---
category: "Private Organization"
tags:
  - Organization
  - Patricof
  - PROMIS
  - INSLAW
  - VentureCapital
alias:
  - Allen Patricof and Associates
  - Patricof & Co.
  - APA
summary: "New York venture capital firm, formally Allen Patricof and Associates, that managed the 53rd Street Ventures fund and through it made a 100,000-dollar investment in INSLAW about 1982; the firm where Patricia Cloherty worked before and after her government service."
location: "New York City"
created: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-09-22
---

Patricof and Company, formally Allen Patricof and Associates and known in the special counsel's report as APA, was a New York venture capital firm founded in 1969 as Patricof & Co. Ventures by [[Alan Patricof]], later renamed Apax Partners.[^2] It managed several funds, among them [[53rd Street Ventures]], formed about 1976. [[Jonathan Ben Cnaan]], a native of [[Israel]] employed at the firm from 1981 to 1987, managed the funds and about 1982 made the firm's first investment in [[INSLAW]], 100,000 dollars through 53rd Street Ventures, describing himself to the investigators of [[Nicholas J. Bua]] as a "follower" investor with no active role in the negotiations. [[Patricia Cloherty]] worked at the firm from about 1970 to 1977, left for the Small Business Administration under [[Jimmy Carter]], ran [[Tessler & Cloherty|Tessler and Cloherty]] with her husband [[Daniel Tessler]] through the 1980s, during which that firm took over the 53rd Street fund in 1984, and returned to Patricof and Company in February 1988. Neither the [[House Committee on the Judiciary|House Judiciary Committee]] nor Bua found any wrongdoing by the firm, which entered the [[PROMIS Software Scandal|INSLAW affair]] only through its stake in the company and the handoff of the fund to the Tesslers, whose dealings with [[Bill Hamilton]] in December 1984 became the subject of his affidavit.[^1]

### Footnotes

[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, interviews of Jonathan Ben Cnaan, Daniel Tessler and Patricia Cloherty. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport
[^2]: Boston Properties, Inc. Definitive proxy statement (Schedule 14A), filed March 29, 2002, director biography of Alan J. Patricof. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1037540/000092701602001770/ddef14a.txt