Profile

Centana Growth Partners is a growth equity firm with deep, relevant sector experience investing in and working with companies in financial services, fintech, and related enterprise software. Centana empowers its portfolio companies by providing industry expertise as well as access to a broad strategic network of operating executives and key stakeholders across the financial services ecosystem—the Centana Strategic Network.

Tailoring investments ranging from $10 to $40+ million, Centana doesn’t use a standard investing formula, opting for a personalized and adaptive investment structure designed to meet the needs of founders, management teams, and their stakeholders. The firm’s deliberate size ensures that portfolio companies benefit from dedicated time, attention, and hands-on support, creating a synergistic relationship that supports long-term growth.

Awards

2023 Top Growth Equity Firms

2023 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Matthew Alfieri

2023 Top Software Investors, Eric Byunn

2022 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Matthew Alfieri

2020 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Tom Davis

2020 Top 25 Software Investors, Eric Byunn

2019 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Tom Davis

Key People

Matthew Alfieri, Partner

Matthew Alfieri joined Centana in 2017 and is a Partner on the investment team, and he currently serves on the Board of Eventus Systems and serves as a board observer at Beacon, Plooto, Sayari Labs, SpyCloud and Zesty.ai. Matthew was recognized two years in a row as one of GrowthCap’s Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors (2022 and 2023) and was named one of Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Wall Street (2019).

Eric Byunn, Partner

Eric Byunn co-founded Centana Growth in 2015 and is one of its Partners. Before founding Centana Growth, Eric spent over 20 years in growth equity and technology. Eric currently serves on the Boards of Athennian, Beacon, Ease, Jumio, Operto, SheerID, Teikametrics and Vena. He previously led investments in companies including Cloudmark (acquired by Proofpoint), Coremetrics (acquired by IBM), Covario (acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network), GMI (acquired by WPP), KVS (acquired by Veritas), MarketShare Partners (acquired by Neustar), One, Inc. (Acquired by Great Hill Partners), PSS Systems (acquired by IBM), Sentieo (acquired by Alphasense), Sourcecode/K2 (acquired by Francisco Partners), Varicent (acquired by IBM) and Vindicia (acquired by Amdocs). Eric spent 13 years at FTV Capital, a $3.8 billion growth equity fund, where he was a Partner, served on the management committee and led investments in enterprise technology.

Ben Cukier, Partner

Ben Cukier has 24 years of experience in growth equity, corporate finance and management consulting, including 21 years in private equity. He has developed a keen understanding of the key players, regulatory environment, and complexities of the financial services ecosystem and a passion for helping companies grow. Ben co-founded Centana in 2015, and currently sits on the Boards of Centana portfolio companies Adroit, Jumio, Plooto, Sayari Labs, Striveworks, Zesty.ai, and formerly at Alaia Capital (Acquired by Axio Group LLC) and Quantitative Brokers (Acquired by Deutsche Borse). Previously, Ben spent almost 16 years at FTV Capital, a $3.8 billion growth equity manager, where he was a Partner, served on the management committee and led the financial services practice. At FTV Capital, Ben led or co-led 11 investments in, and sat on the Boards of companies such as Aspire, Cloudmark, ETF Securities, IndexIQ, PowerShares and Velocity Shares.

Sarah Kim, Partner

Sarah Kim joined Centana in 2023 as a partner on the investment team. Sarah has over two decades of experience investing and operating in the technology and financial services industries. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Corsair (Nasdaq: CRSR) and previously the Board of Directors for ABR Re, a Bermuda-based insurance carrier. Sarah served as the Chief Financial & Business Officer of Archipelago Analytics, an insuretech platform serving the global real estate and insurance industries. Prior to Archipelago, Sarah was the Senior Director of the Investment Strategy Group at ICONIQ Capital where she led ICONIQ’s investing efforts in private equity and venture capital funds and co-investments. Prior to ICONIQ, Sarah was a Director in Private Equity at Stanford Management Company (“SMC”), the group that manages Stanford University’s
$25+ billion endowment.

Steven Swain, Partner

Steven Swain co-founded Centana Growth in 2015 and is one of its Partners. Before founding Centana Growth, Steven spent over 26 years building, operating, and advising financial services companies, including 11 years of private equity experience. In 2015, Steven was the President of Global X Management, a New York-based sponsor of exchange-traded funds, as well as an Executive Advisor at Aquiline Capital Partners, a New York-based private equity firm investing globally in financial services enterprises. Prior to that, Steven was the Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of Lyster Watson & Company, an alternative investment management and advisory firm.

Funds Raised

Centana Growth Partners, established in 2015 by experienced investors, is a growth equity fund dedicated to investing in innovative financial services and the future of finance. With a global investment mandate, the firm is currently deploying capital from a $375 million fund. Centana typically invests between $10 million and $40+ million in each portfolio company, providing customized funding solutions to meet the unique needs of entrepreneurs.

Key Investments

Beacon: Initial investment January 2020
Sector: Trading & Risk Management

Beacon is a cloud-based platform designed to empower developers, quants, data scientists and business users to scale technology and achieve their business goals. Founded by the team of senior technologists who worked with SecDB at Goldman Sachs and created Athena at JP Morgan and Quartz at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Beacon is the only vendor on the market that gives clients underlying source code, a developer platform, and infrastructure services so that clients can own the full technology stack. Clients benefit from Beacon’s next-generation platform for enterprise-scale analytics, trading, risk management, and more.

Jumio: Initial investment May 2016
Sector: Authentication Evolution

Jumio is the next generation digital identity management and authentication company. Jumio utilizes computer vision technology to verify credentials issued by over 200 countries in real-time web or mobile transactions in order to help businesses reduce fraud and increase revenue while providing a fast, seamless customer experience.

One, Inc. (acquired): Initial investment April 2017
Sector: Insurance Brokers as Merchants

One, Inc. provides a cloud-based technology platform for insurers, offering both core insurance software and digital engagement solutions. The company’s broad offerings include policy administration, claims, billing, data analytics, CRM, agency management, and customer-centric payments solutions that meet the needs of insurance companies and their customers.

Quantitative Brokers (acquired): Initial investment June 2017
Sector: Non-equity Electronification

Quantitative Brokers is the leading provider of agency-only trading algorithms and transaction cost analysis for the fixed-income and futures markets. The company’s proprietary algorithms help the buyside navigate evolving market dynamics by providing tools to achieve premium execution quality, transparency and minimize transaction costs.

5. Sayari: Initial investment August 2021
Sector: Data intelligence platform

A corporate data and commercial intelligence provider that helps financial institutions, the public sector, and multinationals navigate corporate ownership and relationships to improve transparency, reduce risk, and maintain compliance with regulations related to Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Beneficial Ownership, and Sanctions.

6. Sentieo/ AlphaSense (acquired): Initial investment October 2018
Sector: Financial Research

Sentieo, an AlphaSense company, is a market intelligence platform used by many of the world’s leading companies and financial institutions. The AI-based technology platform helps professionals make smarter business decisions by delivering insights from an extensive universe of public and private content—including company filings, event transcripts, news, trade journals, and equity research. The platform is trusted by over 2,000 enterprise customers, including a majority of the S&P 100. The company employs over 1,000 people across offices in the U.S., U.K., Finland, and India.

SheerID: Initial investment January 2018
Sector: Digital Identity

SheerID is a digital verification platform which provides real-time affinity-related discount eligibility verification for promotional activities and loyalty programs, enabling enterprises to deliver authenticated experiences while minimizing fraud and providing seamless verification services within the brand’s native environment.

Vena: Initial investment July 2016

Vena Solutions provides a multi-tenant, SaaS CPM platform that offers performance management and business intelligence solutions across a number of industries, including financial services, healthcare, consumer goods, energy and resources, professional services, and more. The platform provides flexible and cross-functional capabilities to support a variety of business use cases, ranging from back-office financial management to core revenue and demand planning.