Scythia Ventures is a seed fund with a mission to kickstart digital (ICT) sector companies in the CIS region (ex-USSR) by aligning technology creators, industry, entrepreneurs and capital sources behind the funding and mentoring of seed and early growth investments. We receive our deal flow from various sources but most closely work with Scythia Accelerator that teamed up with Startup.ua to develop early stage deals (angel and pre-seed).
Evaluating potential investments at Scythia Ventures we look for several factors to help anticipate and mitigate entrepreneurial risk challenges.
Human Capital Matters: We invest in people, not technology.
Transparency: Integrity, openness, and honesty are essential.
Large Market: A large market provides a cushion and mitigates unforeseeable risks.
Technology: We are technology sector-agnostic. We are interested in strong technology backed by intellectual property as long as it has a clear, capital-efficient path to market.
Frugality: Focus spending on the priorities that really move the ball forward.
Momentum: Generally, if companies can't generate momentum without money, things don't change after they do. Maximize sweat equity into building traction.
Terms: We believe that deal terms should align incentives, follow a win-win framework (alternatively called mutually disagreeable), and allow the syndicate to close quickly.
Alexey is experienced generalist with depth and breadth of his experiences comes from: 1) More than decade in corporate banking dealing, analyzing and following thousand of businesses from every sector of CIS economy. With such knowledge he understands value chains within majority of industries including information, money and operation flows of any business and its success/failure factors. 2) Building and managing technology driven professional services organization thriving on superior team and execution 3) Building and managing software and SaaS development, sales and marketing organizations. 4) Building a number of largest professional communities in the CIS region on LinkedIn with combined membership over 25K.
Alexey received a MBA degree from the TRIUM EMBA program (joint degree from LSE, NYU and HEC) and a BBA in Finance degree from Georgia State University. Alexey currently serves on the boards of companies owned by Plurallion holding.
Alexander is the president of Startup.ua – investment platform and VC pitching events provider focused on attracting investments into Ukrainian start-up projects. With strong experience in creation, management and sale of various businesses, Alexander is a shareholder in a number of Ukrainian companies. In 2006, Alexander has been ranked in Top-10 manager of Ukraine by Companion business magazine. He is a member of Ukrainian Venture Capital Association (UVCA).
Alexander received his Owner/President Management (OPM) program degree from Harvard Business School and masters degree in IT engineering from National Aviation University in Kiev, Ukraine. He also currently serves as a board member at Harvard Club of Ukraine.
