Felix Schliemann, an Associate at Oak HC/FT, joined the firm in 2023 and focuses on growth equity and early-stage venture opportunities in fintech.
Prior to joining Oak HC/FT, Felix was an Associate at Spectrum Equity, where he focused on investments across software, internet and info services.
Felix graduated from the Huntsman Program at the University of Pennsylvania receiving degrees in Economics and International Studies.
In college, I worked at a financial education startup and got to see many of the problems in the financial services industry firsthand like an underserved / unbanked population, poor experiences with traditional FIs, and increasing amounts of fraud. After spending the first few years of my career as a generalist investing across software and technology, I joined Oak recognizing that many of the biggest issues in financial services continue to persist and the opportunity to partner with great fintech founders trying to solve them is as great as ever.
Oak is unique in their ability to back entrepreneurs across stages and over the long term. Combining that approach with the firm’s domain expertise and expansive network can make a real difference for founders looking to build an enduring, transformational company.
Despite being one of the fastest growing areas of technology, fintech still only makes up ~2% of total financial services revenue across the globe. This share will inevitably increase as fintech continues to lead innovation within financial services, but that’s not to say there aren't significant obstacles.
The challenge of digital identity today is more pressing than ever when it comes to fintech adoption as bad actors become increasingly sophisticated and leverage criminal networks and new technology like AI to outsmart current protections. We’ve seen many digital identity solutions come to market in the past few years, especially as COVID increased the number of our online interactions, but we’re still only at the beginning. New technology leveraging massive amounts of online transaction data will enable both new and existing fintechs to identify users more seamlessly and reliably while maintaining secure privacy controls.