We are thrilled that our portfolio company NextCapital, a leading enterprise digital advice company, will be acquired by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. This is a significant milestone and ideal outcome for NextCapital, which follows what we consider to be a model partnership between an entrepreneur and a VC focused on growth, expertise and friendship.
NextCapital provides solutions designed to help everyone retire successfully. The company delivers innovative digital advice solutions by partnering with leading financial institutions, such as Franklin Templeton and John Hancock, to deliver personalized planning and managed accounts to investors across multiple channels, including 401(k), IRA, and taxable banking accounts. All of NextCapital’s solutions use technology to drive efficiency and reduce costs.
We led NextCapital’s Series C growth round in 2017, with a follow-on investment in 2020 alongside other investors to help the company continue advancing retirement income capabilities and growth partnerships.
Joining Goldman Sachs is an ideal next step for the company’s credibility, distribution, and market validation. In a Financial Times article, Goldman Sachs co-head of asset management Luke Sarsfield said, “This is a bid to provide all of corporate America with a better solution to help their employees plan for retirement.”
Our own Dan Petrozzo said, “The bulk of Americans’ savings are in retirement plans and NextCapital provides an optimal solution that offers guidance and customization. We knew this company had the right leadership, creativity, and foresight when it came to identifying and solving for a need in the retirement planning industry when we met John and his team early on. I’m proud of the partnership we’ve cultivated over the last several years, where we provided our expertise and execution around financing, customer strategy, talent acquisition, and positioning the company for growth.”
We believe that having the right talent in place is vital in scaling a company, and as such, we worked closely with NextCapital to meet their talent needs. Throughout the partnership, we leveraged our network to source two credible and hands-on external Board Members, as well as other senior positions.
John Patterson, NextCapital’s Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, shared, “Oak HC/FT is a clear leader in helping entrepreneurs grow their companies into large business institutions, while providing partnership and friendship, transparency and insights every step of the way. Each member of the Oak team brought different experiences and ideas to collectively help us get to where we are today. Oak instilled trust and exuded alignment with our mission from the start. If you haven’t been on boards or have had multiple companies, you don’t know what you don’t know; Oak filled those gaps for us from a talent standpoint, operationally, and by spearheading financial engineering processes that created efficiencies and growth not only for our company, but more importantly to help everyone retire successfully. Thank you to Tricia, Dan, Matt, Oivind and the entire Oak team.”
Our top priority has always been – and continues to be –to make customer experiences better and throughout our partnership, and we believed in the platform that NextCapital was building to help everyone retire successfully. We extend our deep congratulations to the NextCapital team and look forward to watching their continued success in this next chapter.