreneur Darr has started or joined several early stage companies whose successful exits have totaled over $600M. Included in these were Shiva (sold to Intel), Avatar (sold to DCA), Zip2 (sold to Compaq), WhoWhere (sold to Lycos), and Epylon (sold to Accenture). Darr held executive roles in marketing, business and corporate development at each of these companies. He and his brother Tom also worked together with executives from Bank of America and Goldman Sachs to create the Stonepath Group, a venture group focused on early stage businesses. 

Board of Advisors

Ian Condry

Ian is an Associate Professor of media and cultural studies at MIT, and Associate Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program.  He is the author of Hip-Hop Japan:  Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (2006, Duke Univ. Press), published in Japanese as Nihon no Hip-Hop (2009, NTT).  He is currently completing a book manuscript called The Soul of Anime:  Collaborative Creativity and Japan's Media Success Story, which is based on fieldwork research in Tokyo animation studios.  During the 2010-11 academic year, he will be conducting research in Tokyo and Boston on the uses of social media among mobile/digital youth.  

Prof. Condry's work focuses on "globalization from below," that is, cultural forms that become transnational through the efforts of grassroots supporters and indie businesses, later to be appreciated by major corporations and governments.  He has also written about the cultures of music piracy, and fan practices around translating and distributing anime online.  He founded and organizes the MIT / Harvard Cool Japan research project, which explores the cultural connections, dangerous distortions, and critical potential of the media and popular culture through seminars, international conferences, and performance events.  More info: http://mitcooljapan.com  and  http://iancondry.com and Twitterfeed iancondry.

David Flaschen

David Flaschen, of Castanea Partners, has over 20 years of executive experience in information and marketing services.

Prior to joining Castanea, David was a Managing Director at Flagship Ventures. Previous to Flagship, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of Thomson Financial. Prior to Thomson Financial, David served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Donnelley Marketing Inc., a venture capital-backed consumer information services firm that was acquired by First Data Corporation. Prior to 1995, he was with Dun and Bradstreet for 10 years including serving as the President of AC Nielsen, North America, a company that provides market research, information and analysis to the consumer products and service industries. David has a degree from Brown University and earned an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.