Lay of The Land #194: Hanna Kassis (Babylon Asset Management) — Business Financing, Private Credit, and Growth Capital
Throughout his career, Hanna Kassis has overseen $1.5 billion in capital deployment.
Hanna began his entrepreneurial journey in Youngstown, where he managed Tim Ryan's congressional campaign from 2008 to 2011. This early taste of independence would prove formative for his future ventures. Though he initially pursued law school in Chicago with intentions of becoming a tax attorney, Hanna's entrepreneurial spirit led him to found OAREX Capital Markets while still a student. The company secured seed funding from Dan Gilbert's Bizdom and later raised substantial institutional capital—$50M from a global asset management firm and a $50M line of credit from East West Bank—to build an innovative online ad revenue exchange.
After successfully scaling OAREX, Hanna exited in 2022 by selling his majority stake to his investor group. His entrepreneurial drive led him to expand into new ventures, including the acquisition and revitalization of Whistle Taproom (formerly Whistle & Keg), which has become a Downtown Cleveland premier game day destination. When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in 2023, Hanna recognized an opportunity and launched Babylon Asset Management. Under his leadership, Babylon has invested in 170 alternative loans, participated in 12 senior loans to other lenders, and helped 36 companies raise debt capital.
Hanna was one of the first people I met in Cleveland, and it was a pleasure to finally have him on the podcast
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LINKS:
https://babylonassets.com/about/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannakassis/
https://oarex.com/
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Past guests include Justin Bibb (Mayor of Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Steve Potash (OverDrive), Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Stewart Kohl (The Riverside Company), Mitch Kroll (Findaway — Acquired by Spotify), and over 200 other Cleveland Entrepreneurs.
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