// LEADERSHIP

Leadership

Who runs Argonav and how the firm operates.

// WHO RUNS ARGONAV

Argonav is the technology and intelligence division of Merchant Bank, run by two Managing Partners.

Alex W. Putzer

Managing Partner · Chief Technology Officer

Alex leads the design and deployment of the autonomous systems built to run inside middle-market businesses, replacing fragmented software stacks with operator-grade workflow infrastructure. In 2024 he founded Bridge Advisory Group, a New York real-estate brokerage and technology firm built with a private-equity partner; since inception Bridge has closed over $120M in sales, 15k sqft of commercial leases, and a 500+ unit residential leasing portfolio. He ran it as chief executive and chief technologist, and as its second-highest-producing broker, architecting the agentic workforce behind its operations.

B.A. Business Management · University of St Andrews

Sean Koons

Managing Partner · Chief Product Officer

Sean leads product strategy and development across the firm's technology and operating platform, shaping how the firm's intelligence reaches the operator and how the platform itself becomes a product other institutions can run on. He is a Limited Partner and Creator in Residence at dao5, a crypto-native venture fund, and previously served as Portfolio Manager at District 2 Capital Fund LP, with earlier roles at Goldman Sachs and Citadel. His career spans public markets, private capital, and frontier technology; the through-line is turning complex systems into products people can actually run.

B.A. Economics, cum laude · University of Chicago

Supported by the embedded execution of Merchant Bank's principal investing and operations expertise.

Dan Picmann

CEO (Keel Merchant Bank)

Former private-equity principal with deep experience leading operational transformations across the middle market.

Profile on keelmb.com

Kap Haldia

COO (Keel Merchant Bank)

Former private-equity principal with extensive operational and capital-markets expertise across the middle market.

Profile on keelmb.com

Eddie Perlman

Independent Director · Strategic Advisor

Governance oversight and strategic counsel; founded Scottwood Capital Management in 2001 and built it to nearly $1B in assets under management.

Profile on keelmb.com

// OUR APPROACH

We operate like an instrument, not a department: a small group of operators, one platform, and a doctrine that decides what gets built and in what order.

Own the outcome

We build durable capability and take ownership in the outcomes, not billable hours. Every engagement leaves an asset that compounds, not a deliverable that ends.

Leverage over headcount

We compound output through the platform, not through staff. The standing work runs under the hood so people stay on the questions that demand judgment, taste and accountability.

Slim teams hold the line

Headcount scales with strategic need, not workload. Each operator owns an outcome rather than a function, and the team stays radically small on purpose.

// THE BROADER TEAM

We prize range over specialization and the people who move fluently across domains; the work rewards taste, breadth, and the ability to hold a whole system in view at once.

// RANGE OVER SPECIALIZATIONPolymaths, thinking in a quantum registerWe hold many possible answers at once, treat ambiguity as information, and reason across paths instead of marching from A to Z.