Sam Katz, investor and past mayoral candidate: Philadelphia is becoming more entreprenurial ‘without permission’ [Q&A]
Sam Katz is widely known in Philadelphia for campaigning. But he has had considerably more success in business.
More than a decade ago, he lost the mayoralty to John Street in one of the closest and most controversial big city elections in at least a generation, enough to warrant a celebrated documentary. Running a competitive Republican campaign in an overwhelmingly Democratic city was enough to make him a recurrent candidate suggestion, as recent as this mayoral race. No matter that a mayoral primary loss in 1991, a governor primary loss in 1994 and a failed rematch against Street in 2003 has tied losing in politics to his legacy.
Where Katz, 61, has maintained his air of success has been in business and government oversight.
In March, Katz was named the chairman of the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, the state-created panel that oversees city finances and quickly became the public face of an important body that has often operated in relative public obscurity.
Katz, a former Central High School honor student and Johns Hopkins basketball star, made his wealth working from 1976 to 1994 for Public Finance Management, a firm that advises government authorities on efficient large-scale project management, as the Inquirer reported in 1999.
With that accrued wealth, the West Mount Airy resident dove into investing, taking roles in a half dozen or more investment properties of note in the region.
The native of Wynnefield in West Philadelphia formed in the late 1990s the early stage private equity fund Wynnefield Capital Advisors (though it went by variations of that name) and invested through that organization in a variety of ways until 2004. He is board chairman of BioAdvance, investing in “very early stage life sciences companies,” and a limited partner in Osage Ventures, which is being credited with rethinking how universities profit on intellectual property. Katz has also been involved in launching or leading WellSpring Biocapital Partners, Biotechnology Greenhouse of Southeastern Pennsylvania and other small boutique investment groups.
With that background and with personal computing roots dating back to 1983, it’s no surprise he’s also taken to direct partnership, including investing in Fort Washington-based data-driven campaign analysis firm CampaignGrid and advising cWyze, the interactive video startup with Queen Village roots that presented at the spring 2011 Switch.
And just to show that investing remains something of a hobby, Katz has set his eyes on producing The Great Experiment, a seven-hour series on the 400-year history of Philadelphia the city, kicked off with a pilot proof of concept on 6ABC this past spring. [Support its Kickstarter here].
With that background, below, Technically Philly asked Katz about how Philadelphia has changed, how it’s stayed the same and what we can do about it.
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