I grew up in Houston’s Third Ward, in the Mexican part of town. The grandson of farmworkers, I knew from an early age that it was only going to be through hard work and education that I could go beyond the borders of my neighborhood.
I dreamed of someday making it in Houston, of being one of the businessmen in suits I would see in restaurants downtown, doing big real estate or finance deals over a long lunch in the shade of the tall glass buildings. I wasn’t sure exactly how to get there, but I put my head down and got the straight A’s, got the high scores, got the valedictorian spot at my huge public high school, and was offered a full scholarship to Brown University. The window to better things began to open.
Growing up, I began to explore beyond US borders. I spent summers with my extended family at their home in Yucatán, Mexico. I volunteered to be a foreign exchange student when I was in high school and was sent to Australia to study. From then on, the world was open to me, and I worked and traveled to six continents, from a business study tour of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Bangkok, to consulting assignments for Coca-Cola in Central America, to economic development projects for the Organization of American States in Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala, to relaxation on safari in Kenya and in the Loire valley of France.
Ironically, my career path never brought me back to Houston. Instead, I worked in leadership positions in banks in New York City, Dallas, and Austin. My experience at Citi was my most formative, the opportunities immense, where I was one of only two managers selected nationally for a two-year executive rotational program in commercial banking and Citi commercial credit college in New York. I was a member of a CEO war room at one of the Citi companies, inventing my own cross-sales platform from the ground up. My executive sponsor remarkably was the Chief Risk Officer for all of Citi.
At Citi, I always gravitated towards working with entrepreneurial clients, especially those with international assets. One of my favorite assignments was as a capital advisor to the army of financial advisors and their clients, where I saw investor opportunities from around the world. My first big energy deal had an international flavor. My client was an investor selling a patch of natural gas fields in Turkey to Marathon Oil Company, a public company at the time, for $100 million in cash plus $100 million in Marathon stock. It was a thrilling experience being a part of the deal team that worked through nights and weekends to bring the deal home.
Ever since growing up in Houston, I saw Texas as full of opportunity. There has always been a spirit of optimism here and a “can-do” attitude that is infectious. I have always been and I remain, bullish on Texas business and investment opportunities in general, including oil & gas produced right here. After all, the Permian Basin is the largest oil-producing basin in the US, contains an estimated 20 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and accounts for about 40% of total US oil production and 15% of US natural gas production at any given time.
I recently launched the Salazar Energy Fund 1, as my first fund. It is a “fund of funds” in that it feeds into the third fund, $100 million KOPIII, of my operating partner King Operating Corp. King Operating has been in business over 28 years. The CEO, Jay Young, is a 4th generation oil and gas man, and he is one of the former owners of the Texas Rangers baseball team. The projects at King are tax-advantaged and asset-backed oil and gas opportunities centered in Texas.
Key Benefits:
- Tax Advantaged: 100% tax deductions against both active (W2) and passive income (AGI).
- Income Potential: Forecasted 9-14% annualized monthly passive income distribution.
- Exit Strategy: Projected 2.3x multiple at exit in 3-5 years.
For my accredited investors, who invest through me rather than through my operating partner, I offer special economics in the form of increased carried interest (70/30), as well as a lower minimum entry ($50k).
