CEO Letter
My interest in finance and analytics began at an early age. Growing up in my small town in Texas and making a trek to the local mall’s food court, I recall counting stacks of brightly colored trays left behind by diners to gauge the performance of the various restaurants and inform the critical decision of where to eat lunch.
This is a simplistic example, of course, but it illustrates how I have approached decision-making throughout my life. I have never been a person who cuts corners. When presented with a problem or initiative, I do a complete analysis, forecast multiple potential outcomes, and consider secondary and tertiary effects before moving forward with a carefully crafted plan. This is what our firm does best: we use proven techniques and technology to solve complex business problems and develop a plan of action for our clients. We are on a mission to do this better than anyone else while having fun and finding fulfillment.
For nearly two decades, finance has been my life, spanning a variety of financial domains, including corporate finance, venture capital, operational finance, business intelligence, strategic finance, FP&A, ERP implementation, investor relations, SEC financial reporting, technical accounting, M&A, asset management, and equity research.
Before founding Blue Eddy, I held multiple senior leadership positions, including serving as the Chief Investment Officer at Gemini Hotel Group (“Gemini”), a private equity fund that invests in limited-service hotels across the nation, and VP of Investment Sales at Realty Income Corporation, the nation’s largest publicly traded net lease REIT. On the transactional side, I have led or participated in over $4 billion of closed commercial real estate deals across multiple property types, including hotel, office, life science, and retail. Moreover, my capital markets experience encompasses over $7 billion of transactions, including corporate recapitalizations, secured/unsecured financings, and securitizations.
Before Gemini, I held the title of Director of Finance at BioMed Realty, one of the world's largest owners of life science real estate. When I began my tenure there in 2012, BioMed was a publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). In 2015, the company was acquired and privatized by The Blackstone Group in an $8 billion transaction. My experience at BioMed was unique because it allowed me to hone my strategic finance skills from a public and private company perspective.
When BioMed was a publicly traded company, I oversaw the preparation of the company's internal corporate valuation model and earnings forecast, which were the tools we used to analyze potential corporate transactions and establish quarterly GAAP earnings guidance (communicated to Wall Street). Additionally, I participated in various capital markets activities during this time, including preparation of rating agency presentations and analysis to support secured/unsecured debt financings and equity issuances. My role required coordination with each functional area of accounting and provided an opportunity to become intimately familiar with GAAP accounting rules. Over the years, I have discovered that the accounting experience I gained at BioMed has translated well to other industries with recurring revenue structures. For example, the GAAP accounting rules for recording real estate lease revenue are similar to those applied for subscription-based (e.g., early-stage technology / SaaS) and royalty-based businesses (e.g., media & entertainment). When BioMed went private, I continued to lead the FP&A function while overseeing finance and analytics for the company's venture capital subsidiary, BioMed Ventures (~$200 million AUM). During this time, I was directly involved in transforming BioMed's core analytical infrastructure to integrate with Blackstone's platform, transitioning from a primarily a GAAP-based environment to cash-based and "modified" GAAP methodologies.
The technical skills I acquired early in my career provided a foundation that has proven to translate well across different companies and industries. After graduating from Cornell University, my first job was in the Operational Finance department at HEI Hotels & Resorts, where I learned how to build and support ERP systems and create business intelligence tools. After HEI, I was recruited by Sunstone Hotel Investors, a publicly traded hotel REIT, to build an internal business intelligence platform from the ground up using Hyperion Essbase (Oracle’s ERP product). Sunstone was pleased with the ultimate product and promoted me to an M&A role (Manager, Corporate Transactions). This was during the 2008/2009 financial crisis when Sunstone's Corporate Transactions team had only three members due to internal layoffs (me, a VP, and an analyst). Sunstone raised $400mm of equity to target distressed acquisitions, and our young, 3-person Corporate Transactions team was given the incredible opportunity to source, underwrite, and negotiate deals. The hands-on experience I gained during this period set me on a course to take increasingly more transactional roles later in my career.
Throughout my career, I have pursued knowledge to ensure I am oriented to the ethical and technical underpinnings of the industries and roles I work in. To illustrate, as an equity research analyst at Green Street Advisors, I was afforded the incredible opportunity to learn the tools of the trade from true thought leaders in sell-side equity research, but I found that my role required a higher degree of corporate finance skills than I had at the time, which led me to begin the rigorous process of obtaining the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, which I completed in 2014. Similarly, at BioMed, I was responsible for leading a team, but I recognized that the skills that had gotten me to that point in my career were not the same skills that would enable me to continue to grow as a leader, which led me to pursue my MBA from Wharton, completing the program in May 2019.
Reflecting on my journey to date, I am very grateful for the people who have helped me along the way. And at Blue Eddy, I am thrilled to be able to teach and mentor a new generation of finance leaders. One of my favorite Abraham Lincoln quotes is, “I will prepare, and someday my chance will come.” Our chance has arrived at Blue Eddy, and I could not be more excited about the future.
Sincerely,
Brian Nudd
