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 Founder Launch. 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 in excess of $3.5 billion. Concurrently, Reza has taught many entrepreneurship courses and created several entrepreneurship programs at Harvard Business School, University of Toronto and NEXT Canada.

Alignvest is a private investment company, controlled by Reza, that has founded,built, and exited several businesses that have created substantial equity value, including:

(i) Alignvest Student Housing, built Canada’s largest owner-operator of purpose-built housing with over 7,500 beds nationwide, sold to Forum REIFfor $1.7 billion;

(ii) Edgewood Health Network, built a leading national provider of mental health and addiction services, sold to Peloton Capital Management for $200 million);

(iii) KGS Alpha Capital Markets, 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

(iv) StorageNow, built a leading self storage company, sold to InStorage REIT in for $110 million 

Alignvest has in excess of $200 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 $2.5 billion from high net worth and institutional investors in a concentrated group of businesses.

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. In 2010, Reza founded NEXT Canada, an intensive 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 several programs including NEXT 36, NEXT AI, NEXT Founders and NEXT IPO. NEXT now has an alumni base of over 1,200 young founders that have launched over 400 ventures, raised over $3 billion of equity capital and created thousands of jobs. Over the past 20 years, all of Reza’s teaching activities at University of Toronto and at NEXT Canada have been provided by Reza for no compensation and purely as part of his charitable endeavours.

Prior to becoming a founder, 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. 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.