SKventure Group packs three separate yet intertwined businesses—real estate, hospitality, and finance—under the command of ambitious, agile, and forward-looking Mid-West entrepreneur Shyon Keoppel. Being a three-prong business conglomerate, the company thrives and keeps expanding into new ventures, targeting the Los Angeles area, thanks to its organic self-sufficiency, cost-effectiveness, and the business shrewdness of its leader and mastermind, Shyon Keoppel.
Keoppel started his construction business while investing in real estate in Oklahoma by doing construction jobs for multi-family apartment complexes. SKventure owns, partly or in full, several thriving real estate businesses in the Keoppel’s hometown Oklahoma.
Parallel with growing his real estate and construction businesses, Keoppel founded Millenium Capital Group, a lending and finance arm, to help expand his main operations, and fund third-party ventures. “People were coming to me with different investable ideas, so I started helping those who wanted to start their own companies either with capital, or helped them out with an idea. Then I started doing some angel investing and a lot more tech stuff,” elaborates Keoppel. A fast learner, he soon branched out into the hospitality and restaurant business, designing and building restaurants and hospitality spaces from scratch, using his construction company. “Real estate and construction go hand in hand,” rightfully points out Keoppel. “We use our construction company for all of the ventures—from concept to design, everything is done in-house, and we use all of our companies when possible from start to finish of a new project. Through word of mouth, we grew our business in Oklahoma,” says Keoppel. The move from construction to hospitality was organic. Having beefed up his muscles in the construction business, Keoppel started to conceptualize restaurants, borrowing some ideas from other cities and opening them with partners.
Though SKVentures’ home office is still in Oklahoma, seeing more opportunities in LA, Keoppel shifted his focus westwards. “Everything good comes from LA, all the big brands are born in big cities like NYC, Miami, and LA,” says Keoppel. His presence in the Los Angeles area has been growing exponentially since 2018. His childhood memories may have well prompted the westward move. When he was a kid, Keoppel used to come to the Los Angeles area to visit his father in Santa Barbara for Christmas every year. “I liked it there, and I picked the city (Los Angeles) over the other two,” reminisces Keoppel.
Today, Keoppel is developing his role in the Los Angeles hospitality sector thanks to several new ventures. 3rd Base LA, a sports bar in Hollywood, creates a unique sports viewing atmosphere. The bar, which opened in December 2019 to become an immediate success, had to pivot due to COVID-induced restrictions, moving operations outside to the adjacent parking area. Two other hospitality projects in the city are in the making. A large restaurant project on Melrose and Crescent Heights, and a lounge on Sunset, were slowed down by delays in getting permits from the City due to COVID. These two are expected to be up and running in late Q1 of 2021.
A fast learner, a shrewd, cost-conscious entrepreneur, Keoppel is leading his SKventure Group westward and upward, and living by his lifelong mantra “we are building bridges, not burning them.”