Blackstone Seeks Silicon Valley Startups

The Blackstone Group—one of the world’s largest private equity firms—is known for a lot of things, most notably headline-grabbing buyouts and tens of billions of dollars under management. But recently, the New York-based company made the unusual move of hosting a Tech Forum in Northern California's Silicon Valley for the first time, an event intended to match up start-ups, investors, and industry experts. Blackstone Senior Managing Director Ivan Brockman, who is based in Menlo Park with a team of about 12 people, spoke to me about his company’s growing interest in advising tech startups. (Answers are condensed for brevity.)

Portfolio.com: Blackstone isn’t necessarily known for advising tech companies.

Ivan Brockman: We’re trying to change that. We’re not as well known for our advisory business, and certainly not technology.

So why are you interested?

We think this is an area where we’re going to see a lot of consolidation—we want to work with great companies buying other companies or selling to other companies.

In a blog post about Blackstone’s Tech Forum held last week, you wrote that the firm’s advisory group wants to work with “emerging disrupters.” Who are they?

I don’t know that there is one good definition of an emerging disrupter—the companies that are disrupting the status quo are those that are tackling current problems in a new way. Given the situation today, sometimes those emerging disrupters aren’t creating the market; they’re making it better.

Would holding a tech conference be any indication that you’re looking to expand in the Silicon Valley?

I think it will be up to my team and I to perform well to justify a larger presence. My hope is we’ll be expanding, but it’s not on the horizon.

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Kirsten Grind covers venture capital, private equity and money matters for Portfolio.com.