Spears raises capital
Spears is one of the founders of Legacy Equity Advisors, a boutique private equity fund-of-fund and co-invest advisory firm offering commingled, separate account and customized private equity vehicles to a broad range of institutional investors including: sovereign wealth funds, public pensions, Fortune 500 pensions, labor union pensions, native American sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and commercial banks.
One of the 12th annual 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology, he's seeking to follow in the footsteps of the late Dr. Frank Greene, founder of the first black publicly traded technology company, Technology Development Corp. in 1979 and later managing partner of New Vista Capital, a venture capital fund which raised $80 million in several rounds to fund minority and women-owned tech firms.
Another Silicon Valley pioneer, Roy Clay Sr., still active as chairman of Rod-L Electronics, helped start the phenomenon of venture capital in the 1970s as a consultant to Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers for such early IPOs as Tandem Computers and Intel.
One of the workshops during Innovation & Equity 2012: Capitalizing Creativity: Job Creation and Innovation on Sunday, Jan. 15 will address generating investment capital for the growing portfolio of African-American technology patents and other discoveries.
Other venture capitalists active in the field include Lisa M. Lambert, vice president for software and services at Intel Capital, Robert Smith, founder and chairman of Vista Equity Partners and Phil Bronner, a partner in the Washington, D.C. area firm of Novak Biddle.
June Riley, founder of the VC Task Force in Palo Alto for the past ten years, is one of the most knowledgable experts on the field, having recently held a large gathering in Silicon Valley with the leading lights in the field.
During the past two years, a Catapult Innovation Showcase has toured the country following the Innovation & Equity symposiums to attract patent holders and other researchers with products which can attract investments from venture capitalists and angel investors.
Over a 22 year career, Spears has worked on over 100 transactions and investments that range from $1.0 million to well over $10 billion in size. He has led the due diligence effort on over 50 fund and co-investment opportunities and he has generated top quartile performance on behalf of his clients.
Prior to Legacy, Keith was a Vice President and co-managed Hamilton Lane’s Golden State Investment Fund, a $550 million private equity separate account fund-of-fund/co-investment fund managed exclusively on behalf of CalPERS, the largestU.S. public pension.
With over $80 billion of private equity assets under advisement, Hamilton Lane is one of the largest private equity fund-of-fund/co-investment advisory firms in the U.S. Spears was part of the fund Investment and co-investment teams at Hamilton Lane and also sourced secondary transaction opportunities.
Prior to Hamilton Lane, Spears was a general partner in an emerging manager fund-of-funds firm established in partnership with WestLB private equity group, which raised $125 million. Keith is also a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse First Boston. Keith received his JD from Yale in corporate law; an MBA from Stanford Business School in corporate finance and his BA from Brown University in economics and urban studies.
