Palestra Capital Management co-founders Jeremy Schiffman and Andrew Immerman met in college but became firm friends while working in private equity in San Francisco — Schiffman for TPG Capital and Immerman for a TPG spin-out. The two had remarkably similar backgrounds: Both Immerman and Schiffman, 39, graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and worked in investment banking at Goldman Sachs Group. After a stint at TPG, Schiffman, who grew up in Miami, was a prelaunch hire at TPG-Axon Capital Management, the New York–based hedge fund firm founded in 2004 by former Goldman proprietary trader Dinakar Singh, with backing from TPG. Schiffman stayed with TPG-Axon, where he was a partner, until 2011, when he left to form New York–based Palestra with Immerman. The $900 million, long-short equity, value-focused, event-driven fund has funding from Goldman and several TPG Capital partners.
