Team

Nick Smith

Nick is the founder and Managing Partner of Rice Park Capital Management LP. Prior to founding Rice Park, Nick was the Chief Investment Officer for Blackstone’s residential mortgage REIT and the founding executive and President of Incenter (Blackstone portfolio company), a technology-enabled provider of transactional and capital markets services to the financial services market. Prior to Blackstone, Nick served as Managing Director, Two Harbors Investment Corp (NYSE: TWO) where he built and led the investment platform for MSR and residential whole loans. Prior to TWO, Nick was Chief Investment Officer for Green Tree Investment Management (“GTIM”) where he was responsible for the residential mortgage investment platform. He was also the senior portfolio manager for a $1.45 billion private investment fund co-managed by GTIM.

Shawn Kelly

Shawn is the COO of Rice Park Capital Management LP.  Prior to joining Rice Park, Shawn served as Managing Director, Residential Mortgage Operations at Two Harbors Investment Corp (NYSE: TWO) where he built and led the operational and oversight functions that supported the multi-channel acquisition and management of over $2.0 billion in market value of mortgage servicing rights.  Prior to TWO, Shawn served as Director of Servicing Operations at Wilshire/Merrill Lynch and later (post acquisition) Seterus/IBM (NYSE: IBM).  In addition to these roles, Shawn has held several roles operating at the nexus of capital markets, finance, operations and technology at GMAC-ResCap and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Jason Deleeuw

Jason is a Managing Director, Investments of Rice Park Capital Management LP. Jason has over 13 years of experience in the financial technology and real estate technology sectors. Prior to joining Rice Park, Jason was Vice President and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Jaffray covering financial technology and real estate technology. Jason was the Thomson Reuters #1 earnings estimator for IT Services in 2016 and 2018. Before Piper Jaffray, Jason was a key member of the investment team at Pine River Capital where he focused on financial technology, real estate technology and specialty finance investments. Prior to Pine River, Jason was a Research Analyst at Piper Jaffray.

Senior Advisors

Brad Farrell

Finance and Operations

CFO, Castlelake, L.P. is a global private investment firm managing private funds with approximately $15.3 billion (start date December 1, 2019).
CFO and Treasurer, Two Harbors Investment Corp (NYSE: TWO)
Served in various leadership roles at GMAC ResCap, XL Capital and KPMG.

Gene Ross

Residential Mortgage Services

Served 25 years as President of LoanCare, a ServiceLink company where he led LoanCare to be one of the largest servicers in the nation.
ServiceLink is a provider of technology-enabled services to the mortgage and finance industries.

Damien Elias

Student Lending Technlogy

Founder of Campus Door, one of the nation’s largest private student lending technology platforms.
Campus Door was sold to a subsidiary of the Blackstone Group.
Investor and advisor to a variety of technology start-up’s in the U.S. and Europe.

Brian Bispala

Software Entrepreneur

Co-founded Code42 Software in 2001 and, as VP of Engineering, helped grow the company over eleven years until it raised over $135 million in venture capital.
Began his career at Accenture and most recently co-founded Rambl, a seed-funded voice AI sales solution.
Served on the board of directors of Foodsby since 2015 and is an active technology angel investor.

RPC Ventures Portfolio