We waited months and now the wait is over…!
Please welcome Jonathon George to the investment team at Flare Capital Partners. To his family, friends, colleagues, well, everyone, he is known as “JG.” As we invest our most recent fund, we will continue to add more depth to the core investment team and could not be more delighted that JG has been joined as a Senior Associate.
It goes without saying that he has an impressive academic career (Penn State University, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University), but it was his obsession with healthcare and commitment to play an important role in the transformation of this industry that convinced us that he was going to be a terrific add. After two years as a strategy consultant at Strategy& (part of PwC) and three years at The Chartis Group, JG developed a keen perspective on the trends impacting healthcare. While earning his MBA, he juggled a handful of investment internships so joins us with another set of relevant experiences. Notably, he was also a Flare Scholar in the great Class of 2022, bringing us to five former Flare Scholar alums on the team.
Of course, what so impressed us about JG was both the quality of his analysis and the depth of his understanding of industry fundamentals, but also how grounded he is. Born in Akron and growing up in Pittsburgh imparted an earnestness and sincerity that is a wonderful attribute to have and will cause entrepreneurs to seek him out as a valued and trusted partner. His father’s family is from Lebanon, making JG fully 50% Lebanese, so he is also worldly beyond his years.
Importantly, JG is an all-around great guy. When we first met, I was surprised to learn that he is on a pursuit – seriously – to find the best chicken wings and chicken sandwiches in the entire United States. While we do not expect that this will be a meaningful distraction for him, we are super excited to see his contributions to the firm over many years to come.
Quick update on our Flare Scholars program and Flare Scholar Ventures (FSV), two of our more successful initiatives. With 316 Flare Scholars, who are young brilliant passionate emerging healthcare technology entrepreneurs and investors, we launched FSV, which is our commitment to invest a portion of each fund in pre-seed rounds of Flare Scholar sponsored projects. At this point, we now have 17 FSV companies, exceeding our initial goal – and a handful of those companies have already graduated by raising proper seed or Series A rounds (in total our FSV companies have raised nearly $70 million). The progress of the FSV program is inspirational as we continue to on-board the next generation of great healthcare technology entrepreneurs.
As we look to recruit the Class of 2024 Flare Scholars this fall, we could not be more impressed with the quality of all our Flare Scholars, but particularly the exceptional Class of 2023. Capital will always follow great talent and in this market, it will be great talent that wins.
And please join us for our next quarterly Expert Roundtable Series webinar on September 12, 2023 at noon EST.
On the Flying Bridge 