Reza Satchu

Reza Satchu is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurship Management Unit at the Harvard Business School where he teaches The Entrepreneurial Manager and Launching Technology Ventures. He is also the Co-Founder, Managing Partner and majority shareholder of Alignvest Management Corporation.

Alignvest is a private investment company focused on long term value creation. The firm has in excess of $150 million of permanent capital, which allows it to take a truly long-term investment outlook, create bespoke financing solutions for highly complex situations, and avoid the pressure of selling good businesses at inopportune times. Alongside its own capital, Alignvest has invested over $1.5 billion from ultra high net worth and institutional clients in a concentrated group of businesses that are entrepreneur-led across a wide variety of industries.

Reza has substantial experience as an entrepreneur and as an investor. He has co-founded, built, and managed several businesses from inception including: Alignvest Management Corporation; Alignvest Student Housing REIT, Canada’s largest student housing owner/operator with a $700 million portfolio in 5 university markets; KGS-Alpha Capital Markets, a U.S. fixed-income broker dealer with over $10 billion dollars in assets that was sold to Bank of Montreal for over $400 million; StorageNow, which became one of Canada’s largest self-storage company prior to being sold to InStorage REIT for $110 million; and SupplierMarket, a supply chain software company that was sold to Ariba for $925 million.

Previously, Reza was a General Partner and Managing Director at Fenway Partners, a $1.4 billion, New York based private equity firm focused on acquiring leading middle market companies, and a Financial Analyst at Merrill Lynch in the High Yield Finance and Restructuring Group.

Reza is also the Founding Chairman of Next Canada, an intensive entrepreneurship program that provides education, mentorship, and start-up funding to Canada’s most promising entrepreneurs. Next Canada has an alumni base of over 750 entrepreneurs that have launched over 250 ventures, raised over $2 billion of equity capital and created over 4,000 jobs. Reza has taught and mentored many of these entrepreneurs and he has been an angel investor in many start-up companies. Previously, he was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto, where he created and taught The Economics of Entrepreneurship.

Reza serves on the Board of Directors of Sagicor Financial Corporation, as well as several privately held corporations. He also serves on several non-profit boards including Strategic Advisor to the Creative Destruction Lab, an organization that delivers an objectives-based program for massively scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies and the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children Foundation where he was Vice-Chairman of the Board. He was also the Co-Chair of his HBS Class of 1996 20th Year Reunion. Reza has received “Canada’s Top 40 Under 40™” Award and the Management Achievement Award from McGill University.

Reza has a BA from McGill University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

PUBLICATIONS

• Lerner, Josh, Reza Satchu, and Alys Ferragamo. "The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments): April 2021." Harvard Business School Case 821-125, June 2021.
• Ghosh, Shikhar, Marilyn Morgan Westner, and Reza Satchu. "Wes Hall and the BlackNorth Initiative." Harvard Business School Case 821-056, November 2020. (Revised February 2021.)