Dynamic, Functional Capital

Scott Bluestein is the Chief Executive Officer​ and Chief Investment Officer for Hercules Capital. He is responsible for the company’s lending policies and risk management practices related to its loan and investment portfolio.

Scott joined Hercules in 2010 as chief credit officer and brings more than 24 years of financial services, direct investment and credit experience to Hercules. Most recently, he served as founder and partner of Century Tree Capital Management, a fund established to make senior secured debt investments with warrants and equity co-investments in small and micro-cap public and private companies.

Prior to that, he was managing director at Laurus - Valens Capital Management, where he had responsibility for a structured debt with equity investment portfolio, including new investments, portfolio management, and restructurings. Previously, Scott worked at UBS Investment Bank, where he was a member of the Financial Technology Coverage Group.

Scott received his B.B.A. in Finance from Emory University.

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Catherine is a Senior Managing Director at Hercules and leads origination, venture relationships, and business development for the fund's Technology and Sustainable/Renewable Groups. Catherine’s investments include AppDirect, Arctic Wolf, C2FO, Couchbase, Fastly, Impossible Foods, Pivot Bio, Postmates, SingleStore, SeatGeek, Thumbtack, Udacity, Varsity Tutors, Wrike (acquired by Vista), and others. Before joining Hercules, Catherine spent over 10 years in senior operational roles within startup companies, including sales, business development, research and product management. At Cleantech Group, Catherine ran the company’s data business, where she lead the product, engineering, research and sales teams. Prior to Cleantech Group, Jhung was the Director of Sales at edo Interactive. Prior to edo Interactive, Catherine spent over five years on the executive team at Equilar, the leading research firm for benchmarking executive and board compensation. There, she built and managed the business development and client services divisions from the ground up, growing the business to over 600 clients. Catherine received an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, a BS in Agricultural Economics and a minor in Computer Information Systems from UC Davis.

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Lesya Kulchenko is a Managing Director at Hercules Capital with over 17 years of structured finance and investment experience.

Prior to joining Hercules in 2012, Lesya worked with two early stage venture capital firms: Nourish Capital, a start-up fund in San Francisco focused on investing in early stage consumer retail businesses, and Hopewell Ventures, an equity fund in Chicago primarily focused on high-growth businesses across a broad range of industries in the Midwest.

Prior to that, Lesya worked as a Corporate Credit Monitoring Manager for Raiffeisen Bank Ukraine, a subsidiary of Raiffeisen Zentralbank Austria. She began her career in product management at Rockwell Automation.

Lesya received a B.S. in Computer Engineering with a Mathematics minor from Marquette University. She was a recipient of a full international scholarship sponsored by the United States Information Agency/Freedom Support Act program.

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