Escalate Capital Partners

Investment decisions are made by the investment committee, which includes co-founders Ross Cockrell and Tony Schell, along with Chris Julich. The committee oversees originations, structuring, and portfolio management for the firm's private credit and growth equity allocations.

Escalate functions as both. It provides venture debt and other private-credit solutions alongside growth equity, aiming to offer later-stage companies capital that is less dilutive to management and existing equity holders than a traditional venture round would be.

The firm targets rapidly growing, later-stage companies — typically those with established revenue — that require growth capital, expansion financing, or structured debt. Its stated investment size ranges from $5 million to $30 million per transaction.

Escalate concentrates on technology, software, business services, and healthcare. The investment team's operating and underwriting experience is largely built around these sectors, drawn from prior roles at Austin Ventures, SVB, and Comerica.

The firm markets its current fund's size as $350 million (per firm website). It uses the vehicle to write bespoke credit and equity checks, though it does not publicly disclose whether the structure is a single commingled fund or a series of targeted vehicles.

While Escalate does not publicly document a syndication or co-investment policy, its leadership's experience at venture lenders such as SVB and Comerica implies familiarity with layered debt structures and multi-lender transactions common in the technology lending market.

Senior professionals arrived from Austin Ventures, Comerica, Silicon Valley Bank, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and PIMCO. Co-founders Ross Cockrell and Tony Schell brought overlapping venture and bank-lending experience, while more recent hires such as Janan Ghaddar (joined 2023) and Aharon Modlin (joined 2025) deepened the firm's credit-analytics and venture-lending capabilities.