BUCK JORDAN

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BUCK JORDAN

Canyon Creek Capital

Santa Monica

Buck Jordan, managing partner at Canyon Creek Capital, says his firm is a “bridge fund” that targets companies between the seed and Series A stages. And one of the portfolio companies he’s excited about is a West L.A. business services firm named Bridg.

Jordan met the founder of Bridg, Amit Jain, in February 2013 and was immediately interested in what he was up to.

“He was just incredibly impressive,” said Jordan. “He’d exited a couple of companies before and is just a really solid operator. He had this vision to attack this really large, underserved market.”

Bridg sells a customer relationship management service. The company provides a portal that allows stores to set up targeted ad campaigns, respond to Yelp reviews and otherwise interact with consumers online.

“I thought it was an interesting product,” said Jordan. “But once I heard more about the metrics of the company, how basically none of their customers ever left, I started to see some pretty incredible potential.”

Jordan made his initial investment in Bridg in April of last year. Not long after, he realized he wanted to make a bigger bet on the business.

“I begged him to let me put some more money in,” he said.

He invested in the company after the business had started earning revenue, but before it had ramped up to the level where Series A investors come calling.

“It was a fortuitous timing thing,” said Jordan. “He was just really starting to scale the company.”

He wouldn’t give specific details about the valuation of Bridg, but said that coming to an agreement wasn’t difficult.

“It wasn’t a long, arduous, painful valuation discussion,” he said.

Jordan’s background research consisted of talking to customers and people Jain had worked with at prior startups. He received the green light from all of them.

When asked about the one defining thing about Bridg that sealed his decision, Jordan paused for a few seconds and thought.

“An outstanding product,” he said.

However, if the product was No. 1, Jain’s skill and integrity as an entrepreneur was 1A, said Jordan. As part of his role as an active investor in Bridg, Jordan connects Jain with people he knows who might be helpful to the company. Jain’s humble personality makes this networking extremely easy.

“Every time I introduce somebody to him it’s like I’m doing the other person a favor,” said Jordan.

He told a story from Jain’s time at MuckerLab, a Santa Monica incubator. While other entrepreneurs gave flashy, attention-grabbing performances at Demo Day as they presented their companies to investors, Jain walked up to the stage, read a 30-second summary of his product and sat back down. The founder and his investor believe the business speaks for itself.

“He’s been pretty under the radar,” said Jordan, “but I believe the potential for this company is enormous.”

– Matt Pressberg

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