Osei Van Horne and Matthew Raubacher have been managing directors for Wells Fargo Strategic Capital Technology Division (WFSC), financial services firm Wells Fargo’s corporate venture capital (CVC) vehicle, since mid-2017.
WFSC is a multi-strategy, principal investment vehicle focused on providing equity to technology companies. The unit invests capital directly from Wells Fargo’s $1.9 trillion balance sheet, pursuing transactions across sub-sectors including cybersecurity, consumer, software, restaurant technology, internet, internet of things, mobile, financial technology, hardware, logistics and property technology.
Raubacher and Van Horne said they were attracted by CVC because of the potential to provide meaningful, differentiated value-add to portfolio companies through the parent company’s ecosystem and resources. CVC also has the flexibility beyond a traditional fund structure and the opportunity to experience first-hand how innovative, high growth companies are transforming legacy industries and business models.
Van Horne was an investor at Goldman Sachs’s merchant banking division where he executed equity and mezzanine transactions from a $1bn on-balance, multi-strategy growth capital fund. Before Goldman Sachs, Van Horne was a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) investment banker at Wells Fargo where he was responsible for executing transactions in business services and technology industries. Prior to this role, he worked in the US Senate for senator John McCain.
Van Horne served as an adjunct professor at New York University where he taught VC and M&A courses. He has published several works concerning private equity process optimisation including Impact of Group-Buying Models on Small Business Purchasing: Pilot Research Analysis in early 2013 issue of Institutional Investor Journals – Journal of Private Equity.
Raubacher, on the other hand, was a managing director at VC firm TriplePoint Capital where he worked across technology, evaluating and executing venture debt and equity investment opportunities. In addition, he led the software investment banking efforts at Cowen and Company and the application software investment banking efforts at Thomas Weisel Partners, as well as working as a managing director at Ridgecrest Capital Partners. His career in finance has also included working in the investment banking divisions of Lehman Brothers and Salomon Smith Barney.
Raubacher holds a bachelor in industrial management with honours from Carnegie Mellon University and an MSIA (quantitative MBA) from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. Van Horne graduated from Howard University with a bachelor in biology.
