US Small Business Administration’s Associate Administrator
Office of Investment and Innovation (“OII”)
Javier Saade was recently appointed by the White House as the US Small Business Administration’s Associate Administrator. OII houses the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC), Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs along with SBA’s Innovation Initiatives. He is part of the agency’s top executive leadership team. SBIC is a growth capital program that about $22.8 billion of assets under management spread across ~290 private-public partnerships comprised of private equity, venture capital and structured lending funds. With authorization to invest $4 billion annually, the program operates at a zero-subsidy cost to the American taxpayer. Further development of i) the $1 billion over-five-years Impact Investing SBIC Initiative and ii) the $1 billion over-five-years Early Stage SBIC Initiative, is key to the enhance the flow of capital to where investment gaps are widest. Since 1958, SBICs have capitalized American small businesses with about $67 billion. SBIR and STTR entail the government's largest innovation effort focused on small business, effectively making the collective ~$2.5B/year the largest pool of seed funding in the world. Since inception, ~145k grants totaling ~$38B have been awarded to small firms that participate in federally funded R&D via 11 agencies and 100's of research institutions. In addition to expanding the frontiers of human knowledge, a key end goal of the programs is to commercialize the resulting inventions. The programs touch, catalyze and seed the creation of STEM driven innovations in industries critical to the nation's long term competitiveness and growth - from nanotech to robotics to mobile communications to genetic therapies to clean energy to advanced weapons to space exploration. OII’s Innovation Initiatives support entrepreneurs and their dynamic ecosystems and include Demo Days, StartUp University, Crowdfunding education and the $2.5m Growth Accelerator Contest among others. Javier regularly works the White House’s Innovation Cohort, Business Council, Domestic Policy Council, Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Economic Council on issues that directly affect high growth small businesses across the country. He has over 20 years of global principal investing, general management, strategic consulting and entrepreneurial experience. He co-founded three companies in three different industries and has worked at The GEM Group, Bridgewater Associates, Paradigm Ventures LP, McKinsey & Company, Booz | Allen | Hamilton and Abbott Laboratories. Before joining the administration, Javier most recently was an advisor to two firms: Pacific Community Ventures, a $100 million double-bottom line venture capital firm in San Francisco and Aspen Grove Capital, a $1.3 billion family office in Vail. Concurrently he was a Partner at Brand Maestro, a marketing and brand strategy firm based in New York City. Javier holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS in Operations & Technology from Illinois Institute of Technology, and a BS in Industrial Management & Manufacturing Engineering from Purdue University.
