Lawrence ("Larry") F. Levy
Managing Partner, Levy Family Partners; Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Levy Restaurants; and Chairman, Del Taco Restaurants, Inc., joining from Chicago, Ill.
Larry is a serial entrepreneur who brings his value-added approach to his many various endeavors, developments, investments and philanthropy.
Levy Restaurants - Founded in 1978, Larry built Levy Restaurants from a single delicatessen in Chicago into an internationally recognized specialized food service organization with the market leading share of sports and entertainment catering throughout North America and Europe and a network of acclaimed restaurants. Levy Restaurants disrupted sports concessions by providing restaurant quality dining and hospitality in sports and entertainment venues. From its initial start of catering the skyboxes for the Chicago White Sox Comiskey Park in 1982, the company grew to become the full food service restaurateur for more than 100 sports and entertainment venues across the globe including stadiums and arenas for all major sports leagues, convention facilities, and music/performance venues. Throughout the company’s 40 year history, Levy Restaurants has hosted and continues to cater marquee events such as the Kentucky Derby, Major League Baseball’s World Series, the All-Star Games of MLB, NHL & NBA, NFL’s Super Bowl, the GRAMMY Awards and the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament. Larry sold Levy Restaurants to the Compass Group of London in 2006, but remains Chairman Emeritus.
Levy Family Partners (LFP) - Larry and two of his sons, Managing Partners Ari Levy and Steven Florsheim, manage LFP’s portfolio of operating businesses, real estate and other investments. LFP owns significant stakes in the Esperanza Resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, a portfolio of real estate assets, Del Taco Restaurants Inc. (NASDAQ:TACO), and Blaze Fast-Fire’d Pizza. The private equity and venture holdings of LFP have included investments in a diverse set of private companies, including, Intensity Therapeutics, Cleversafe, Base, Home Depot Supply, Lakeview Investment Group, Nest, Organic Life, Peloton, Signal, Space X, Swipesense, Sunbit, Apervita and Salesforce Tower Chicago.
Real Estate – Larry has had a simultaneous career in real estate development and investment. Major projects have included the recently completed River Point, a 1.1 million square foot office building in partnership with Hines and Ivanhoe Cambridge; Chicago Mercantile Exchange Center; One South Dearborn, in partnership with Hines; One Magnificent Mile; and Woodfield Lake Office Campus and the redevelopment of 321 North Clark. In all more than 10 million square feet developed. In addition, LFP has interests in Diversified Real Estate Capital, Waypoint Residential and RedHill Realty Investors, all sponsors of multiple real estate projects. Diversified is the co-sponsor of the Cresset + Diversified QOZ Fund which has provided equity for major real estate projects.
Awards and Recognition - IFMA Gold Plate Award as Restaurateur of the Year in the United States; the Ivy Award, the restaurant industry’s Academy Award, for Spiaggia, Bistro 110 and Levy Restaurants. Larry and his wife Carol created and endowed the Levy Institute of Entrepreneurial Practice and the Levy Social Entrepreneur Lab at Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. 2001 Ernst & Young’s Master Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Sports Business Journal winner of the 2017 Champion of Sports Award.
Boards – The Art Institute of Chicago, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Lincoln Park Zoo, Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Northwestern University. Larry previously served as Chairman of the Chicago Chapter of the Young Presidents Organization and the Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee.
Larry received his B.S. and M.B.A. at Northwestern University.
Leonard Batterson
Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, VCapital Management, based in Chicago, Ill.
Leonard (“Len”) is a veteran venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has invested in and founded many venture-backed entrepreneurial companies and venture capital investment organizations since 1982. He is currently Chairman and CEO of Batterson Venture Capital, LLC (“BVC”), headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
Previously, Len was the Managing General Partner of Batterson, Johnson & Wang LP, one of the first private venture capital firms in Illinois focused on early-stage high technology and life sciences companies. He was also an early or founding investor in other major venture capital and private equity firms including Advent International, APAX, Athena SA, M/C Partners and U.S. Venture Partners. Earlier in his career as a venture capitalist, Len specialized in the turnaround and revitalization of entrepreneurial companies as Principal of Leonard Batterson Associates.
From 1985 to 1987, Len was the Director of the Venture Capital Division of Allstate Insurance Company, one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most successful venture capital operations. There, Len played an integral role in the financing and restructuring of Control Video Corporation, which became America Online, Inc. He also sourced and introduced Allscripts to the venture capital industry while at Allstate.
Len has since been a founding or early investor in a number of successful entrepreneurial companies, including Cleversafe, CyberSource, Beyond.com, Atlantic American Cablevision, Health Magazine (subsequently acquired by AOL/Time Warner), Illinois Superconductor Corporation (OTC: ISCO), and Nanophase Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: NANX). AOL, Allscripts, and Cybersource have all become $1 billion+ valued companies.
Len received his BA from Washington University, a Juris Doctor degree from Washington University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is the author of Raising Venture Capital and the Entrepreneur (Prentice-Hall). As a thought leader on venture capital investing, Len is a frequent speaker and regularly consulted by business reporters.
Len is the co-author of Building Wealth through Venture Capital: A Practical Guide for Investors and the Entrepreneurs They Fund.