The Team
Paul Inouye - Founder and CEO
Paul Inouye is the Founder and CEO of Western Hills Partners, a boutique M&A advisory firm focused exclusively on sell-side transactions for founder-led software, services, and internet companies.
With over 35 years of West Coast technology banking experience, Paul has advised founders and entrepreneurs through some of the most consequential decisions of their professional lives. His career includes senior roles at Robertson Stephens, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Perella Weinberg, and Moelis & Company — giving him a buyer network and deal instinct that few advisors at the lower middle market level can match.
Paul focuses exclusively on sell-side mandates and growth financings, working with a small number of clients at any given time to ensure every founder gets his direct, senior-level attention from first conversation to close.
Outside of work, Paul is an endurance athlete who has completed multiple Ironman and half Ironman triathlons. He holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MBA from The Wharton School.
Sasha Grutman - Partner
Mr. Grutman is a founder of Middlemarch Partners and co-leads the firm's merchant banking and investing efforts. He has spent his entire 35-year career investing in and advising high-growth financial services and enterprise solutions companies that leverage technology to create sustainable advantage.
At Middlemarch, Mr. Grutman advises clients on business and capital strategy issues, has sourced over $2.5B of capital for clients and has served as a board member for several Middlemarch clients and Middlemarch Capital Partners portfolio companies. Active with both private and public companies, he has participated in over $4.5B of transactions over the course of his career as a merchant banker and private equity investor.
Prior to founding Middlemarch Partners, Mr. Grutman served as a Partner at TH Lee Putnam Ventures, a $1B growth equity fund, where he co-led the firm's financial services investments in specialty finance, insurance services, and electronic capital markets investments. Previously, he was a Managing Director at Citigroup where he oversaw the firm's on-balance sheet financial services private equity holdings as well as managed the bank's $6B private equity fund-of-funds business. He has also held private equity investment roles at Goldman Sachs and Frontline Capital. He began his career at The Boston Consulting Group in its Financial Services and e-Commerce Practices.
Mr. Grutman received an MBA from the Wharton School where he majored in Finance. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Italy where he pursued independent research on Dante. He graduated from Yale University magna cum laude with a BA in Humanities. He holds Series 7, 63, 79, 24 and 65 FINRA registrations.
DEMETRIS PAPADEMETRIOU - Partner
Mr. Papademetriou is a founder of Middlemarch Partners and co-leads the firm's merchant banking and investing efforts. He has spent over 30 years investing, advising, and operating high-growth financial business services companies across the payments, specialty lending, capital markets, and insurance sectors.
Mr. Papademetriou is an active investor and advisor to financial services companies with a particular focus on financial technology opportunities, having raised over $2.5B for clients. Because of his operating and financial experience, he also serves as a board member for multiple Middlemarch Capital Partners' portfolio companies. Prior to founding Middlemarch, he was a Director at Knight Capital Group, a global trading firm, where he was responsible for originating, evaluating, and executing strategic investment opportunities and M&A with the mortgage-backed securities, equities, foreign exchange, and derivatives desks both in the US and in Europe.
He also served as the Head of Strategy and Corporate Development for CashEdge, Inc., a financial services transaction and risk management software company, where he focused on capital raising, M&A, and new product development. CashEdge was sold to Fiserv (FISV) for $465M in 2011. Earlier in his career, Mr. Papademetriou worked for Swiss Re Capital Partners, the $5B AUM Merchant Banking and Private Equity division of Swiss Re.
Mr. Papademetriou graduated from the Honors Program in Engineering and Management, receiving both a BS in Engineering from Northwestern University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. He holds Series 7, 63, 79, 24 and 65 FINRA registrations.