Ashley Keller, '07: Gerchen Keller Capital Featured in Crain's Chicago Business

January 02, 2016

The big boys in litigation financing

Ashley Keller's resume looks like an escalator: Harvard College, followed by double degrees from the University of Chicago's law and business schools, a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship and finally a partnership at one of the country's premier litigation boutiques.

His first business venture, though, was a miserable failure.

It was the dot-com era, and venture capitalists were handing out money to even Harvard undergraduates who had snapped up domain name Why.com for $5,000. Keller and his partners planned to create a Yahoo-like directory that listed search results based on user ratings of websites. He dropped out of school for two years to work on the startup, he says, only to discover “profit and loss really matters. You can't value a business based on the number of eyeballs in China that come to your website.”

“I stepped off the path,” he adds, “and quickly discovered I needed to get back on.”

In 2013, though, Keller stepped off the path again, this time with Adam Gerchen, whom he had met at Alyeska Investment Group, a Chicago hedge fund. Together they founded Gerchen Keller Capital to finance litigation in exchange for a cut of the resulting judgment or settlement. Gerchen, 34, is CEO, and Keller, 36, managing director. Travis Lenkner, 36, joined soon after as a partner and managing director.