Miami · New York
Private equity. Entrepreneur. Investor.
Thirty years from a Manhattan bullpen to Miami, and still working the phone like it is day one.
Who he is
Ask David about his schedule and he will tell you his life is one big day. Monday to Monday, no weekends, because when you love what you do, the line between working and living disappears.
He is up before sunrise riding over the Biscayne bridges as the sun comes off the ocean. He splits his time between Miami and New York to be close to his daughter, and he still works a phone the way he did as a nineteen-year-old making five hundred cold calls a day from a Manhattan bullpen.
The resume runs deep. Vice president at some of the most respected banks in the world, certified NBPA and FIBA agent, founder, investor. But titles were never the point. What carried him from trading floors to locker rooms to boardrooms is simpler: the nerve to walk up to anyone, the discipline to outwork the room, and the conviction that one conversation can change everything.
His entire career started with a business card handed to a stranger. It usually does.
Three chapters
A kid from New York who taught himself the markets and talked his way onto Wall Street with no degree and nothing but nerve. By his early twenties he was a vice president advising serious money, and just getting started.
He arrived in Miami with a thousand dollars and rebuilt from nothing, soon advising the fortunes of celebrities and professional athletes. Somewhere along the way, the kid from New York became the man Miami knew simply as Sugar.
David channels two decades of finance, sport, and reinvention into private equity, backing founders and businesses others overlook. The throughline has never changed: find talented people, and bet on them before anyone else does.
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The journey
Raised between New York and New Jersey, he taught himself the markets card by card. The day he passed, he lit a cigar on Wall Street and never looked back.
No degree, so he pitched himself instead. Oppenheimer, PaineWebber, Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley. A vice president barely into his twenties.
A move to Miami with a thousand dollars, a business card handed to a stranger, and New Edition signed. The name stuck.
SugarTime Sports Management, built to protect athletes the way no one had before. NBPA and FIBA certified by 2012.
Sugarman World Enterprises. Small Business of the Year, Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. A bridge between finance, sport, and entertainment.
Private equity through SugarTime, funding, networks, and hard-won instinct behind founders worth believing in. And a microphone. Sugar in the Raw is where the story gets told out loud.
In his own words
Three long conversations. Wall Street with a GED, the athletes, the fall, and the way back, told by David himself.
The work
“One conversation can change everything.”
His entire career started with a business card handed to a stranger. It usually does.
Contact
One conversation is how everything starts. Reach out directly, or send a note and it lands with David.
