WestCap made an investment in Addepar via its Strategic Operator Fund and as a partner at the firm, Jaime Hildreth has had a “front-row seat” to witness Addepar’s steady growth in recent years.
Her experience at the “nexus” of technology and private capital markets brings “a unique perspective to [their] board and the opportunities awaiting Addepar.”
Jamie shared that she started her career with General Electric’s Financial Management Program and Corporate Audit Staff.
She then joined a GE subsidiary that was “soon sold to Blackstone Private Equity.”
Through that connection, she was “offered an opportunity to join Blackstone in 2008 with the mandate of building out its portfolio monitoring, valuation and investor reporting capabilities.”
That’s when she met Laurence Tosi (L.T.), founder and Managing Partner at WestCap, who was also “the CFO of Blackstone at the time.”
L.T. and Jamie “recognized that Blackstone needed a ‘source of truth’ for its portfolio data.”
And if Blackstone needed a solution…”the whole industry needed one.”
To address this, they founded iLEVEL, which “offers portfolio monitoring and management for alternative investments.”
As Jamie was approaching her eighth year at Blackstone, her “gut” was telling her “it was time to go back to a Blackstone portfolio company and gain some real operating experience.”
And so that’s what she did.
She joined Ipreo and “the first acquisition [they] made was iLEVEL to form Ipreo’s Private Capital Markets (PCM) division.”
Three years later, PCM was “the fastest growing unit when it was sold to IHS Market (now S&P Global) for close to $2B.”
And that’s when the story of WestCap “started to come together.”
For me, WestCap represents “the culmination of the best of my experiences and people – it completes the circle, both professionally and personally.”
Today, as a Partner at WestCap, she is on the Investment Committee, leading their Asset Management efforts “along with a few of our notable FinTech investments, including Addepar.”
Since joining, WestCap has grown “from ~$100 million of capital to ~$8 billion in assets under management today.”
It’s been “an incredible journey so far and it’s just the beginning.”
Jamie noted:
“Addepar was a company that we knew well in a highly attractive space. Alternatives offer a massive, addressable market—with a secular tailwind of $220 trillion in the retail channel. In addition, private markets are growing 3x as fast as public markets. We believe there is an untapped opportunity that Addepar can help address to bring the good things about public markets, like information flows and institutional trust, into private markets.”
She added:
“We also saw the opportunity for Addepar to go beyond its core offering through expansion into international markets, broader product offerings like Marketplace and benchmarks, and new market segments like institutions, for example.”
She also mentioned that alternatives have “seen significant growth in demand, and correspondingly, a need to better manage these investments.”
This has “led to an increased focus on modernization and digitization.”
She further noted:
“We’re seeing a rapid rise in the use of AI, big data and data science to augment traditional data aggregation and drive insights for better decision-making. Another trend is the increased acceptance of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.”
She also shared:
“Addepar recognized this as an area of opportunity from the beginning, building the platform with the ability to model any asset and currency in their clients’ portfolios. Technology is also playing a key role on the transaction side—with a further increase in digitization.”
For more details on this update, check here.