IA Capital Group

Matt Perlman is an Advisory Partner at IA Capital Group, which he joined in 2018 after serving as a Partner and investment committee member for eight years. He previously worked as a Principal at Fenway Summer Ventures, where he helped establish the firm's venture operations and led early-stage fintech investments, and earlier held roles at Lightyear Capital and Citigroup. He graduated from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.

Richard "Rick" Viton is an investor at IA Capital Group, which he joined in 2008 after roughly a decade advising the firm and its portfolio companies, and where he now focuses on the insurance industry and sits on the investment committee. His earlier career was in financial services as a senior investment banker, including roles as Managing Director in the FIG group at Credit Suisse (2005-2007) and UBS (1997-2005), where he completed over 150 financing and M&A transactions totaling more than $60 billion. He has advised many of the largest US and global insurers, including MetLife, Prudential, Nationwide, The Hartford and SwissRe. Alongside IA Capital, he is a Partner at Energy Capital Ventures and an investment banker at Ramirez & Co. He holds a Master of Management from the Kellogg School of Management and a BA in Economics from Northwestern University.

Ravi Shah is a Principal at IA Capital Group, where he sits on the investment committee and handles sourcing, execution, and management of insurtech and fintech investments. Before IA Capital, he worked at Laconia Capital Group, a B2B-focused venture firm, and at MergerTech, advising on M&A and capital structuring in digital media. He earned a B.S. in Finance with an Economics minor from Rutgers University.

Christy Lane is a Venture Partner at IA Capital and co-founder of FLORA, a direct-to-consumer fertility insurance product. She has a background in exercise science, data analytics, wearable devices, and modeling mortality risk, and occasionally advises portfolio companies on data products and the life insurance vertical. She is a Visiting Associate Professor in Orthopaedics at Stanford University, a founding member of the Stanford Wearable Health Lab, and founder of Vivametrica, an insurtech company using wearable device data to predict mortality and disease risk. She holds a PhD in Rehabilitation Medicine from the University of Alberta and an MSc in Exercise Physiology from Western University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Rehabilitation Science at the University of Michigan.

Anton Wesener is a Principal at IA Capital Group, where he has worked since 2016, focusing on sourcing, analyzing, conducting diligence on, and monitoring investments, and he sits on the firm's investment committee. He holds a B.A. in Financial Economics from Columbia University.

Bob Sollmann is a Senior Advisor in Accenture's North American Life Insurance practice, which he joined in 2013. Before that, he was an executive vice-president at MetLife, where he led the annuities and retirement businesses and had responsibility for M&A totaling $30B globally; he also led the group benefits business and built its voluntary benefits offering. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Bates College.

Brett Baris joined IA Capital in 1998 and now serves in an advisory role. He co-founded Credibility Capital Inc., a small business marketplace lending company, and served as its CEO, and earlier worked as an analyst in the Financial Institutions Group at Salomon Smith Barney. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Tufts University and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School, and previously sat on IA Capital's Investment Committee and several portfolio company boards.

Bruce MacFarlane has advised IA Capital since 2005 and has over 35 years in financial services, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. He is a Managing Partner at Venturion Capital and GPO Capital, both private equity funds, and co-founded Aquiline Holdings. Earlier in his career he led Smith Barney's financial services M&A practice, served on the RTC Oversight Board, and held senior roles at Andersen Consulting and Oliver, Wyman & Company; he holds an A.B. in Chemistry from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Cornelia Spiegel is an advisory partner at IA Capital Group, where she supports the firm's investment thesis in retirement savings solutions and annuities. She has more than 20 years of experience in financial services with private and institutional clients, having built financial products and sell-side businesses focused on guaranteed investment products and annuities. Her prior roles include Senior Client Executive for Insurance at BNY, Managing Director on insurance solutions teams at Nomura and Goldman Sachs, and leading the Equities Insurance Solutions Group at Deutsche Bank; she holds a degree from the University of St. Gallen and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Dave O’Brien is an advisory partner at IA Capital Group. He previously served as CEO of Agreement Express, a digital onboarding and process automation platform for wealth management firms and payment service providers, and was a founding member of Zywave, an insurance software provider, where he became CEO in 2013 and led its shift to a SaaS platform, along with several acquisitions and exits. He holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Iowa.

Joseph Scheerer founded Stonybrook Capital in 2012, drawing on more than 20 years of experience in insurance, reinsurance, investment banking, and capital markets. Earlier in his career he spent four years at Willis Capital Markets & Advisory and worked as an investment banker at Benfield Advisory Group, Ltd. He holds a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania.

Richie Carchia is an Associate at IA Capital Group, where he has worked since 2022 conducting market research, screening investment opportunities, and supporting fund administration. He serves as a Board Observer for Certificial. He previously was a Summer Analyst at Newlin Ventures, an early-stage insurtech-focused venture firm, and holds a B.A. in Political Science from the College of Charleston, having also studied at EDHEC Business School in Nice, France.