Team
Alec Machiels
Alec is a Managing Partner at CoLift. He was a Partner at Pegasus Capital Advisors, L.P., a private equity fund manager with approximately $2bn in assets under management. Alec was a member of the firm’s executive and investment committees. He has over 20 years of private equity investing and investment banking experience. Previously, Alec was a financial analyst in investment banking and private equity at Goldman Sachs.
Investments in which he has been highly involved include Pure Biofuels del Peru, Molycorp Minerals, Traxys, Slipstream Communications, Coffeyville Resources, and Merisant Company. He also co-founded Potentia Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (sold to Apellis), Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASD:APLS), Revon (sold to Zyus Life Sciences, Inc.), and Liberate Medical. He serves as a board member of Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He will join the Traxys Group board upon closing.
He also served as a member of the board of trustees of the American Federation of Arts, where he chaired the endowment committee. Alec is a graduate of Harvard Business School, KU Leuven Law School in Belgium, and Konstanz University in Germany.
Martin de Crane
Martin is a Partner at CoLift. Prior to that, he was in the Energy Investment Banking Group at Morgan Stanley in London. Previously, Martin was an analyst at Pegasus Capital Advisors. He also helped turn around Pure Biofuels, a fuel import terminal in Lima, Peru and Pegasus portfolio company that increased its EBITDA from $(2)m to $42m before its sale at record industry multiples to Valero.
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He is also involved with Loft3Di – a company that creates 3D assets for the largest e-commerce platforms – and MCE Social Capital – a non-for-profit impact investing firm. Martin is a graduate of Vlerick Business School in Belgium and Maastricht University in the Netherlands
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Martin has experience in Energy, Industrials, TMT, and Business Services
