Dynamic, Functional Capital

Manuel is a 30–year veteran of the venture capital and financing community who has devoted his career to helping entrepreneurs and new businesses succeed by providing them with highly responsive, creative and flexible financing solutions.

As an entrepreneur and innovator himself, Manuel understands the challenges new ventures face as they seek to find the capital necessary to begin production, scale their operations or take their companies public. Under his leadership, Hercules has completed more than $6.7 billion in investments to over 375 companies.

Prior to founding Hercules Capital, Manuel was a Managing Director at VantagePoint where he focused on technology investments. Prior to that, he served as President and Chief Investment Officer of Comdisco Ventures, a division of Comdisco, Inc.

As a long standing advocate for children’s health and education, Manuel also serves on the Board of Directors for the Lucile Packard Foundation as well as the Children’s Health Council. Previously, he served on the Board of Directors for the Charles Armstrong School, an independent elementary and middle school that serves students with language-based learning differences.

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Brian Sapp is a managing director In the Energy Technology Group at Hercules. Sapp has more than 16 years of experience in finance working with VCs, start-ups and public companies as an investment banker. Prior to joining Hercules in 2014, Sapp was a director in the energy technology investment banking group at Robert W. Baird & Co., where he originated and executed private and public equity and debt capital raises, and advised on M&A transactions. Prior to Baird, Sapp held senior banking positions at Wedbush Securities, Thomas Weisel Partners and SVB Alliant in their energy technology and technology groups. Sapp first started covering the clean technology / energy tech sector in 2004 at Pacific Growth Equities. Prior to investment banking, Sapp was an environmental process engineer with TE Connectivity for three years. Mr. Sapp received an MBA from Cornell University and a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from The Pennsylvania State University.

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