Team
Our founding partners bring a wealth of experience as operators and investors across software, deep tech, and healthcare throughout the Southeast.
Our founding partners bring a wealth of experience as operators and investors across software, deep tech, and healthcare throughout the Southeast.
Our Team
A purpose-built mix of investors and operators with a two-decade track record together
The Director's Cut of the Front Porch origin story goes back to grad school, where Gregg, Nikin, and Joe used to sit on a front porch and debate investment ideas.
After extended runs in finance, technology, and healthcare, they started to deploy their hybrid strategy personally before opening their first pilot fund to outside investors in 2020.
Since then, they have raised and deployed over $50M into 27 top VC firms and 61 startups across the Southeast across three institutional funds.
Gregg Bordes
Managing Partner
Gregg brings 20+ years of direct investment experience across various asset classes, strategies and sectors to Front Porch, where he manages the day-to-day operations.
After growing up in Kentucky, Gregg famously paid a single visit to New York and his parents knew he’d be gone for a while. Prior to co-founding Front Porch, Gregg was the Director of Investments for a multi-billion dollar family office and built the research team at the venture-backed unicorn data analytics firm YipitDATA. His previous investment roles also include AEA Investors (NYC), Blum Capital (SF), Stone Tower Capital (SF, now Apollo Global Management) and Hurley Capital (NYC). He began his career in the grinder of bulge bracket M&A at Merrill Lynch.
Gregg holds a BS from NYU-Stern and MBA from Duke-Fuqua.
Joe Mancini
Founding Partner
Joe brings 20+ years of experience scaling technology companies and growth teams to Front Porch. He has on-the-ground expertise in every recent tech platform innovation, from the web and mobile, to cloud, SaaS, and now AI.
Joe grew up in Virginia and attended undergrad at UVA before joining PRTM as a management consultant (after, fun fact: a few years in sports talk radio). At PRTM, Joe served a variety of high-profile Tech, Media and Telecom clients in and outside the US, before the firm was sold to PwC. Joe spent a short stint with 200,000 accountants and then scampered to Google, where he joined a nascent business within Google X called Access and Energy that included Google Fiber. After scaling the Fiber business in the Triangle, Joe joined Digital Turbine, where he led revenue growth from $70M to $700M, including the integration of four global acquisitions.
Joe spends most of his time on the tech side of the portfolio and is happiest elbow-to-elbow with founders and their teams. Joe is a frequent keynote speaker at venture conferences and proudly holds a BA from UVA and MBA from Duke-Fuqua.
Nikin Shah
Founding Partner
Nikin brings 20+ years of experience scaling and exiting heathcare companies to Front Porch and as an exited CEO, spends a lot of time coaching our founders.
After growing up in North Carolina, Nikin attended undergrad at UNC and was a management consultant at Deloitte, primarily in the healthcare industry. A few years of slides propelled him back to business school, and then afterwards to Medtronic.
Nikin returned to the Triangle as the CEO of Polyzen, a medical device company that was later named one of the fastest growing companies in the region. He successfully exited Polyzen in 2022 after leading substantial revenue and EBITDA growth. Nikin spends most of his time on the healthcare side of the portfolio, but also enjoys coaching new CEOs, having sat and stressed in the seat himself.
Nikin holds the rare combo of a BS from UNC-Chapel Hill and MBA from Duke-Fuqua.
