Executive Officers

Nick Kaiser, 43
Chief Executive Officer and Director

Mr. Kaiser has served as Marlin’s Co-Founder and Senior Managing Director since its inception over 15 years ago. He is actively engaged in all aspects of managing the firm including the oversight of all investment related activities and decisions. As a member of the firm’s Executive and Investment Committees, Mr. Kaiser is responsible for developing and pursuing strategic initiatives, originating and qualifying investment opportunities, conducting due diligence, executing transactions, and directing portfolio construction and management. Mr. Kaiser’s leadership extends throughout Marlin’s portfolio, as he is significantly involved in the strategic direction and management of the firm and each of its portfolio companies. Since founding Marlin, Mr. Kaiser has sat on dozens of boards and mentored and coached many of Marlin’s most successful executive teams. His transaction experience includes numerous enterprise software acquisitions, take-privates, corporate divestitures and growth equity investments. Mr. Kaiser earned a B.A. in Economics-Mathematics, with honors, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Michael Nutting, 45
Chief Financial Officer and Director

Mr. Michael Nutting has served as the Chief Capital Markets Officer at Marlin Operations Group, Inc., an affiliate of Marlin, focused on providing corporate finance and capital markets support to prospective, new and existing portfolio companies, as well as fostering and managing relationships with debt financing providers since 2017. From 2009 to 2017, he was a Managing Director, Head of Capital Markets & Corporate Finance at Glendon Partners (an affiliate of The Gores Group) where he served in a similar capacity. Prior thereto, Mr. Nutting spent over 12 years in investment banking, most recently at Credit Suisse where he was responsible for executing capital markets, mergers and acquisitions and other corporate transactions for financial sponsors and their portfolio companies. He earned a B.A. in Economics-Accounting from Claremont McKenna College and an M.B.A. from UCLA Anderson School of Management, and is a CFA® charterholder.

Board of Directors

Pete Spasov, 44
Chairman

Mr. Spasoy is a Senior Managing Director of Marlin Equity Partners where he is engaged in all aspects of managing the firm, including the oversight of all investment related activities and decisions. As a member of the firm’s Executive and Investment Committees for nearly 15 years, Mr. Spasov is responsible for developing and pursuing strategic initiatives, originating and qualifying investment opportunities, structuring transactions, overseeing investments, setting and implementing investment policy, directing portfolio construction and management, as well as overseeing the firm’s operations. Mr. Spasov also oversees sourcing and business development efforts at Marlin, a role in which his significant network and expertise will be valuable to help identify optimal targets. Mr. Spasov sits on the board for numerous Marlin portfolio companies. Mr. Spasov has over 20 years of broad-based institutional investment and private equity experience and prior to joining Marlin in 2005, he was at Northrop Grumman, which manages over $30 billion in investments, where he was primarily responsible for private equity and real estate investing. Mr. Spasov earned a B.A. in Economics-Accounting from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

David Donatelli, 55
Director 

Mr. David Donatelli (Director Nominee) has over thirty years experience working in the technology business. Most recently he served from 2015 to 2020 as the Executive Vice President of the Cloud Business Group at Oracle Corporation. Prior to Oracle, Mr. Donatelli was the Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Group as Hewlett Packard. Prior to Hewlett Packard, Mr Donatelli served at the President of the EMC Storage Division. Mr Donatelli has extensive experience with direct management responsibility of mergers and acquisitions, software and hardware engineering, global sales, marketing, manufacturing and supply chains. He earned a B.A. in Computer Science from Tufts University.

Robert Youngjohns, 69
Director 

Mr. Robert Youngjohns (Director Nominee) Mr. Youngjohns has over 40 years of experience as an executive in the technology industry. Most recently, Mr. Youngjohns has been an operating executive in Marlin Operations Group, Inc. for over a year, focused on conducting operational due diligence and providing operational support to portfolio companies across the software and technology sectors. Previously, he served as EVP & General Manager of Software and Cloud at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he spearheaded HP’s new cloud strategy (HPE Helion) and led the spin-off of HP’s $8.5 billion non-core software business to Microfocus. Prior thereto, Mr. Youngjohns was President of Microsoft North America where he was responsible for sales, marketing and services totaling $25.0 billion of revenue across all product lines and channels in the United States and Canada. Additionally, he has held key executive management positions at leading technology companies including Callidus Software, Sun Microsystems and IBM. Mr. Youngjohns earned his M.A. in Physics and Philosophy from Oxford University.