Richard Harjes

Richard is a General Partner at Next Frontier Capital and brings decades of investment experience to the fund. Along with his wife, he is co-founder of Willow Spring Ranch Montana, a ranch devoted to sustainably raising organic lamb for the local and national gourmet market. Richard represents Next Frontier Capital on the board of Blackmore Sensors and Analytics and is a board observer of Clearas. Prior to Bozeman, Richard had a long-term career in quantitative investments – computerized, model-based investment strategies employing statistical modeling and machine learning techniques, analyzing and making thousands of small investment decisions on a minute-by-minute basis. Throughout his career, Richard built, grew and/or managed a number of highly successful investment teams with PhD level expertise in statistics, computer science, math and physics. He was Managing Director of the Statistical Arbitrage business at Citadel Investment Group in Chicago, founding the group responsible for the quantitative trading of equities at the firm. Prior to this, he was Director of Research and partner at Numeric Investors, a quantitative equity fund in Boston where he founded investment strategies and ran the overall research effort. Early in his career, Richard was one of the founding members of the Alpha Strategies Group at Barclays Global Investors, contributing to that effort by establishing the group’s research platform, strong investment returns and exceptional client and asset growth. Richard has served on the faculties of Duke University and the University of Arizona and is published in major academic journals. In addition to his business pursuits, Richard serves on the board of directors of the Children’s Museum of Bozeman. He founded and is one of the creative drivers behind the Museum’s STEAMlab – a hands-on, high-tech science and technology learning center focused on circuits, robotics and 3D printing, and expanding opportunities for the kids of Southwest Montana.