What I run, and what came before.
Three active companies. Thirteen years of underwriting and operating behind them.
Current companies
BuildUp Capital
Founder and CEO
Most of what comes to me was already turned down somewhere else. Usually the business was fine. The file just didn’t fit the box the bank is allowed to lend out of. I read the collateral and the operator myself, and my own capital goes into every loan.
buildup.capital →02Alexander, Strauss & Associates
Co-founder and part owner
Companies wait too long to chase an invoice. Every month that passes costs them. ASA works the commercial side only: businesses owed money by other businesses. Never consumers.
- Work
- Commercial invoices, creditor-side only
- Sectors
- Construction, oil and gas, healthcare, transportation
- Where
- Texas
BuildUp Group
Founder
I would rather own a good business than lend against it twice. The people in this group have run companies, not just financed them. An owner can tell the difference in the first conversation.
- Buying
- Four to six local companies
- Who
- Operators and former owners, not passive capital
- Hold
- Built to outlast the sale
Previously
2024–present
BuildUp Capital, BuildUp Group
Founder and CEO, BuildUp Capital; Founder, BuildUp Group
Private lending, and a group of operators buying local companies outright. The lending terms are on buildup.capital.
2023–2024
Key Business Strategies
Lead underwriter
Hundreds of files seen from the lender’s chair, which is where the gap became obvious to me.
2023
CGM, BMG, Acadea
Turnaround
An education-technology portfolio bought on a thesis that didn’t survive AI, with a cyber attack on one company and weaker systems than represented on another. Accounting moved onto an ERP, customers retargeted.
2022–2023
Skillz
Took over the finance function
A twelve-person finance team had been let go overnight and replaced with a consultancy. I was brought in with two others and it became two of us, producing audited financials, earnings reports, earnings scripts and disclosures for a public company.
2021–2022
CoinCloud
Director of Financial Planning and Analysis
Hired for product. Two weeks in, half the staff went and I took over finance instead. I pulled machines out of thousands of unprofitable locations and rebuilt the portfolio while Bitcoin fell from about $60,000 to about $18,000. The company reached profitability; a lawsuit with its machine manufacturer took it under anyway.
2020–2021
H-E-B
Merchandise Business Manager
Owned the strategy for the entire front end. Launched a credit card and a debit card, rebuilt the fuel programme, reassorted the vending portfolio, and placed the cryptocurrency company that then hired me away.
2018–2020
Alexander Land Development Consulting
Founder
Founded to do the same work on my own account: underwriting, entitling, financing and positioning land assets, including on behalf of a trust. 330 residential lots entitled and financed across eight distressed land assets.
2013–2017
Development Planning and Financing Group
Analyst to business development manager
The first hire after the recession, promoted three times in three years. Took over the firm’s hardest work — fiscal impact analyses and public facility financing plans, 300 pages each — and spent most of the job arguing with municipalities on behalf of people trying to build something. Helped entitle almost 40,000 lots. Over $1 billion in municipal debt issuance.
2017–2018
The year away
Away from work
Seventeen countries, on foot.
2017
Festival Yurts
Founder
A luxury festival rental business run out of Reno, owning and operating the equipment directly. Since closed.
2022
MBA, USC Marshall School of Business
First place, Google Pitch Competition
Runner-up, UNC Real Estate Challenge. Before that, a B.S. in Business Administration, Finance, from the University of San Diego.