Jeremy Hogue, 28, Is OC Point Man for Billion-Dollar Fund Firm
At 28, Newport Beach venture capitalist Jeremy Hogue is ahead of the curve.
After studying business at the University of Southern California, starting his own company and then getting a law degree from Harvard University, Hogue now runs the West Coast office of the Audax Group, a Boston- based venture capital and investment firm.
“I have a ball,” Hogue said. “I work a lot, but I love every hour of it.”
Geoffrey Rehnert and Marc Wolpow,two senior partners at Boston-based Bain Capital Inc.,broke away to form Audax in early 1999. To get the operation rolling, the duo raised $50 million in operating capital. In the past two years, the firm has raised about $1 billion for investments.
The Audax Group runs a $500 million private equity and buyout fund. There’s also a $75 million venture capital fund that the partners are looking to expand by $125 million. And the firm has raised about half of a $500 million mezzanine fund, which is set to close this summer. Audax also is considering a hedge fund and a debt-financing fund, Hogue said.
The firm hasn’t invested in any OC companies, but Hogue said he’s focused on venture financing for technology companies. He said he’s also on the lookout for other types of deals.
“We are already seeing opportunities for buyouts and mezzanine financings,” he said.
Audax has invested in Los Angeles-based Rampt Inc., which is working on broadband delivery products, San Francisco-based digital photography site Snapfish.com Corp. and Santa Monica-based movie and TV producer Artisan Entertainment.
While many venture capitalists have decades of 16-hours days, red-eye flights and blown deals scribed into their 40-year-old-plus faces, Hogue is youthful and poised. But he said he’s just as busy as his more seasoned counterparts.
“I get bored easily,” Hogue said. “I do something every hour I am awake.”
The Audax Group founders tapped Hogue,one of the firm’s first employees,in their search for dealmakers who could act like entrepreneurs.
Hogue already had raised money for his own company, a sports newspaper publisher. He also had worked as a money finder and consultant.
“I just wasn’t a guy who was going to work for somebody else,” he said.
Hogue got his start in venture capital as a student in the Entrepreneur Program at USC. After graduating from the program, Hogue enrolled at the Marshall School of Business. Two-thirds of the way through, he quit to put into practice what had been learned. He left the MBA program and started his sports newspaper.
“The whole point of the degree is leveraging the experience to do things outside of the academic environment,” he said. “A lot of guys go through the program just to get hired by someone else.”
But Hogue ended up going back to school to get a law degree at Harvard. Hogue kept doing deals while at school. Some friends wanted to start a business-to-business Internet produce company, and Hogue ended up writing the business plan for what is today Irvine-based Buyproduce, an electronic service provider for produce companies that last week announced it’s buying Orlando, Fla.-based Kirkey & Associates Inc.
In another deal, he helped a Texas real estate firm find financing for a high-rise office building in Fort Worth. He also put together financing for Oklahoma City-based Surgery Centers of America, a national management firm for surgery centers.
During his time at Harvard, Hogue raised $40 million for seven different companies, allowing him to cut his teeth in private equity financing and structuring companies. He also worked for a corporate law firm and on Wall Street for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Hogue’s name eventually got passed to the Audax founders from a fellow Trojan at Goldman, Sachs & Co. Hogue said he jumped at the chance to join the firm.
After spending about a year working at Audax’s Boston headquarters, Hogue convinced Rehnert and Wolpow to start operations on the West Coast. Hogue wanted to take advantage of his familiarity with the region and tap regional companies.
“Southern California is the most entrepreneurial place in the country, but traditionally there have been a lot of small guys like T-shirt businesses,” Hogue said. “We are getting to a point where Southern California is spawning billion-dollar ideas, not T-shirt guys. The more that happens, the more money that comes here.”
Despite the recent stumble on Wall Street, the amount of money getting pushed into venture capital, mezzanine, buyout and debt funds has been increasing steadily over the past 10 years.
According to Wellesley, Mass.-based Asset Alternatives Inc., capital raised for corporate use, venture capital and other private equity hit $154.2 billion last year, up from $97.3 billion in 1999. In 1990, the figure was $8.2 billion.
“There is more and more money going into alternative assets,” Hogue said. “Pension funds are growing and international money is coming in. New entrants are having difficulties because more money is chasing fewer deals.” n
