Geek Ventures is the most contemporary carrying out capital company to open its first fund and has $23 million in capital commitments to make investments in immigrant tech founders at the pre-seed and seed levels.
Ihar Mahaniok founded the company in 2021 after working for better than two decades as a tool engineer for companies, including Google, Fb, WeWork and Lightning AI. Sooner than starting the company, Mahaniok became an packed with life angel investor, getting into into on the flooring flooring of corporations fancy Instacart, PandaDoc, Folk.ai, Chainalysis, Airbyte and Jeeves.
An immigrant himself, rising up in Belarus, he seen how hard it became for immigrant entrepreneurs to create connections within the U.S. carrying out capital ecosystem.
“Expertise is equally dispensed, however opportunity is now not,” Mahaniok told TechCrunch through an email interview. “I need to create extra alternatives for the wonderful ability that originates in each place the narrate on the earth. A whole bunch them terminate up spirited to the U.S. the attach they’ve essentially the most productive environment to grow the enterprise and then in overall grow their teams in worldwide locations of starting attach, which creates wonderful job alternatives for proficient folks there.”
It became that connection part that also led Mahaniok to fabricate Geek Ventures as a company to fabricate those carrying out capital connections. Thru immigrant-focused networking occasions, founders dangle an opportunity to grow their professional networks and break into the U.S. market.
Mahaniok began fundraising for his debut fund assist in October 2021 with the arrangement of only elevating $15 million. He found restricted companions resonated with his immigrant-focused thesis, as other VC corporations dangle found, including One Design Ventures, Unshackled Ventures and BGV. Mahaniok closed the fund in June with $23 million.
Backing Geek Ventures is a neighborhood of investors, including Applovin founder and CEO Adam Foroughi, PandaDoc founders Mikita Mikado and Sergey Barysiuk and Decile Capital Premier Fund I.
Working with Mahaniok is Vadim Rogovskiy, who’s splitting his time as accomplice at Geek Ventures and as co-founder and CEO of 3DLOOK, and funding analysts Maksym Strukov and Sviatoslava Luhovets. To this point the company has invested in 35 corporations, including Filmustage, NewHomesMate, ShapesXR, FoodReady and Spice AI.
The crew plans to make investments in one or two corporations a month and is focusing on 60 full investments for Fund I, with investments starting from $50,000 to $1 million.
“We watch the right steadiness between fixing precise buyer complications now (or within the come future), and an awfully courageous imaginative and prescient for the future five to 10 years from now,” Mahaniok talked about. “The most simple early founders can dangle a runt working resolution with tickled potentialities now, and an image of how they’ll grow it to an worldwide-changing company later.”
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