Ex-Affirm Exec Named Latest Bain Capital Ventures Partner

Bain Capital Ventures has appointed a former executive from buy now, pay later platform Affirm to serve as its newest partner.

As TechCrunch reported Monday (Dec. 6), Christina Melas-Kyriazi will focus her efforts on seed and Series A funding for up-and-coming FinTech and commerce firms, working out of Bain Capital Ventures’ San Francisco office.

“Christina’s expertise at the intersection of fintech and e-commerce is a perfect complement to BCV’s deep focus on these domains,” said Bain Capital Ventures Partner Merritt Hummer, who met Melas-Kyriazi while they both attended Harvard Business School.

Another BCV partner, Matt Harris, adds that the firm has long been searching for someone with expertise in the space where commerce and FinTech intersect.

Matt Harris, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, agrees, saying his firm had been “looking for a long time” for someone well-versed in the intersection of FinTech and commerce.

“More than half of our investing dollars go to work in those two categories,” Harris told the news outlet. “And what we’ve experienced is that some of the best companies don’t fit neatly into one category. They’re often at the seams between two activities.”

In addition to her time with Affirm, Melas-Kyriazi has been an angel investor, a road that led her to BCV, she says.

“The move to VC felt like a natural transition,” she said. “There are still so many hard problems left to solve, especially within fintech and commerce tech and I am excited to continue to work with great founders and back the next generation of mission-driven fintech founders.”

Read more: Socure Raises $450M at $4.5B Valuation in Oversubscribed Series E

BCV says Melas-Kyriazi’s arrival comes at a time of expansion for the firm, which raised $1.3 billion earlier this year and amid a new focus on seed and Series A funding.

That isn’t to say BCV is only pursuing those types of offerings. Last month, the firm was one of the new investors in a $450 million Series E round at the digital identity verification and fraud platform Socure that valued the company at $4.5 billion.