Industry News

6th Avenue Capital Builds Business Development Team with Veteran Hires

6th Avenue Capital has hired three seasoned employees to its business development team: Mitch Levy, Gary Lockwood and Marc Seidel.

Darren Schulman
Chief Operating Officer

“We’re putting together a team that I wanted to put together,” said Chief Operating Officer Darren Schulman. “They didn’t come knocking on my door, I knocked on theirs.”

This is part of an expansion of the New York-based company, which launched formally in 2016 and was reorganized in April 2017 with the hiring of Schulman.

Mitch Levy
Strategy Officer

Mitch Levy, who used to work with Schulman at AmeriMerchant (now known as Capify), will oversee the company’s business origination strategy. Levy joins the company with more than three decades of alternative financing experience across multiple disciplines including origination, underwriting, investing, operations and legal.

“6th Avenue Capital has quickly established itself as a major force in the Merchant Cash Advance business,” Levy said. “In this role, I have a great opportunity to work closely with the leadership team and our strategic partners to help small businesses across the country gain fast and efficient access to capital in times of immediate need.”

Gary Lockwood
Business Development Manager

Gary Lockwood, who also worked with Schulman at Capify, joins 6th Avenue Capital as Business Development Manager. He built and led a successful consulting business where he opened several business financing sales offices. Lockwood was a Senior Vice President of Partnerships at Fundation and worked at Capify as Director of Business Development with responsibility for onboarding, managing and training broker and partner groups.

Marc Seidel
VP Business Development

Schulman has never worked with Marc Seidel, but told deBanked that he knew of him and came highly recommended by Levy. Seidel will be 6th Avenue Capital’s Vice President of Business Development. Previously, Seidel spent more than 10 years working at Bizfi, where he started his career in the alternative financing industry as a Risk Analyst. He then worked his way up to a Senior Underwriter position and landed a business development role where he was responsible for managing relationships with brokers and driving deal demand.

Christine Chang
Chief Executive Officer

“Adding these industry veterans in business development will undoubtedly advance our mission to expand our existing network of ISOs and other strategic partners to ensure small businesses have access to capital in hours,” said 6th Avenue Capital CEO Christine Chang.

Schulman takes pride in assembling a veteran team that does the right thing by clients, he said.

“We don’t want to give merchants more money than they can afford,” he said.

He said the the company now employs 20 and is growing.

“We’re looking to form long-term relationships with brokers and merchants and we’ve been successful at getting merchants to refer us to other merchants.”

In Wake of Fraudulent DocuSign Emails, How to Recognize The Real Thing

Fraudulent emails with DocuSign attachments have permeated the MCA business in recent weeks. Independent MCA broker and Small Business Banker Paul Kelly told deBanked that he received up to 15 emails over the last few weeks from both Edwin Torres and John Edwards at the MCA company RET Capital. The emails had an attachment that encouraged the reader to “View Document.”

Staff at deBanked also received similar emails from Edwin Torres on January 16 and from John Edwards on January 23. Suspicious of the email, Kelly didn’t open the attachment, which was wise. According to DocuSign’s Trust Center page, people should “not click on attachments within an email requesting your signature. DocuSign emails only contain PDF attachments of completed documents after all parties have signed the document.”

The page lists other signs that may indicate a fraudulent DocuSign email, such as misspellings or conveying extreme urgency.

When we asked Torres if he had intended to send these emails, he said he not. Instead, he said he was the victim of a virus from DocuSign, which was likely hacked, he said.

“This has ruined my life for the past few weeks,” Torres said.

He also urged people not to open the attachment, as he had, which allowed the virus to send emails from his email account. Torres said that other companies in the industry had also been affected by the virus. But he said that his company’s computers had been cleaned for the virus last week and, so far, he hasn’t received any complaints this week.

Yellowstone Capital’s Donations Help Volunteer Ambulance Corp Upgrade Equipment

Hatzalah of Union County, a volunteer ambulance company in New Jersey, was able to secure a new digital communications system, thanks to a fundraiser held by Yellowstone Capital this week. Throughout the past six years, Yellowstone Capital has been by far the largest donor to Hatzalah with total donations exceeding $300,000, according to a press release.

Hatzalah Chief Yudi Abraham said, “There is no doubt that Yellowstone Capital is partners in our lifesaving mission. With their support, we are able to continue providing the utmost in care for our patients. Both our community and our entire squad are forever grateful for their constant support.”