Partners
David M. Jacquin
Matthew Kelly
James Lim
Sam Madani
Bill Placke
John D. Sternfield
Manoj Verma
Sam Wilkins
David M. Jacquin
David Jacquin founded North Point Advisors in 2004. He has spent two decades of his career as an M&A advisor. Prior to founding North Point Advisors, he led M&A divisions for each of Piper Jaffray & Co, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America/Montgomery Securities. Additionally, David practiced law with Cravath, Swaine and Moore in New York and London, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions. He also worked as a consultant for Arthur Andersen and Company.
David Jacquin obtained a B.S. with honors from St. Louis University and earned his J.D. with honors from Georgetown University. David lives in Sonoma, California with his wife Heidi and their two children, Hayley and Alec.
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Matthew Kelly
Matthew Kelly joined North Point Advisors in early 2005. Prior to joining North Point, Matt spent the majority of his financial career at Deutsche Bank Alex Brown and Franklin Templeton.
Matt earned a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Colorado at Boulder, majoring in Finance. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter holder. Matt lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jessica.
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James Lim
Prior to North Point Advisors, James co-founded the Technology Industry Group and was Co-Head of Technology investment Banking at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. Prior to joining Cantor Fitzgerald, James was Co-Head of Technology Investment Banking at Pacific Growth Equities. Previously, James was a Managing Director and Head of Software, E-Commerce and Security Investment Banking at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, where he worked for nine years. James has been responsible for and executed over 80 transactions representing over $10 billion in value. James has extensive transaction experience in equity, high yield, convertible securities, and mergers & acquisitions for Internet, Enterprise Software, and Electronic Commerce companies. He received an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Sam Madani
Sam Madani joined North Point Advisors in 2006. He has spent two decades in operations, M&A transactions, and post acquisitions at Zhone Technologies, Lucent, Cisco, and Hewlett Packard. Prior to his involvement with North Point Advisors, he was Vice President of Business Development and M&A at Zhone Technologies, He was also involved in historical multibillion dollar Telecom transactions while serving Ascend/Lucent and Cisco. Additionally, Sam has strong business and technology background in hardware, software, finance, and management and guides companies through their advisory boards.
Sam earned BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado and BA and MBA from Tehran University. He lives in Los Altos with his wife Nahid and their children Michael, and Michelle.
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Bill Placke
Bill Placke joined North Point in 2009 where he focuses on capital raising and M&A advisory services for telecom and technology companies. Bill is also one of the founding partners of Alpha Global Ventures. Bill was the Managing Director of the International Division of a technology company in Northern Virginia and successfully launched the business in South America, Europe and Asia-Pac. Prior to that position, he was Vice-President of Business Development for Fortune 500, Charter Communications Inc. Prior to Charter, Bill held senior positions in Chello Media Investments division, Liberty Global/UPC, working on industry-leading M&A consolidation. Bill worked as a cross-border mergers and acquisitions attorney for Clifford Chance, LLP in Europe and in the New York corporate group at Dickstein, Shapiro, Morin & Oshinsky. Bill has served on the boards and advisory boards of cable companies in Europe, and technology companies in North America and Australia.
Bill holds a BS from the University of Dayton, a JD from St. John's University and a Diploma in EU law from the University of London, King's College. Bill resides with his wife Saskia and two children in Northern Virginia.
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John D. Sternfield
John D. Sternfield has been in Investment Banking for over 30 years. Prior to joining North Point Advisors, he co-founded the Technology Investment Banking practice of Cantor Fitzgerald where he opened the West Coast office for Cantor and established their banking practice. In 2002, John opened Ross Road Partners to service the needs of emerging growth technology companies in Merger and Acquisitions and Private Equity Placements. Prior to founding Ross Road Partners, John was the Managing Director in Investment Banking at Piper Jaffray in charge of the Communications and Computing practice from 1995. In the last nine years, John has been the senior banker on over 80 public offerings which raised over $10 billion and over 30 Mergers and Acquisitions transactions representing over $3 billion in transaction value.
For Piper, John opened the Menlo Park office and built it to over 100 professionals. John founded the Communications practice and in three years generated revenues over $140 million. John managed twenty-eight bankers working with twenty-four research analysts over nine industry segments. John also founded and ran the firms Israeli Practice where he led Piper to become the second most active investment bank in Israel within two years. He managed the firm’s Communications Private Equity Investments and founded the Venture Capital Liaison Group within Corporate Finance.
Prior to Piper, John developed and managed the Venture Capital Services Group at Montgomery Securities where he coordinated Corporate Finance new business from the venture capitalist and financial sponsors from 1992. Prior to Montgomery, John also held positions in Equity Sales at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette and Brown Brothers Harriman. He is a graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Business with an MBA and a B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Manoj Verma
Manoj Verma joined North Point Advisors in 2008, after having served as an advisor for the past several years. Manoj is passionate about the consumer Internet space and has over 8 years of experience with a variety of leading Internet companies in Strategy, Corporate and Business Development. He is actively involved as an advisor or Board member to start-ups, venture capital firms and angel investors. Prior to his involvement with North Point, he was most recently the VP of Corporate Development at IAC Search & Media. Prior to joining IAC, Manoj was at Yahoo! in a variety of Corporate Development, Business Development and Product Integration roles within the M&A group, Music and HotJobs businesses. Before Yahoo!, Mr. Verma co-headed Corporate Development at Amazon.com. He started his career in the Investment Banking Division at Lehman Brothers in New York and Hong Kong doing M&A and general Corporate Finance.
Manoj earned Bachelor of Social Science Degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of Ottawa, and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Manoj lives in the South Bay with his wife Neera and their two children, Ria and Nikhil.
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Sam Wilkins
Sam Wilkins has spent much of the past 15 years focused on advisory transactions and capital raising for hospitality and real estate companies. Sam managed the Lodging, Gaming and Leisure investment banking group at Banc of America Securities (formerly, Montgomery Securities). He then opened and ran the West Coast office of Boston-based investment bank Adams Harkness, and managed the investment banking business at Presidio Financial Partners. In 2004, as a part of KSR Partners, Sam raised $86 million of equity capital for Chileno Bay Development Partners LP and joined as a general partner. Later, as CEO of Chileno Bay, Sam oversaw the successful entitlement and master planning of this luxury resort project in Cabo San Lucas, MX, and negotiated a variety of financial transactions and strategic relationships on behalf of Chileno Bay.
Sam graduated with honors from Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School. Prior to Banc of America Securities, he practiced law at Goodwin Procter in Boston, and was an Associate Independent Counsel on the Iran-Contra investigations and prosecutions headed by Lawrence Walsh. Sam lives in Mill Valley, California, with his wife, Melissa Murphy, and their three children, Sarah, Grace and Sam.
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