CalSTRS can teach you a thing or two about saving for retirement. California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) manages and disburses retirement, survivor, and disability benefits for more than 800,000 California public school educators and their families. It also offers survivor and disability benefits. CalSTRS is the largest US teachers' retirement fund and one of the nation's largest public pension funds. It oversees some $150 billion in assets, which it invests in stocks, real estate, private equity, and other investment vehicles. The organization is run by a 12-member board, five of whom are appointed by California's governor.

VantagePoint Management company (aka VantagePoint Venture Partners) provides long-term capital to primarily technology and health care companies ranging in development from start-up to pre-IPO. VantagePoint is organized around its target markets: information technology, health care, clean technology (which focuses on the application of technology to energy, water, and materials), and Asia. The firm has a dedicated clean tech investment team and oversees one of the largest active venture capital efforts in the sector with more than $1 billion in investments.

The Blackstone Group, L.P. was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in New York, New York. The Blackstone Group L.P. (Blackstone) is a manager of private capital and provider of financial advisory services. The Company is an independent manager of private capital with assets under management of $98.2 billion, as of December 31, 2009. Blackstone provides a range of financial advisory services, including corporate and mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and reorganization and fund placement services. The Company operates in four segments: Private Equity, Real Estate, Credit and Marketable Alternatives, which consists of its management of funds of hedge funds, credit-oriented funds and separately managed accounts, CLOs and publicly-traded closed-end mutual funds, and Financial Advisory, which consists of its corporate and mergers and acquisitions advisory services, restructuring and reorganization advisory services and Park Hill Group, which provides fund placement services for alternative investment funds.

Scottish Equity Partners LLP was founded in 1997. Scottish Equity Partners LLP is a venture capital firm specializing in seed, start up, early stage, mid and late venture, and growth capital financing. The firm prefers to invest in information technology, healthcare, life sciences, and energy related sectors. It seeks to invest in information technology sector with a focus on enterprise application software, enterprise network technologies focused on connectivity, security and mobility standards based communication technologies, semiconductors, displays, and novel new materials. In healthcare and life sciences sector, the firm includes enabling diagnostics, medical devices, specialty pharmaceuticals, as well as platform and enabling technologies, new therapeutics, novel research, and development technologies. In energy related sector, it primarily invests in oilfield technology, renewable energy, environmental technologies, and clean and green technology. In the renewable energy sector, the firm includes sources such as wind, wave, tidal, and solar energy. It also seeks to invest in equipment and services, distributed and mobile power technologies such as fuel cells, advanced batteries, energy storage, energy efficiency, and new materials.

Wingate Partners gets by on more than a wing and a prayer, rescuing lackluster manufacturing, distribution, and service businesses. The investment firm, founded in 1987, seeks long-term controlling stakes in US-based companies that are underperforming or are in transitional or out-of-favor industries. Targets typically have revenues of $50 million to $250 million and may or may not be profitable at the time of purchase. Wingate often invests between $25 million to $100 million per transaction and avoids financial services, media, high-tech, real estate, and certain other businesses. It typically invests in one or two companies a year.

Sage Advisory Services, Ltd. Co. was founded in 1996 and is based in Austin, Texas. Sage Advisory Services, Ltd. Co. is an employee owned investment manager. The firm also provides portfolio risk evaluation and diagnostics; performance analytics; and financial and liability modeling services. It provides its services to corporate and retirement funds, financial institutions, foundations and endowments, healthcare institutions, public funds, Taft-Hartley funds, wrap programs and sub-advisory, and individuals. The firm manages client-focused equity, fixed income, and balanced portfolios. It also manages exchange traded funds and structured products for its clients. The firm invests in the public equity and fixed income markets across the globe with a focus on the United States. It invests in index based exchange traded funds (ETFs) of all-cap companies, employing a fundamental analysis along with a top-down macro approach to create its equity portfolios. The firm benchmarks the performance of its various equity portfolios against the Standard & Poor 500 Index; the Russell 3000 Index; the Lehman Brothers Government Credit Intermediate Maturity Index; and the Lehman Brothers Municipal Blended 1–10 year Maturity Index. For fixed income, it invests in U.S. treasury and government agency securities; mortgage and asset backed securities; investment grade corporate and municipal securities; and high-grade international government securities, employing fundamental economic and quantitative security analysis to create its fixed income portfolios.

Baker Capital, founded in 1995, is a New York-based private equity firm with $ 1.5 billion under management. Baker Capital invests in growth companies at all stages of development in both Europe and North America. The partners of Baker Capital have extensive private equity and operational experience, allowing the firm to provide its portfolio companies with not only capital but also strategic thinking and relationships.

Quad-C Management, Inc. was founded in 1989. Quad-C Management, Inc. is a private equity firm specializing in management buyouts, owner recapitalization and family succession, and industry consolidation in middle market companies through both, internal growth and add-on acquisitions. Under management buyouts, the firm seeks to invest in corporate orphan, where it help managers acquire a division of a parent company, a going private, where the firm work with management to buy out public shareholders and take the company private, or a buyout of a private company, where it partner with management and buyout shares from the controlling private shareholders. The firm will also consider smaller strategic acquisitions for its current portfolio companies. It prefers to invest in building products; specialty finance; food, beverage, and restaurants; transportation and logistics; distribution; infrastructure; healthcare; equipment rental; financial services; light manufacturing; packaging; specialty chemicals; security and corrections; business-to-business services; education and training; and consumer and leisure products sectors.

August Capital was founded in 1995 by Dave Marquardt and John Johnston. Seasoned veterans of the venture capital industry, Marquardt and Johnston formed August Capital to invest in companies differentiated by technical innovation and entrepreneurial excellence. Today, August Capital's six partners -- Marquardt, Johnston, Andy Rappaport, David Hornik, Vivek Mehra and Howard Hartenbaum -- have more than a century of combined venture and operational experience. Together they manage $1.3 billion and have invested in more than 75 companies across the technology spectrum.From its inception, August Capital has funded an extraordinary group of entrepreneurs who have built significant, long-term value across the full range of information technologies. The companies that August Capital's partners have backed represent an aggregate market capitalization of well over $250 billion, generate in excess of $75 billion in annual revenue and employ a quarter of a million people around the world. This success is a testament to the entrepreneurs themselves, as well as the fundamental technologies they have created. We are proud to have supported these entrepreneurs and their companies as they have grown and prospered.

Landmark Ventures, Inc. was founded in 1995 and is based in New York, New York. Landmark Ventures, Inc. provides strategic and financial advisory services. The firm offers mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, private placements, capital raising, due diligence, and fund placement advisory services. Additionally, it provides business development, strategy formulation, and key account identification services. The firm’s clientele include ActionBase, Blinco Systems, Agentis, BioPetroClean, BoardVantage, Centrata, Inovis, Network Privacy, and Radware. It caters to IT, business services, and life sciences sectors.

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