Barry Schwimmer

Managing Director Petros Connecticut Fund

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Barry Schwimmer is Managing Director of the Petros Connecticut Fund, an $18 million growth-capital vehicle he created in December 2015 with Austin, Texas-based Petros Partners to invest in Connecticut businesses, operating under the state’s Insurance Reinvestment Tax Credit Program. He is also the founder of the Stamford Innovation Center, the business incubator he established in 2011 in the city’s former municipal building. The two are deliberately connected: having spent four decades as a private equity and venture investor, Schwimmer built first the place where Connecticut companies could get started and then the fund that could finance their growth, addressing a state whose proximity to New York has historically meant its promising companies either raised money elsewhere or moved.

Career Highlights

• Managing Director of Petros Connecticut Fund I, an $18 million growth-capital fund created with Petros Partners under Connecticut’s Insurance Reinvestment Tax Credit Program.
• Founded the Stamford Innovation Center in 2011, opened in 2012 in Stamford’s former municipal building.
• Supported companies through the incubator including Arccos Golf, Tru-Optic, eBrevia, US Mobile, Sensify, and Applango.
• Former partner at Chemical Venture Partners and Commonwealth Capital Partners.
• Owner of Stoneybrook Capital, his own investment firm.
• Directed fund investments including Oasis Charger Corporation, a Connecticut electric vehicle charging manufacturer.

Professional Journey

Schwimmer began his career as a securities analyst at Value Line Investment Survey and then as a senior consultant at Andersen Consulting, before taking an MBA in finance and accounting at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He moved into institutional investing, spending more than a decade as a partner at two venture capital and private equity firms, Chemical Venture Partners and Commonwealth Capital Partners, and subsequently establishing his own investment firm, Stoneybrook Capital. Across that span he has invested through private equity, mezzanine, and senior debt structures, working with entrepreneurs to shape capital around a company’s specific stage rather than fitting every business to a single instrument.

In 2011 he founded the Stamford Innovation Center, which opened the following year in Stamford’s former municipal building as an incubator and co-working space. Its stated mission was job creation and the development of an entrepreneurial community across Connecticut — a response to a structural problem for the state, whose companies sit close enough to New York and Boston that founders have historically looked outward for space, capital, and community rather than building them locally. The centre supported companies including Arccos Golf, Tru-Optic, eBrevia, US Mobile, Sensify, and Applango.

The fund followed in December 2015 and addressed the next constraint. An incubator can help a company start; it cannot finance growth. Schwimmer joined with Petros Partners, an Austin-based investment firm, to create Petros Connecticut Fund I, an $18 million vehicle capitalized under Connecticut’s Insurance Reinvestment Tax Credit Program, which channels insurance industry capital into state businesses in exchange for tax credits. The fund provides capital and operational support to lower middle-market Connecticut companies, with investments including Oasis Charger Corporation, a Connecticut manufacturer of electric vehicle charging equipment.

Education

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

MBA, Finance and Accounting