Reza Satchu

Early life

Reza Satchu was born in Mombasa, Kenya. He and his parents moved to Toronto when he was seven years old. His family emigrated as part of then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s policy to accept Ismaili immigrants from East Africa.

Satchu’s family settled in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, where his father worked as a real estate agent and his mother worked as a secretary. Satchu graduated high school and then attended McGill University in Montreal. He first intended to become a doctor, something that he described as the “typical Indian family” ambition, but then he changed his major, earning his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1991.

After graduation, Satchu moved to New York City and worked for Merrill Lynch as a financial analyst. He later said he found the position limiting and that he really wanted to be in a situation where he was creating something.

Satchu later entered Harvard Business School and graduated from the school in 1996 with an MBA.

Career

After earning his MBA in 1996, Reza Satchu joined Fenway Partners, ultimately becoming a managing director. The New York-based private equity firm specializes in the acquisitions of underperforming companies.

In 2000, when he was 30 years old, Satchu and his brother Asif Satchu, along with Jon Burgstone, sold SupplierMarket.com, a B2B supply chain software company. The company was purchased by Ariba for $925 million.

In 2003, Satchu co-founded StorageNow, a consumer storage facility chain which became Canada’s second-largest storage company. StorageNow was sold in 2007 for a reported $110 million. In 2010, Satchu co-founded the fixed-income broker-dealer KGS Alpha Capital Markets, which specialized in U.S. mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities. The broker-dealer was later sold to the Bank of Montreal for over $400 million.

Also in 2010, Satchu founded the NEXT 36, an organization that offers promising young entrepreneurs an intensive eight-month program , where they can learn from guest speakers, leading entrepreneurship academics and mentors about how to develop their ideas successfully and launch new businesses.

In 2012, Satchu founded Alignvest Management Corporation, a private investment firm where he currently serves as Managing Partner and controlling shareholder.
In 2016, the NEXT 36 was renamed to NEXT Canada and two additional programs were added: NEXT Founders, which is geared toward later stage startups, and NEXT AI, which is designed for those in the field of artificial intelligence.

Net Worth

Reza Satchu’s exact net worth is not known to the public.

Achievement

• Starting in 2004, he taught an undergraduate course at the University of Toronto called The Economics of Entrepreneurship. He earned no salary as an adjunct professor but chose to award the top students in each class $5,000 scholarships, funded with his own money. This course was widely known as the most popular course at University of Toronto.
• In 2011, McGill University chose Satchu for one of three recipients of their Management Achievement Award, given to decorated alumni who serve as great role models for the students at the school.
• Satchu has been the recipient of both the Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 award and the McGill University’s Annual Leadership Award.
• He is also affiliated with The Satchu Prize. The Satchu Prize is awarded in recognition of outstanding performance in the NEXT Canada program and a demonstrated potential to lead Canada’s next generation of high-impact entrepreneurs. The Satchu Prize has been awarded annually for the past 17 years from 2003 to 2010 by the University of Toronto and from 2010 by NEXT Canada.
• He started teaching at Harvard Business School in 2021 and currently teaches 3 entrepreneurship courses, including The Entrepreneurial Manager, Launching Technology Ventures and Founders Journey.