Greg is the CEO and 100% owner of Venice Brands, which he founded in 2018. He has been intimately involved in the creation and management of each company in our portfolio, sitting on the board of each company and having played the CEO role for several of them at times. He also typically leads the capital raising efforts, both debt and equity.
He is also the owner of Willsey & Company, which own both majority and minority equity positions in numerous businesses in the food, beverage, fitness, pet, agricultural and personal care industries. Willsey & Company typically provides some or all of the seed capital when Venice Brands creates a new company, while also making select growth capital investments and acquisitions outside of the Venice Brands portfolio.
Prior to founding Venice Brands, Greg helped launch Monogram Capital as one of three partners and as a member of the firm’s investment committee. While there, he helped the firm make over a dozen investments and raise its first committed fund, which was oversubscribed at $152 million. His investments included Chewy, Country Archer, Planet Fitness, Ellenos, Kidfresh, Healthy Spot, Dig, and Paleteria La Michoacana, among others.
Previously, Greg held P&L responsibility for POM Wonderful, the largest vertically integrated grower and marketer of pomegranates and related products. He started with the Wonderful Company (the owner of POM Wonderful) in Strategy and M&A, where he led the diligence of potential acquisitions as well as capital projects and strategic initiatives.
To start his career, Greg spent five years at McKinsey & Company’s Los Angeles office where he specialized in the consumer packaged goods, media & entertainment, and private equity sectors. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School as well as the Calloway School of Business at Wake Forest University.