Zack Mansfield is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Conductor Capital. He’s been actively involved in the entrepreneurial community for 20 years. Zack started his career at CED and then spent 12 years as one of the early members of Square 1 Bank. He was one of the founding members of the Venture Banking Group at Signature Bank in 2019, where he ran the East Coast prior to starting Conductor. Zack is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill where he was a member of the 2001 NCAA Champion men’s soccer team.
Dhruv Patel is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Conductor Capital, which he launched with Zack, his longtime colleague and friend of more than 15 years. Dhruv was previously part of the founding team of the Venture Banking Group at Signature Bank and helped build the venture debt practice at Square 1 Bank. Throughout his career, he has focused on serving entrepreneurs, starting at CED where he founded the Capital Connections practice to connect North Carolina’s most promising startups with leading venture and growth equity firms. Born and raised in India, Dhruv has called North Carolina home for more than 20 years.
1.) What is in your pockets?
Zach: Right now, nothing. But I usually carry my wallet, cell phone, and AirPods.
Dhruv: Same as Zach. Nothing at the moment, but I typically carry a wallet and a cell phone.
2.) What exciting thing has happened recently for you or your organization?
Zack: Dhruv and I launched Conductor Capital (“Conductor”) in 2023. Conductor is a private credit fund where we invest in growth-stage technology companies. We raised an initial $42 million Fund I. We subsequently closed the fund and then made our first five investments.
Dhruv: Our focus is software and tech-enabled services businesses. Typically, these businesses are between $5 million and $20 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), and our check size ranges from $3 million to $5 million. We’ve made five investments thus far in good growth businesses. We are providing them with optionality as they consider more growth, solving for a potential transaction or a growth financing.
3.) What is your favorite coffee spot?
Dhruv and Zack: Our office is in downtown Durham, and we’ve found an important part of our workflow is to work in the same room, particularly in Conductor’s early stage of evolution. We are right next to the Durham Hotel, which has an open and airy coffee shop with great coffee and tons of space. We also spend a lot of time in meetings at the Oak House downtown.
4.) What keeps you up at night?
Dhruv: Part of building Conductor from the ground up is raising capital from people, many of whom are friends; we’ve built amazing relationships over the last 15 to 20 years. These entrepreneurs, the people who build these amazing businesses, have trusted us with $42 million of their money. We think every day of being great stewards of their money and generating great returns.
Zack: The thing that we need to do really well as a lender is to make sure you don’t lose money and don’t have a loss on your loan. So, we think a lot about how to do good underwriting and manage our deals. Conductor originated from a bank crisis. Silicon Valley Bank was quickly taken over, and we were previously with Signature Bank.
5.) What’s your favorite restaurant or happy hour?
Dhruv: My wife and I have two favorite restaurants. The first is Hawthorn and Wood in Chapel Hill. It’s just amazing with great food and a great bar. They just treat you well.
Bida Manda in downtown Raleigh is the other favorite. Even though the food is phenomenal, it’s more of a personal connection. My wife and I have been there many times, but we went there on my wife’s birthday when she was due to have our first child in two days. They took extra care of us, and it was really fun.
Zack: My wife and I have been very regular attendees at Nuvo Taco. You can never go wrong with them. It’s a Durham institution.
6.) What is next for you or your organization?
Zack: We launched Conductor and are investing out of Fund I. We have five portfolio companies right now. We will build a portfolio of somewhere between 12 to 15 companies. We’re going to go out and find our next investments over the next couple of years.
At the same time, we’ll continue to support our portfolio. We have an incredible network of entrepreneurs. Our hope is that we’ll continue to be supportive of them and they’ll, in turn, have good success. Looking beyond that horizon, we’ll be able to raise Fund II and continue to grow the platform, add to our team, and be part of the ecosystem on an even greater scale.
Dhruv: The significant dislocation event that Zack referenced is why Conductor exists. It’s created this interesting gap in the market where there’s a demand and supply imbalance. [There just aren’t that] many firms providing capital from $3 million to $5 million.
Growth debt is an important part of the capital stack for many of the businesses with whom we work. We see a big opportunity here. One of the biggest things that we think about when we evaluate opportunities is that we provide optionality to entrepreneurs. They could raise equity capital, but that also means more dilution for the founders. So, we provide this optionality—which is the fun part. There is a long road ahead, with plenty of great businesses that need this capital, so it’s really awesome for us to be in the market and be able to do this.
