Mountainside Lending Team
Clay has always been an entrepreneur. It’s in his DNA. He was motivated to become a businessman well before receiving his undergraduate degree (a Bachelor of Science in Business) in 1984. At the same time as he continued down the academic path, he found opportunities for growth in commercial real estate.
1987 was a benchmark year for Clay. It was then that he obtained his MBA in Finance from Centenary College of Louisiana while also achieving the prestigious CCIM designation awarding him recognition as a leading expert in commercial real estate. Since then, he’s started, owned and operated a variety of companies in various industries and continues to own and operate several successful businesses today.
In 1992, with only $300,000 in start up capital, he formed a Texas-based factoring company. His mission was simple, to provide a financing bridge to businesses that needed access to cash faster than when their commercial customers make payment. Twenty-six years later, Allied Affiliated Funding, L.P. became the proof that his mission was a success. Allied had become that bridge by providing $500 million annually to other businesses.
In July of 2018, he sold the company to a national banking institution. Clay currently spends his time on Mountainside and his other companies.
Michael Ma is an experienced real estate investor with over a decade of experience in the multi-family, commercial, and development spheres. Michael began his journey in real estate as a college summer intern for the local Higgins Group brokerage firm, where he quickly obtained his salesperson license and established himself as a top-selling agent in Fairfield County, CT and New York, NY, with collective individual sales well within the eight-digit mark and team sales surpassing nine-figures.
As Michael sought to provide a more complete service for his high net worth clientele over the next few years by branching into property management, rehab/renovations, and real estate advisory, he began to develop his own personal portfolio of investments, beginning with one-off residential properties to condominium lots and entire commercial buildings. More recently, Michael personally developed a 13-unit Class A dormitory for UCONN-Stamford from the ground up, successfully securing a long-term credit tenant in a fast-expanding urban downtown neighborhood.
Michael’s current balanced portfolio consists of a healthy mix of multi-family core holdings, commercial core plus properties that consist of industrial/retail/service sectors, and GP/LP partnership syndicate deals which span the country from North Carolina to Texas and even Idaho, providing essential geographic diversity. Michael has even launched a private real estate-based bridge lending business in the Tri-State area which has surpassed $4 million in total loan amount issued with zero defaults.
During his time building and managing what would become the real estate arm of his own emerging boutique family office, Michael has sought to derive both value and cash flow from his properties. These two aims constitute his long-term investment thesis.
Education: After completing his secondary schooling locally at Darien High School, Michael went on to obtain a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) from Vanderbilt University – where he was a member of the Division 1 SEC varsity football team – and a Master’s degree (A.M.) from Duke University. He is a member of several professional organizations and is proud to be a part of several select honorary societies (ex. Mensa high IQ society).
In the 40+ years since he obtained his BBA in Finance from Baruch College, Joel’s primary focus has been dedicated to solving the financial needs of small and middle market companies. His career highlights include founding an Investment Banking Firm, holding executive level business development roles including running an asset based lending group and managing a full sales team, serving on several credit committees and boards in a senior capacity for various banking institutions, and being the Executive Vice President of Allied Affiliated Funding, L.P.
As a commercial lender, he excelled in originating asset based lending and factoring facilities while building long lasting relationships throughout the commercial finance industry. As an investment banker, he structured facilities including debt and equity combinations to infuse liquidity into companies, businesses in almost every industry across the nation with financing needs of as little as $100,000 or as high as $20MM have benefited from Joel’s unwavering ability to obtain and/or directly provide them with working capital.
Joel’s impressive work ethic and technical expertise in credit and financial analysis with lasting client and referral partnerships, make him the guy you hope to have on your side if you are looking for working capital solutions. That’s why Joel is simply the obvious choice to lead and grow Mountainside Capital.
From weekend racecar driving to DIY home improvements to raising four girls (with wife Diana) Bob McDonald’s career has spanned 4 decades of corporate operations to full-time entrepreneurship. He was a Managing Partner of Maidstone Capital Corp … a merchant banking and private equity firm specializing in middle market business turnarounds and up-grading distressed assets via non-traditional financial solutions.
Based in Westport, CT, Bob founded Maidstone in 2001. The firm specialized in 4 verticals: healthcare, marketing services, direct marketing & mail logistics, light manufacturing (still maintaining a mirror manufacturing business that sells to USA Big Box retailers), with production facilities in China, NY, NJ & CT. During his near 20 year tenure at Maidstone, Bob completed 39 business acquisitions and numerous debt financings.
Bob’s last industry project was to form Katalyst Partners, a consortium of marketing agencies and manufacturing companies dedicated to serving non-profit clients. His acquisitions supported a vertically integrated service platform including a spectrum of businesses ranging from commercial printing and lettershop operations to data analytics, mail logistics, real estate development, and custom art reproductions sold wholesale to the hospitality industry, chain retailers and through e-commerce.
Prior to Maidstone Capital, Bob was COO of Healthcare Solutions Management Associates, Inc., a healthcare turnaround company, and for 5 years he was Director of Operations for Physician’s Hospital (NYC), later becoming its CEO. Bob has a degree in Biochemistry from Clemson University, and near fluency in Spanish.
David is often referred to as our Technology Guru and for good reason. Truth is, he brings much more to the table than that.
An undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and graduate work in Computer Science at SMU brought David to an 18 year career as a Senior Systems Engineer/Senior Member Technical Staff at Texas Instruments.
David used his considerable experience working on domestic and international projects such as customer interfacing, project management and product life cycle management, and his expertise in industries ranging from telecom to financial and defense as a springboard for his next opportunity. He went on to co-found and lead a start up venture achieving the $1 million revenue mark after only 18 months. He repeated that success as the co-founder of another company bringing in revenues of over $2 million in a short time frame.
David claims he’s no economist, yet he’s an avid follower of certain economic indicator historical trends. Periodically, he authors reports sharing this data in a way that is easy to read and understand.
Lisa is the person that is responsible for keeping all of the back office of Allcap running.
She has over 30 years of experience in Office Management, Accounting, Inventory Management, Human Resources as well as setting up a computer or desk if needed. Lisa has been involved with companies as small as 2 or 3 people or up to 100+. She has supervised a staff of 15 when she was in inventory management and accounting. The companies were up to 100 million in sales which included distribution, financing, marketing, advertising and banking in her 30 years of experience.