Meet the venture capitalist who’s making investing easier for his fellow Northwestern alumni

David Beazley grew up eating raw potatoes and ketchup sandwiches.

 Now, Beazley, 47, is the founder and managing partner of Purple Arch Ventures, or PAV, a portfolio owned by Alumni Ventures Group, or AVG. Since its 2017 founding, PAV has invested $60 million in about 100 companies, Beazley said.

 AVG specializes in offering venture capital portfolios, according to its website. The market data website Pitchbook recently named AVG the most active firm in the U.S., meaning it’s investing more money in companies than any other U.S. firm.

 Beazley earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Northwestern in 1996 and 1998, respectively. Northwestern gave him a football scholarship for both degrees, which he is still grateful for given his family’s financial situation, he said.

 Growing up in Carpentersville and later Crystal Lake, both northwestern suburbs of Chicago, Beazley and his brother and two sisters were raised by parents Rosemary and Thomas, who grew up in the same Catholic orphanage, Beazley said.

 They divorced when Beazley was five, leaving his mother to raise three children on a secretary’s salary, he said. She remarried three years later, but Beazley continued playing football hoping to get a scholarship so his parents wouldn’t have that financial burden, he said.

 “I remember in my childhood, you know, eating ketchup sandwiches and raw potatoes,” Beazley said. “There's no entitlement here, but there is a sense of scrappiness and competitiveness that has driven the majority of the success of my life.”

 Although he graduated from Northwestern 23 years ago, the pride Beazley has in his alma mater is still clear, said Erik Hammer, AVG’s Chicago principal.

 “Northwestern played an enormous role in his life, and he’s always looking for ways to give back,” Hammer said. “He’s usually wearing Northwestern apparel, and his office looks like a Northwestern bookstore.”

 Beazley’s passion for venture capital, or VC, also started at Northwestern, he said. During his junior year, he landed an internship at Merrill Lynch working on wealth management, he said. Most of the high-net clients he worked with invested in alternative investments, including VC, as opposed to stocks and bonds, he said.

 Later, Beazley created Synergy Financial Page, a magazine offering advice on alternative investing, for his final project in graduate school, he said.  He worked there as his full-time job after graduating, Beazley said. 

 Beazley and his partners accepted an offer to buy the publication two years after launching, he said. Then, Beazley decided to become a registered investment adviser and start his own firm, Synergy Financial Partners.

 However, he found himself wanting to do more to help his alma mater, Beazley said. So, he joined Northwestern’s now-defunct New Invention Advisory Board to help entrepreneurial students, Beazley said.

  “I just had such an affinity for it and was having a lot of fun spending time on campus helping students figure out their own startups,” Beazley said.

 In 2016, a Manchester, New Hampshire, AVG, then a startup called Launch Angels, approached Beazley about running a portfolio for Northwestern alumni, he said. After meeting the founders, Beazley agreed to help create what would become Purple Arch, he said.

 “The ability to make money while thinking about the university had some appeal to me,” Beazley said. “I thought that if we became something that was with purpose but for profit, we could create a movement, and we certainly have been effective in that.”

 Northwestern was one of AVG’s first university portfolios, Beazley said. In 2016, AVG also launched portfolios for Harvard, MIT and Yale, he said.  

 In just four years, AVG has made 100 investments and built a community of about 31,00 alumni, he said. Investors must be alumni of the portfolio’s university to join; the universities have no official affiliation with AVG and do not profit off the portfolios, he said.  

 The work ethic and leadership skills Beazley developed while playing for Northwestern’s football team helped both Beazley and AVG be successful, said David Culver, chief collaboration instigator at VentureSHOT, an incubator for startups. Culver  matches entrepreneurs with investors who can help them grow their businesses, he said. Culver met Beazley through an investor’s event VenturesSHOT hosted in 2011, he said.

 “He treats his investing like football,“ Culver said. “He works hard at it. You can imagine him doing his receiving drills. He’s going to do all his drills and do them well.”

 At Northwestern, Beazley learned how to be both a team player and a leader, Beazley said. He owes these lessons for much of his success, as do the many athletes he played with are also now industry leaders, he said.

 “It’s just very heartening to see the success they've had outside of school as well,” Beazley said. “This is also the moment in time when we can start to make an impact, as we can share that success and create a path for those that follow.”

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This story was originally written for a Medill business course.