Gary Hultquist and New Cap Partners

New Cap Partners advises technology companies on mergers and acquisitions. With offices in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco and Beijing, the organization also assists client companies in raising capital and finding investors they might need in order to expand.
Gary Hultquist, one of eight partners in the organization, says, “We advise them on the right prices for the transaction and help them get it done."
Hultquist is one of two New Cap Partners operating in the Bay Area. He has been in the business since 1987 and with New Cap Partners since 2009. Before working with them, Hultquist ran his own company called Hultquist Capital. He changed to New Cap Partners in order to work with a bigger group of people and to handle bigger companies.
Before 1987, Hultquist was a lawyer and practiced intellectual property law for 20 years. He says it was very similar to what he does now, with the same type of companies. He thinks this work is more fun and enjoys working with mergers and acquisitions.
Hultquist was born in Stanton, Iowa, an almost entirely Swedish town where the language and traditions have been kept. He really likes his Swedish heritage and got a lot of exposure to the culture as a child living there. All of Hultquist's paternal great-grandparents came from Sweden, and as a child Hultquist was very close to one of his great-grandmothers. She grew up in Småland, Växjö, and moved to the U.S. in the late 1800s. Hultquist's grandmother spoke fluent Swedish, and although he used to stay with her, he never learned the language himself.
Hultquist met his wife in San Francisco; they now have three children and have been living in the Bay Area since 1971. He says that although he was raised on a farm he likes being in the city, and he and his family love living in San Francisco. “When I think of San Francisco I think of a beautiful place with beautiful people.”
In 1997, Hultquist went to Sweden for the first time. With his father and children he visited his great-grandparents’ birth places. They traveled to Gothenburg and rented two Volvos for transportation around the country. They went through southern Småland and up to Stockholm, which was the City of Culture for Europe that year, something the family truly enjoyed.
Hultquist has been back to Sweden five or six times since that family trip. He started doing business there in 2000 and almost all of his Swedish connections are engineers. “I help entrepreneurs for usually young companies that have come up with new inventions and filed patents,” says Hultquist. “When I think of Sweden I think of all the great inventions that were made there.”
When it comes to finding a Scandinavian experience in the San Francisco, however, Hultquist says it can be hard. The exposure to Swedish culture he gets is when he goes to Sweden, when he is home with his relatives in Stanton or when he does businesses in Minnesota. “I have also travelled a lot to Seattle, where you can see a lot more of the Swedish culture than in the Bay Area,” he says. “And it looks just like Sweden.”

One of the reasons Hultquist joined the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco was he felt his life was missing the Swedish culture. He had not been a member of any other Scandinavian or Swedish organization until he heard about the SACC-SF/SV from a friend.
“As soon as I saw the website I knew I wanted to be involved.” He says it's not only the social activities that make SACC so interesting, but the opportunities to meet new professionals is appealing, too. “A hope that I have for the future is to start doing business in Sweden again,” says Hultquist.

After joining SACC-SF/SV in March of this year, the first event Hultquist attended was the International Chambers Networking Event at the Fairmont, a good introduction to SACC. “The event that I really do not want to miss is the Bay Area Achievement Award; I am very much looking forward to that one!”