OVF Member Highlight: Joe Tippens
Joe has been on all sides of private equity backed concerns including Founder, CEO, Senior Partner Venture Capital, Private Equity Fund Founder and Managing Partner, Investor and Board Member. He has served as a CEO with direct profit and loss responsibility on 4 occasions, frequently tasked with restructuring operations and positioning complex companies for growth and exit. His diverse industry experience includes: medical devices, medical diagnostics, biotechnology/drug development, industrial technology, transportation, software, AI data management, financial technology, commodity finance, sports marketing and infrastructure, real estate development, oilfield services telecommunications and financial asset management.
In early 2020, he founded and is Managing Partner of Swiss American Partners, a specialty venture capital and private equity fund based in Zug CH and Oklahoma City OK. For the previous 18 years, Joe had been the Founder and CEO of SCG Advisors (Vero Beach, FL, Toronto and Oklahoma City, OK), a private equity investment management firm. Among his accomplishments, he successfully raised and deployed a $430M private equity firm with capital from European investors; invested in a European vertically integrated real estate development and investment company. Concurrently with those activities from 2015 to 2019, Joe represented middle market enterprises in M&A mandates totaling over $600 million in transaction value. He has also represented numerous asset management firms in complex litigation.
Previously, Serving as CEO and Chairman of the Board at Commodity Capital Group (New York, NY), Joe was recruited to build the technology and team and prepare the company for an exit. Utilizing innovative securitization vehicles, he ran all aspects of this organization, which focused on providing working capital to commodity producers, traders and merchants. He led the company to become the first organization to achieve an investment grade rating on physical commodity securitizations, (grains, metals, and energy commodities) without the benefit of the owner’s balance sheet or credit capacity. The Company was successful in achieving $400 million in commodity securitizations before being sold to a division of Fletcher Challenge, a New Zealand-based conglomerate.
Previous to CCG, Joe was the Co-founder and President of StadiaNet Sports, Inc. (Tulsa, OK), which was sold to Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers) in 1999, 33 months after its 1996 start-up.
From 1986 to 1995, he was Managing Director of Capital Markets at Merrill Lynch and Partner at Merrill Lynch Venture Capital (New York, NY); Previously, he was COO at Western Venture Capital Corporation (a bank affiliated SBIC); and Manager (audit division) at Arthur Andersen & Co., LP (Tulsa, OK). He received a BS in Agriculture Economics and Accounting, with honors, from Oklahoma State University in 1979 and is a CPA since 1980.
Joe currently serves on the following Boards: Swiss American Partners, NexMuv LLC, Oklahoma State University Research Foundation; and Brightest Orange Ventures (OSU’s technology transfer fund). His prior notable Board Memberships include: Chairman of the Board, Commodity Capital Group, Inc. (sold to Fletcher Challenge); Chairman of the Board, ZymeTx, Inc. (IPO); Board Member, StadiaNet Sports, Inc. (sold to Paul Allen); Board Member, Data Critical Corp. (IPO, sold to GE Medical); Board Member and Urocor, Inc. (IPO).
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