Matt Streisfeld, a General Partner at Oak HC/FT, joined the firm in 2015 and focuses on growth equity and early-stage venture opportunities in fintech.
Matt currently serves on the Boards of AU10TIX, Black Ore, CLARA Analytics, Highnote, Justt, Namogoo and ZenBusiness. He is also a Board Observer at Ocrolus and is actively involved with Pagaya Technologies (NASDAQ: PGY) and Paxos. His prior investments include Blend (NYSE: BLND), FastPay (acquired by AvidXchange), Groundspeed (acquired by Insurance Quantified), Kryon (acquired by Nintex) and Urjanet (acquired by Arcadia).
Prior to joining Oak HC/FT, Matt was a Vice President with LLR Partners, a middle-market growth equity firm, where he focused on investments in financial services technology companies. Matt was previously at Lightyear Capital, a private equity firm focused on middle-market financial services companies, and before that, was in the investment banking group of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.
In 2023, Matt was included on Insider's Rising Stars of Venture Capital list.
Matt received a Bachelor of Business Administration, summa cum laude, from The George Washington University.
- Au10tix
- Black Ore
- Clara Analytics
- Highnote
- Justt
- Namogoo
- Ocrolus
- Pagaya
- Paxos
- ZenBusiness
- Blend
- FastPay
- Insureon
- Groundspeed
- NextCapital
- Urjanet
As an investor, I try to get to know my portfolio companies as well as any employee does. This was instilled in me early, and I care about this deeply - partly because it is more gratifying, and partly because it makes you a more effective advisor to the CEO. When a startup is going through a challenging time, you can’t provide generic advice. You need to whiteboard product initiatives and unpack the customer workflow; you need to spend time with the CTO to understand the tech stack and barriers to product delivery; you need to understand the growth potential while balancing cash flow or capital dynamics; and you need to know how to work productively and collaboratively with your founders.
I have always been a night owl. Entrepreneurs close to me know that I am more than happy to chat (very) late into the evening, which usually aligns with their schedule too, since they are putting out fires all day. Late-night phone calls are my favorite, because the hardest issues aren't neatly solvable in a 30-minute Zoom. We just keep going until the problem is resolved.
My love of fintech started with my dad. I didn't realize it at the time, but he worked on one of the first real disruptors in financial services: an online brokerage that offered trades at 100x lower cost than large wirehouses. He taught me about multi-step business models. The $5 trade was an entry point, which created a path to high-margin options trading -- textbook land-and-expand with an amazing customer experience. In college, I wrote a financial market history thesis on the correlation between institutional hedging failures and financial market collapses. My first job in investment banking was covering the financial sector. My whole life, I have loved digging unusually deep into the mechanics of the financial system and how successful companies disrupt that system. I suppose I've been putting all those pieces together ever since.
I could talk forever about what works and what doesn't work in fintech. But the most important hurdle is regulation. Regulation can explicitly prohibit new companies from entering the market, and it can create fear that prevents financial institutions from deploying new technology. The most successful fintechs clear that regulatory hurdle over time by showing the tremendous value in making the delivery and usage of financial services faster, easier, lower-cost, and more accessible.
