My Investment Thesis as an Angel Investor
I make Angel and Pre-Seed investments in Ukraine, US, Germany, Poland and Baltics-based startups innovating in data processing and storage, cloud infrastructure, and deeptech where:
(1) The idea has a global appeal,
(2) You have initial paying customers,
(3) My background and experience can provide value that other investors cannot.
Startups come in all shapes and sizes and I do not profess to know the formula for an ideal startup. However, I do have a preference for the types of startups I invest in, and I seldom deviate from my investment thesis. This preference is largely based on my ability to help your startup with advice, leads and referrals, in addition to providing a financial investment.
I can help you the most if you target a global audience. I believe founders learn the quickest if they get good early feedback from customers, and this means founders should be ready to relocate the sales office and, potentially, the HQ to the United States.
领英推荐
I also have a preference for Ukraine-based or Ukrainian-founded startups. While this does narrow the set of my investment opportunities, I am focusing on Ukrainian startups for a reason. I am originally from Ukraine and have been fortunate enough to receive good education in Europe and the US, and work for major US tech companies that define the Cloud space today. I would like to contribute back to Ukraine and even the playing field for a nation that is still struggling to find its footing. Ukrainian IT professionals are very good, if I may say so, so they might be one of the best bets Ukraine has today. What they lack is a bit of encouragement to start product companies, and a supply of capital and actionable advice.
I offer 15 years of experience as senior manager of product management at Snowflake, Google, Amazon and Microsoft in the US and, more recently, in Germany. I also co-founded two product startups and two IT consulting companies.
If you are a German startup, I am a mentor at Techstars Berlin. If you are a Ukrainian startup, I am running a leading Ukrainian startup and investment news portal (ucluster.org) and have established connections with most Ukrainian IT clusters.
With my angel investment you will get a shoulder to cry on (and you will probably need one, as a startup founder), someone to celebrate your early successes with, and lots of unsolicited product strategy, pricing, cloud technology and guerrilla marketing advice. I am also happy to share my connections in large US tech companies, when it makes sense.
Lastly, I am currently running an Investor Elevator Pitch (page in Ukrainian) campaign and would be happy to record your pitch (in English) if your startup fits its criteria.
Scaleup CPO & GM | 2X PE Operator | B2B SaaS * EdTech * Sustainability Tech | Wharton
4 年Elaina Shekhter you should know Serhii
:-) I get about 3 solicitations/week from (mostly) Ukrainian tech sourcing companies to pitch us buying their services. Their talent, capabilities aside, I think they would benefit from a Ukrainian startup that worked as a service aggregator (maybe with an industry solution overlay) who fronted these companies as a U2G (Ukrain to Globe) provider. This would be a startup worth investing in, especially if they had 2-3 industry experts in their team)...