SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ontra, the leading provider of contract automation and intelligence solutions for the world’s most prominent asset managers, today announced its acquisition of material assets of Captain, a technology and thought leader in the alternative funds space. The move will allow Ontra to further bolster its legal operating system for private markets, providing asset managers with a more streamlined and efficient experience for private markets transactions. Terms of the agreement were not publicly disclosed.
The integration of Captain’s assets into the Ontra platform is an important step in building the future of digital funds lifecycle management, including modernizing burdensome processes such as subscription documents, most favored nations (MFN) elections, side letter obligation management, and funds secondaries transfers. Ontra’s fund lifecycle management solution will improve efficiency, transparency, and performance for all parties involved in private markets transactions, including private equity firms/General Partners (GPs), Limited Partners (LPs), law firms, and fund administrators.
“We are very excited to continue to incorporate Captain’s work inside the Ontra platform and expand our range of solutions for private markets clients. The rapidly increasing complexity and volume of agreements and administrative processes across the private fund management lifecycle has created significant inefficiencies for its key stakeholders,” said Troy Pospisil, Founder and CEO of Ontra. “Ontra is building an AI-powered digital operating platform to help customers transform these burdensome processes into user-friendly, integrated digital workflows, and this acquisition will allow us to deliver on this vision more quickly.”
“We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Ontra to accelerate the execution of our company’s vision and we are incredibly proud of the Captain team and the tremendous progress to date,” said Kyle Hogan, CEO and Co-founder of Captain. “Ontra is the clear market leader in delivering innovative solutions to the private markets. Their team shares our vision to digitize the funds lifecycle and has earned the trust of most of the world’s large private equity firms. We look forward to partnering with their team to execute on a really exciting roadmap that will create a tremendous amount of efficiency and value across the industry,” said Andrew Staines, President and Co-founder of Captain.
In recent years, the volume and complexity of private fund side letters has increased dramatically. In addition, MFN clauses in side letters – once a rare privilege reserved only for the largest LPs – have become increasingly common. These MFN clauses allow eligible LPs to elect more favorable provisions contained in the side letters of other LPs in the fund. Historically, administering MFN provisions is a manual, time consuming, and expensive process which can take up to a full year to complete. Ontra’s offering seeks to both simplify and streamline the MFN process by digitizing the entire workflow. By integrating Captain’s assets into its existing fund lifecycle management platform, Ontra will accelerate the completion of its digital MFN election portal and remove much of the manual burden for GPs and LPs.
“Captain’s work to date shows a tremendous understanding of the highly complex MFN election process. Their philosophy of bringing GPs and LPs into a single platform to streamline the entire fund lifecycle is directly in line with Ontra’s vision for the future of operating a private fund,” added Pospisil.
For more information, please visit our website: Ontra.
About Ontra
Ontra is the global leader in Contract Automation and Intelligence for private asset management firms. The Ontra platform combines AI-enabled software with a worldwide network of highly trained lawyers to modernize recurring legal workflows. Ontra’s solutions improve all aspects of the contract lifecycle—from negotiating and processing routine contracts to tracking obligations in complex agreements. Ultimately, Ontra reduces the time, expense, and risk associated with contract management, freeing its customers to focus on other strategic priorities. Ontra is headquartered in San Francisco, with global operations across North America, Europe, and Asia. Learn more at www.ontra.ai.
