UCG Venture Partners is managed by a veteran team of Investment Professionals with deep domain expertise and a track record of success in numerous ventures. The Team also includes an outstanding group of Advisors from Technology, Real Estate Development & Venture Capital.
Seth Weiner is responsible for deal sourcing and portfolio management. Seth previously worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and most recently, as a portfolio manager at a cleantech private equity firm. Some notable deals he was part of are IPO’s for Brocade Communications, Loud Cloud and UPS, as well as secondary offerings for Ford Motor Corporation, URS, and Accenture. The combined aggregate value of his Morgan deals is $1.2 billion in buy-side/sell-side transactions. At LionChase he achieved a 30% IRR on deals he sourced and managed, focused specifically on clean energy that optimized wind-based power generation and subsequent energy storage.
For the past 15 years Seth has been a featured speaker at global events; such as the silicon valley of the east Conference in Hangzhou, China, and a final panels judge for global cleantech open annual invitation summit competition. He has worked on behalf of international startups, helping them to enter the U.S. marketplace with US MAC a nonprofit business accelerator who work with socially responsible companies.
Seth graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics and political science, as well as a Master of Business Administration from the Lucas school of business. Additionally, he is an active advisor to and has held board seats with a number of silicon valley technology companies, such as Float Cloud, Replicus Research and Isomax Inc.
Michael Gonzalez is responsible for overseeing all construction pre-development and development activities. Michael has a long history in the real estate development sector, starting at a very young age with family-owned real estate development companies. Some of his primary functions are the development of finance proposals, pro formas, feasibility studies, site development, overall construction management, budgets, project supervision, site selection, as well as working with all construction related objectives such as architects, engineers, building departments, zoning, and all other construction-related activities.
Michael has managed multi-million dollar construction projects throughout the U.S. with well over a million square feet of retail/mixed-use construction, residential, retail build out to suit, building from the ground up, and revitalization – community, destination, big box, and mall retail projects, he has been responsible for well over $250 million of commercial and residential construction work.
Michael has been in and around the construction management industry since childhood and has experience in all aspects of construction management from initial planning to finished product. He has spent his entire career finding, valuing, acquiring and developing real estate. Having worked for some of South Florida’s biggest families, he is no stranger to getting the highest quality work completed on time and under budget.