Michael Sidgmore

Over the past 12 years, I’ve been lucky enough to have a front row seat as the alternative investment space has evolved from its roots in peer-to-peer lending (Lending Club) to trading cards (Alt) and collectibles (Rally Rd). How far we’ve come in just 12 short years.

I’m a Co-Founder and Partner at Broadhaven Ventures, an early-stage FinTech VC that has been early investors in Carta, MoneyLion, Republic, Nowports, Covalto (fka Credijusto), Kovi, Liveoak (acq. by DocuSign), 73 Strings, AltExchange (acq. by iCapital), Cantilever, LemonEdge, Alt, Bitso, Allocate, bunch, Brassica (acq. by BitGo), CoinList, Shakepay, DealsPlus, and more.

Broadhaven Ventures is affiliated with Broadhaven Capital Partners, a market leading FinTech investment bank that has advised on over $90 billion in transaction volume, including a number of landmark deals in trading and technology (ICE, CBOE, BATS), asset management (Franklin Templeton / Legg Mason $6.6B merger, Franklin Templeton’s $1.75B acquisition of Lexington Partners), and alternative investments (Cambridge Associates, Wilshire Associates, Angelo Gordon’s sales).

I am the founder of podcasting and content platform Alt Goes Mainstream, a content platform that delivers the latest developments in the alternative investments space. There is everything from a weekly newsletter on private markets, long-form thought posts to podcasts with industry leaders to keep everyone up to speed with the latest trends in alternative investments.

I am a frequent contributor to Citywire, the premier publication covering global asset management.

I’ve been an early investor in some of the online investment platforms, like iCapital, Republic, Forge (IPO), 73 Strings, Alt, CoinList, Allocate, Sorare, bunch, Brassica (acq. by BitGo), AltExchange (acq. by iCapital), Passthrough, Caplight, Capchase, Syndicate, DealsPlus, GP stakes firm Cantilever and others that are enabling alternatives to go mainstream.

I’ve been an operator as an early employee at two online investment platforms that have pioneered access to alternative investments.I was the first sales hire at Oakland-based Mosaic, a Warburg Pincus-backed company that has raised over $300 million in equity, which enabled retail investors to invest into home solar loans and has originated over $14B in home solar loans since inception.

Then, I moved to New York City and was pre-product, employee #9 at iCapital Network, where I helped build their investor network / sales team from a blank sheet of paper. At iCapital, we built a platform that has enabled the HNW community to access alternative investment funds at low minimums. We grew the platform to almost $3 billion in AUM in under 3 years before BlackRock invested into the company. iCapital is now the critical industry infrastructure for banks and wealth managers to access alternative investment funds, enabling over $200 billion in AUM to flow into private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds, and has raised over $700 million in equity from leading investors like BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, WestCap, Ping An, Carlyle, and others.

I started my career as an investor at Goldman Sachs on their Principal Strategic Investments team, investing into FinTech and capital markets infrastructure, which has helped shape my view that alts are the next asset class to undergo a market structure evolution as equities and fixed income have done in the past.