Ron Rich
Verified Expert in Finance
Finance Expert
Ron has spent his career helping management teams leverage finance to strategically plan and drive operational improvement. With clients that have ranged from startups to billion dollar PE-backed companies, he has developed a deep expertise through his roles as an investment banker, management consultant, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur. Freelancing allows him to work with a wide variety of clients and to address pressing, relevant issues.
Career Highlights
Education Highlights
Case Studies
Expertise
Work Experience
Corporate Finance Advisor
Lucent Advisors
- Advised the management team of a SaaS provider on their business model. Helped the CEO and CFO mine, aggregate, and analyze data in order to evaluate marketing channels, and quantify customer acquisition cost and lifetime value of the customer.
- Negotiated and raised over $200 million of private debt to finance mergers, as well as client working capital requirements.
- Helped management teams think through the relationship among business drivers to construct projections that would be deemed reasonable by lenders and prospective buyers.
- Coded software to automate the financial analysis of corporate clients—reducing modeling time from two weeks to two days.
- Constructed financial models that were used to value client companies, raise capital, and negotiate company pricing with corporate buyers.
Debt Investor | Restructuring Advisor
New York Life Investments
- Restructured debt instruments in order to provide debtors breathing room to turn business around and service debt. Negotiated economic and legal parameters of governing documents.
- Built financial models to analyze debtor fundamentals, accounting for macro trends, markets, competitors and end-markets.
- Conducted valuation analyses to value debtor as well as its equity and debt securities.
- Invested in secured bank debt and unsecured bonds of distressed companies.
- Served on unofficial credit committees of distressed companies to facilitate out-of-court restructuring.
Management Consultant
Phoenix Consulting
- Worked on-site with management teams to identify and correct root cause of profitability degradation and cash burn.
- Negotiated with lenders to provide sufficient time to create and execute turnaround plan.
- Led an accounting and finance function to establish infrastructure required to support accurate cash flow forecasts. Built financial models that aggregated divisional projections to forecast cash flow and debt service.
- Coded a program to mine and analyze accounts receivable database in order to understand timing and magnitude of customer collections, which led to customer restructuring and vastly improved profitability.
- Audited budgeting processes and controls to identify fraud in the C-suite.
Founder | CEO
Campus Contacts
- Founded a direct marketer of contact lenses.
- Created the infrastructure to collect the data necessary to analyze the business model.
- Mined and analyzed database to calculate customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value.
- Created and executed marketing plans to grow the business.
- Hired and trained customer service and an in-field marketing sales force.
- Built financial models to determine an unprecedented business model.
- Installed information systems that addressed customer relationship management, marketing force compensation, and shipping and receiving.
Venture Capitalist
SG Cowen Securities
- Invested equity capital in Series A and B fundraising rounds.
- Partnered with startup management teams to construct business plans and projections for fundraising rounds.
- Built granular financial models to due diligence prospective investments.
- Conducted market and competitor research as well as pricing and go-to-market analyses.
- Invested industries included social media, telecommunications, healthcare, and security.
Investment Banker
Bear Stearns & Co.
- Built financial models for private placements, leveraged buyouts, and financial restructurings.
- Constructed new business development pitches.
- Conducted valuation analyses.
Education
Master's Degree in Real Estate
New York University - New York, NY, USA
Master's Degree in Engineering
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Master's Degree in Business Administration
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Finance
University of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, PA, USA
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring