Reza R. Satchu

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

For over 20 years, Reza has been both a serial founder and an entrepreneurship professor. He has co-founded, built and managed six operating businesses, from inception, within a variety of industries.  These businesses, collectively, have been sold for/valued in excess of $3 billion dollars.  Concurrently, Reza has taught many entrepreneurship courses and created several entrepreneurship programs.

Alignvest is a private investment company, controlled by Reza, that has founded and built several businesses including:

(i) Edgewood Health Network, founded in 2012, built a leading provider of mental health and addiction services with sites across the country, successfully sold to Peloton Capital Management (generating in excess of a 10x multiple on invested capital);

(ii) KGS Alpha Capital Markets, founded in 2010, built a leading New York based US fixed income broker dealer with over $10 billion of assets, sold to Bank of Montreal for over $400 million; and

(iii) Alignvest Student Housing, founded in 2018, building Canada’s largest owner-operator of purpose-built student accommodations currently with over 4,750 beds and over $850 million of asset value.

Alignvest has in excess of $150 million of permanent partner capital, which allows it to take a long-term investment outlook and be fully aligned with its investment partners. Alongside its own capital, Alignvest has invested over $2 billion from ultra high net worth and institutional investors in a concentrated group of businesses.

Previously, Reza co-founded, built and managed StorageNow, a leading self storage company that was founded in 2003 and sold to InStorage REIT in 2007 for $110 million and SupplierMarket, a supply chain software company, that was founded in 1998 and sold to Ariba in 2000 for $925 million.

In 2010, Reza founded NEXT Canada, an intensive 9-month philanthropic entrepreneurship program that provides education, mentorship, and start-up funding to promising entrepreneurs. Reza is the Chairman of NEXT and teaches the core entrepreneurship course at NEXT. NEXT has launched serval programs including NEXT 36, NEXT AI, NEXT Founders and NEXT IPO. NEXT now has an alumni base of over 1,000 entrepreneurs that have launched over 250 ventures, raised over $2.5 billion of equity capital and created over 7,500 jobs. From 2003 to 2010, Reza was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto, where he created and taught a fully accredited course, The Economics of Entrepreneurship. All of Reza’s teaching activities at University of Toronto and at NEXT have been done on a voluntary basis.

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, 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 serves on the Board of Directors of Sagicor Financial Corporation, a public life insurance company, as well as several privately held corporations.  He also serves on several non-profit boards including Strategic Advisor to the Creative Destruction Lab. Reza has received “Canada’s Top 40 Under 40” Award and the Management Achievement Award from McGill University. He was also the Co-Chair of his HBS Class of 1996 20th Year Reunion

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

Cases and Teaching Materials

• 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. View Details
• 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.) View Details

Additional Information

• Reza Satchu LinkedIn