Behdad Eghbali

He built finance experience before starting Clearlake

Eghbali was born in Iran and moved to the United States with his family as a child. Forbes describes his billionaire wealth as self-made and traces it to Clearlake Capital rather than to an inherited investment firm or family-controlled business. ^[1]

Before Clearlake, Eghbali worked in technology investment banking and then at TPG, where the Milken Institute says he focused on buyouts, turnarounds and other transformational investments. Those jobs supplied professional experience rather than ownership of the platform that later made him wealthy. ^[3]

Eghbali and Jose E. Feliciano co-founded Clearlake in 2006. Clearlake's own history says the firm began with three employees and a $182 million first fund, a relatively small institutional base compared with the scale it later achieved. ^[1][2]

Scaling the management company created his billionaire equity value

Clearlake expanded across private equity and credit through successive funds and acquisitions, reaching tens of billions of dollars of assets under management before a major 2026 expansion. Forbes identifies Eghbali as one of the firm's co-founders and ties his fortune directly to private equity. ^[1][2]

The combination of co-founder ownership, investment performance and long-term expansion supports a founder-created wealth story. Eghbali's career at established financial firms helped him develop the necessary skills, but the billionaire-scale management-company value came from Clearlake, which he helped create from its earliest institutional stage. ^[2][3][1]