< Fintech's Most Powerful Dealmakers of 2016

Venture capitalist Matthew Harris believes many entrepreneurs would do well to understand military strategy. “There is conflict in entrepreneurship,” says the Bain Capital Ventures managing director. “It ain’t apple pie. It is hard to disrupt with a bouquet of roses.” As head of BCV’s five-person fintech team, Harris has invested more than $250 million in what he calls financial insurgents. With such concepts as flanking (attacking from the side rather than head-on) and resource deployment in mind, the 43-year-old has advised the likes of upstart exchange operator IEX Group and human resources automation platform Justworks on how to compete against much bigger incumbents. “You don’t build a plan against the enemy’s current position; you build a plan against the enemy’s capabilities,” he explains. “That’s a military cliché, but a lot of entrepreneurs miss the point.” Harris’s obsession with military history began during his senior spring at Williams College, when he read The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, the second book in Alistair Horne’s trilogy on 19th- and 20th-century conflicts between France and Germany. After graduating in 1994 with a BA in political economy, he spent a year at consulting firm Bain & Co. before moving to its private equity business. The first deal he worked on was the acquisition by Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Co. of TRW’s credit reporting business, later renamed Experian. In 2000, with backing from Bain, Harris co-founded Village Ventures to do early-stage investing. He rejoined Bain in 2012 to oversee Boston-based Bain Capital Ventures’ nine-person New York office. His biggest investment to date: $105 million in AvidXchange, a Charlotte, North Carolina–based company that he says “basically digitizes the invoice flow” for middle-market businesses, part of a $225 million September 2015 financing round led by BCV. Most recently, he invested $3 million in former World Gold Trust Services CEO William Rhind’s GraniteShares, a New York–based company that is building a platform to issue exchange-traded funds. BCV typically makes follow-up investments over time, generally averaging about $25 million per portfolio company.

 
The 2016 Fintech Finance 35

1. Jonathan Korngold General Atlantic 2. Matthew Harris Bain Capital Ventures 3. Jane Gladstone Evercore Partners Podcast: Opportunistic and Distressed Debt Investing: The Strategies, Stories, and Intricacies Sponsored by Fidelity Investments May 22, 2025 4. James Robinson III & James Robinson IV RRE Ventures 5. Steven McLaughlin Financial Technology Partners 6. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park Anthemis Group

7. Richard Garman & Brad Bernstein FTV Capital 8. Gerard von Dohlen Broadhaven Capital Partners 9. Darren Cohen Goldman Sachs Group 10. Hans Morris Nyca Partners 11. Meyer (Micky) Malka Ribbit Capital 12. Maria Gotsch Partnership Fund for New York City

13. Barry Silbert Digital Currency Group 14. Jay Reinemann Propel Venture Partners 15. Mariano Belinky Santander InnoVentures 16. Justin Brownhill & Neil DeSena SenaHill Partners 17. François Robinet AXA Strategic Ventures 18. Vanessa Colella Citi Ventures

19. Michael Schlein Accion International 20. Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates 21. Rumi Morales CME Ventures 22. Alastair (Alex) Rampell Andreessen Horowitz 23. Steve Gibson Euclid Opportunities 24. Fabian Vandenreydt SWIFT

25. Vladislav Solodkiy Life.SREDA 26. Gardiner Garrard III TTV Capital 27. Nektarios Liolios Startupbootcamp Fintech 28. Lawrence Wintermeyer Innovate Finance 29. Bina Kalola Bank of America Merrill Lynch 30. Hyder Jaffrey Fintech Innovation

31. Calvin Choi AMTD Group 32. Janos Barberis FinTech Hong Kong 33. Jalak Jobanputra Future Perfect Ventures 34. Sopnendu Mohanty Monetary Authority of Singapore 35. Oskar Mielczarek de la Miel Rakuten FinTech Fund