"Keep the blanket around you. You'll not fish without eating while I'm alive."Manolin, The Old Man and the Sea
We named our firm after a character in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.
Manolin is the young fisherman in the story — loyal and steadfast in his belief in Santiago, the old man. Santiago hasn't caught a fish in eighty-four days, and the village has written him off. It never once occurs to Manolin to do the same. He understands something that most people take a lifetime to learn: results come and go. What holds is finding your people, sticking with them, and building something together.
When we invest in a business, we are making a long-term pledge — to the founders who built it, the employees who run it, the customers who count on it, and the investors who have trusted us. That pledge, in practice, means bringing genuine attention to what has been built — working side-by-side through the hard stretches, for as long as we are partners.
Small private businesses drew us in for a simple reason: they are almost always built by someone who gave a significant portion of their working life to something they genuinely cared about. That is worth paying attention to.
Prior to co-founding MIG, Gerald spent nearly two decades in investing — starting in private equity at Wind Point Partners, then moving into the public markets at BlackRock and GoldenTree Asset Management, where he held senior roles as a research analyst.
Gerald is drawn to businesses that teach him something — about an industry, a market, or how some corner of the economy actually works. He is particularly drawn to businesses that the market has underestimated — companies doing unglamorous work whose best days, by his read, are still ahead of them. At MIG, Gerald is most in his element in the investment analytics — assessing risk and tracking where industries are heading. He graduated summa cum laude from Tulane and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Prior to co-founding MIG, Mike built his career across investing, operating, and company building. He led direct investing for Meg Whitman's family office, was a private equity investor at Parthenon Capital, and began his career in the Mergers & Strategic Advisory Group at Goldman Sachs.
As an operator, Mike has held multiple C-suite roles at early and growth-stage companies and has advised over a dozen businesses on corporate development. He was also the founder and CEO of Taste Trunk, a food subscription marketplace he built from the ground up.
At MIG, Mike is most in his element working directly with management teams — getting into the operational details and finding ways to build long-term value. He graduated from Williams College and received an MBA from UC Berkeley.