The View from the Office.

I met up with Matthew Gerstenfeld, the co-founder and CEO of Munichain, for lunch at the Inn by Fumo in Hamilton Heights. He had chicken and rice. I had the ravioli.

Munichain builds workflow software for the municipal bond market, one of the last corners of Wall Street still run largely on email, spreadsheets and phone calls. Forbes compared it to a Salesforce-style collaboration tool specifically for muni deals. 

A single muni deal can involve an issuer, a municipal advisor, bond counsel, underwriters and a paying agent, each working from separate systems. Munichain gives all of those parties a central, permissioned platform to manage documents, signatures, analytics and notifications. 

Matthew spent his career in public finance before founding the company in 2022. He started at Oppenheimer working in municipal underwriting, sales and trading, then moved to JPMorgan in public finance risk. He later held business development roles in public finance at Ipreo, which became part of IHS Markit, and at S&P Global. 

Last year, he was named to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s Technology Advisory Group, a panel of market participants that advises the regulator on technology in the municipal securities market. 

The idea for Munichain came from watching the antiquated issuance process. Advisors, attorneys and bankers all touched the same deal but had no common place to work.

Munichain recently surpassed $6.5 billion in notional volume facilitated through the platform, with volume growing 334 percent year over year. Hundreds of deals have been managed on the system. More than 50 organizations are registered, spanning hundreds of users across banks and advisors. 

Matthew said the majority of transactions involve state and local government engagement, a sign the platform is delivering value to the public entities selling debt, not just the private firms arranging it.

Over the past several weeks, more than $600 million in deals were added to the platform with more than 300 participants included, the company’s largest multi-week period since inception.

Munichain also offers MOFLO, short for Munichain Order Flow Origination, a product that automates the order and allocation process for new issues.

On Sept. 16th, the firm will co-host with Spline Data its fourth annual conference in New York. Called MuniTech, it is designed to promote and focus on the technology that is reshaping the market.

You can connect with Matthew via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro. 

(Full disclosure, I am an investor in Munichain.)