Team

Dr. Martin Lautman served as the former Chairman and CEO of GfK Custom Research North America (Nuremburg, Germany), at that time a public company on the DAX and the fourth largest information company in the world, with offices in over 60 countries. While at GfK, Dr. Lautman was responsible for the integration of one of the largest acquisitions in the history of the information industry, NOP Worldwide, into GfK North American Custom Research operations.

Dr. Lautman also served as the President of Numex Corporation, a public company which marketed health care products through infomercials and helped found Stonemor in an LBO, a master limited partnership which he and his partners took public (NYSE: STON) and that has since gone private. Recently, Dr. Lautman has focused on real estate, private equity, and venture capital. He works as a Venture Partner for several early-stage venture funds, as a Managing Partner for Musketeer Capital (www.musketeercapital.com), a venture capital fund which he founded with other Wharton faculty and alumni and as a Managing Partner of the Athena Aurora Fund (www.athenaaurorafund.com), a unique philanthropic venture fund benefiting students of the University of Pennsylvania and The Wharton School. During his career, Dr. Lautman has served on multiple boards of public and private companies both for PE-funded and independent companies and has managed multiple succession plans for both large and small family-owned companies.

Dr. Lautman received his B.S. degree in Political Science from Brooklyn College and Ph.D. degree in Mathematical Psychology (Behavioral Economics) from The Pennsylvania State University. He is a graduate of the Executive Education Program of The Harvard Business School and is a member of Young President’s Organization (YPO) and Chief Executives Organization (CEO).

For ten years, Dr. Lautman has taught startups Entrepreneurial Marketing in The Wharton School MBA and undergraduate programs. All three of his sons either have or are attending Wharton/Penn and he is the proud funder of six Wharton/Penn degrees. He has lectured at Columbia University, Cornell University and Princeton University.

Philanthropically, The Lautman Family Foundation is involved in funding Education and the Arts.  Dr. Lautman also has served as the Chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Penn Hillel and has been active in supporting Jewish and Israel-related activities on college campuses.  He was also a member of the local hospital board, Moss Rehab which was acquired by Albert Einstein hospital.

Steve has been involved as an advisor to and investor in several business; notable such investments include Accurate Autobody, LLC (acquired by Service King, LLC), Bazaarvoice, CustomInk (co-founded by his son), DealMaven (acquired by FactSet) Neverware, RippleTech (acquired by NitroSecurity) and Securly. Prior to being an investor, Steve was co-founder of Automated Catalogue Service, L.P (acquired by Sterling Commerce) which created and published industry-wide and company-specific electronic catalogs; Premier Systems (acquired by Sunguard) which developed accounting systems for both corporate and personal trust; and SEI Corporation, which developed the nation's most widely used trust accounting system/service. Outside of angel investing, Steve is Member of Board of Trustees of Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, and Director of the Palm Beach Chapter of the World Presidents Organization. Steve graduated with an MBA and BS from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Alan started his business career at his father’s one office Mortgage Company. As its CEO, he grew that business into Brokers Mortgage Services ( B.M.S.), a national mortgage broker and servicer. BMS went public and produced a number of innovations in the mortgage market- the first prequalified mortgage –“the House Card”, the first securitized mortgage pool, and the first integration of other complementary services, insurance, equity lines of credit, etc. into the mortgage. BMS was merged into Travelers Corp. and Alan ran and grew what became Travelers Mortgage Services (TMS) for 7 years. TMS was sold to GE and became GE Mortgage Services.  TMS implemented the first strip securities and the first securities for second mortgages travelers also had the largest private security program in the U.S.

He also led a group that bought Shadow Traffic Corp’s 2 markets out of bankruptcy. Shadow grew to 14 markets and introduced the first traffic camera installation (the Panasonic Traffic Cam at the Lincoln Tunnel), and the first integration of news, sports, and weather broadcasts from the same facilities as the traffic reports. Shadow was sold to Westwood One.

Alan has also been a successful urban real estate developer.