Oliver Swig, 29
Co-founder and managing partner at SOJA Ventures
Oliver Swig started SOJA Ventures, a Manhattan-based family office and alternative investment firm, in the fourth quarter of 2021.
“We invest venture debt and equity in technology-focused growth companies,” said Swig. “Our team encompasses a combination of experienced growth advisers, and we specialize in lower-middle-market structured debt, alternative credit financings and equity investments.”
Swig already had a wealth of real estate knowledge due to his family background. His father is Kent Swig, owner or co-owner of Swig Equities, Terra Holdings, Helmsley Spear and more. His maternal grandfather is the developer and owner Harry Macklowe. But before delving into a real estate career, the younger Swig took a detour after graduating from Brown to work for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“I was on her personal team in the tri-state finance department, which was the most successful fundraising office for a U.S. presidential campaign in history. I think we raised over a billion dollars in four months, and that’s mostly out of the Northeast,” said Swig.
After then working for several family-related businesses, Swig saw opportunity in the disruption that COVID-19 caused.
“We found a couple of opportunistic investments that have done very well since we launched,” said Swig. “One of them is HR tech space Job.com. When we started working with them, they were about a $5 million top-line revenue company, just EBITDA-positive. In the past three years of working with them, they’re north of $120 million in revenue and 10 to 12 percent EBITDA-positive.”
SOJA has scaled up quickly since then. A recent acquisition of the intellectual property and investor base portfolio of Singapore’s Falcon Capital brought the company’s assets under management to about $500 million.
Swig is currently continuing to scale, using the increase in capital from the Falcon acquisition to operate as a more traditional debt fund, and looking toward an IPO for one of his portfolio companies by the beginning of 2025.
“We have an investor base of over 2,000 investors internationally,” said Swig. “To leverage them to complement our domestic strategy and accelerate the growth of our portfolio companies is very exciting.”
