About the Foundation.
Launched in 2015 as the Four Peaks Foundation and seeded with a $2 million gift from Patrick B. Horsman, channeling decades of investment experience back into the education of America's next entrepreneurial leaders.
The Patrick Horsman Foundation traces its roots to 2015, when it was launched as the Four Peaks Foundation. It was later renamed and merged into the Patrick Horsman Foundation, and seeded with a $2 million personal gift from Patrick B. Horsman, an American investor and entrepreneur, to support the next generation of business leaders. Its mission is straightforward: help bright, motivated undergraduates afford the education that prepares them to build companies of consequence. The Foundation operates a twice-annual scholarship program and invests its corpus alongside the Horsman family office to compound the resources available for awards over time.
The Foundation is governed by two trustees: Patrick, who founded it, and Russ Gross, who has served as Chief Investment Officer of Horsman Holdings since 2008. Together they oversee both the philanthropic awards and the investment activity that funds them, and they bring the same discipline to the Foundation that they bring to the family office.
A bio of Patrick B. Horsman
Patrick was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before moving to Scottsdale, Arizona at age fifteen. He attended Desert Mountain High School and went on to the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2002 with a triple major in finance, accounting, and entrepreneurship. He earned the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation soon after.
The same year he graduated, Patrick co-founded Blue Sand Securities, a FINRA-registered placement agent and broker-dealer that has raised more than $15 billion from institutional investors for alternative investment funds. It was the first of more than a dozen firms he would go on to found or co-found across hedge funds, private equity, real estate, and digital assets.
In 2009 he co-founded Merion Investment Management, a litigation-finance hedge fund that reached approximately $1.2 billion in peak assets under management. In 2010 he co-founded Context Summits, the leading capital introduction conference series in the alternatives industry. In 2011 he co-founded Integrated Ag, a private equity fund that has developed approximately 17,000 acres of US farmland for institutional investors. In 2017 he co-founded Innovation Shares, a thematic ETF index sponsor that launched KOIN, EKAR, and THCX on the NYSE.
Today Patrick is the Founder and Managing Partner of Octopus Investments, a Puerto Rico-based investment management platform that identifies, structures, and seeds alternative asset managers globally. He is also the Managing Partner of Horsman Holdings, his single-family office, and the Chief Investment Officer of BNB Plus Corp. (Nasdaq: BNBX), a public-company digital asset treasury. He is a member of TIGER 21, the Milken Institute, and the Family Office Association, and he resides in San Juan, Puerto Rico with his family.
Patrick's philanthropy extends beyond the Foundation. He is a co-founder of Paradiso College Preparatory, a tuition-free college-preparatory charter school network in Puerto Rico, where he serves on the board of the Charter Management Organization and personally contributed more than $2 million toward the school's $17 million launch capital.
Why the Foundation exists
Patrick credits much of his own success to a strong early education and the support of his family. The Foundation was created to make that same foundation available to students who have the drive but not the resources. By investing the Foundation's capital alongside Horsman Holdings, the platform compounds its philanthropic capacity over time, ensuring the next generation of entrepreneurs has a steady source of support.