Ihar Mahaniok, founder and managing partner of Geek Ventures, joins Vlad Cazacu, co-founder and CEO of Flowlie, to discuss the launch of his Fund I and share some of the learnings acquired as one of the most active angel investors in immigrant founders.
Ihar Mahaniok, founder and managing partner of Geek Ventures, joins Vlad Cazacu, co-founder and CEO of Flowlie, to discuss the launch of his Fund I and share some of the learnings acquired as one of the most active angel investors in immigrant founders.
You can find Ihar Mahaniok on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mahaniok and learn more about Geek Ventures at https://geek-ventures.com/.
Learn more about Flowlie and how the platform can help you screen deals faster and discover the right connections from your network at https://www.flowlie.com.
Stay up-to-date with all our episodes by checking our website at https://www.thevcarchitects.com, following us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/thevcarchitects, and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thevcarchitects.
The VC Architects (Ep. 4) - Ihar Mahaniok (Geek Ventures)
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Ihar Mahaniok: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Ihar Mahaniok. I am a founder and managing partner of Geek Ventures. We invest in Seed and Pre-Seed companies led by immigrant founders.
Vlad Cazacu: Hey everyone. Thanks for tuning in and welcome to the VC Architects, the podcast where we share the real stories behind new VC fund managers and the blueprints used to make them successful. My name is Vlad Cazacu, and I'll be your host today as we interview Ihar Mahaniok. This is a special conversation with a fellow immigrant investor who has made it his life's mission to support more foreign founders build durable businesses here in the US.
Vlad Cazacu: Drawing from his many years of experience as an angel investor in Instacart, PandaDoc, Jeeves, and more, this episode is jam packed with insights. For more information about starting and growing your venture fund, including show notes, highlight clips and exclusive scenes, follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @thevcarchitects, as well as on our website at thevcarchitects.com.
Vlad Cazacu: This episode is brought to you by Flowlie the number one choice [00:01:00] for deal screening and network management used by hundreds of investors from 50 plus different countries.
Vlad Cazacu: Now let's dive right in.
Vlad Cazacu: Hey Ihar, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Really much appreciate you taking the time to discuss today.
Ihar Mahaniok: Hey, Vlad, really honored to be here. Really appreciate your time and happy to answer all of your questions.
Vlad Cazacu: Absolutely. I think we're getting ready for some interesting conversation here, a fellow immigrant with a very interesting investing background, angel investor turned, VC fund manager.
Vlad Cazacu: So there's a lot to unpack here. And I would actually want to start on that angel investing topic, because I heard that when you first made your angel check, you were looking for A way to make a more meaningful impact in the ecosystem and support entrepreneurs, if I heard correctly from some other folks.
Vlad Cazacu: So I was curious to unpack that a little bit and understand what exactly you meant by that and how the first check ever [00:02:00] really came to be.
Ihar Mahaniok: Yeah I was working at Google at that time as a software engineer, and I felt that, I'm in some way Part of startup alums. So Google was already a public company, but I'm not really part of startup ecosystem and I've heard of a lot of people starting companies and trying to create like next Google or something like that.
Ihar Mahaniok: And I was thinking that I have resources thanks to the Google job, and I have access, so I had really good connections at the time. And a lot of people that I knew were specifically from, not from a center of the ecosystem, not from Silicon Valley, but they were starting startups.
Ihar Mahaniok: They really wanted to grow a big business. And I was like, okay. I started hearing about those companies. I was visiting conferences, especially Eastern European conferences many times. And I was like, okay, maybe I should try to support one of them. And here's an interesting [00:03:00] thing, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: When you're a software engineer and you just want to give advice on connect, people don't value that much as if you add some money to it, right? And I found that, it's very interesting thing in the very beginning. To be an angel investor, you need to start with money and then when you get some experience and get some recommendations from existing founders, other founders really want your advice and mentorship as well.
Ihar Mahaniok: So I found a few companies in the beginning that I really, really liked. I spoke with them, I convinced them to take my money and then try to help them. And then after that was in a position to find even better founders and even more interesting opportunities for me both from a upside perspective, but also from a perspective of challenging myself and how can I help them.
Vlad Cazacu: Yeah.
Vlad Cazacu: And were you thinking in those early checks about the risk allocation that is an investment for a particular outcome? Or was it more of a [00:04:00] I just want to be more involved and spend more time with those people in a more meaningful way?
Ihar Mahaniok: I, in the very beginning, I didn't think of it formally, right? So like risk allocation, I was lucky, privileged. I can say that I had more income than my lifestyle demanded, and I could, as a lot of colleagues or friends of mine could just park it in Google stock or I could buy an apartment, things like that. But instead I felt that, it's much more impact actually work with the early stage founders and that's how I thought about it.
Ihar Mahaniok: I think the important angle from a location perspective was, is like, how can I allocate my money in a way that I can help more founders? And this is not necessarily how I would advise new angel investors think about it, because I thought less of it from perspective. Like, how can I preserve my own capital?
Ihar Mahaniok: Is like, be like super careful, but more about impact and That [00:05:00] lens really helped me to find great companies and not just limit myself or constrain myself to investing in too few companies.
Vlad Cazacu: And at what point throughout that journey, from the first angel checks to quite a sophisticated and wide angel portfolio developed, what would be, called at that point an investment thesis and started looking for a particular set of companies starting diversifying, having a little bit of that investor mentality going on rather than just the impact lens.
Ihar Mahaniok: I think I started feeling more serious about angel investing, like about five years in. I still wanted to, so I think the biggest angle on my investor mentality was that I don't want to go for small quick wins. I'm really in every deal for a long time. So I wanted to invest only in early stage companies that might take eight, 10 years to [00:06:00] fruition, but at the same time, they have a potential of doing a hundred x thousand x.
Ihar Mahaniok: That was a big part of my investment thesis that I started to figure out after several years because that's, I felt like the most rewarding experience from perspective of like early stage founders. They also have more like similar problems. Working with small team. They're also very engaging with angel investors as opposed to founders that already raised like a hundred million dollars.
Ihar Mahaniok: And I can help them because I've seen other early stage founders at the same time. I started to figure out this concept. And this is more like I discovered that this is what has worked for me before is that is what I have been seeing in the first several years, is that working with immigrant founders, either who moved to us or about to move to us, ended up being where I can help the most.
Ihar Mahaniok: Right? I found that it was, you know, this angle of introducing people to the network [00:07:00] or like connecting people or helping them go through the immigrant. Journey that I myself went through, figuring out the cultural differences was something that I was good at. And then it kept being more clear and clear.
Ihar Mahaniok: And by the time I started Geek Ventures, that was like the obvious thesis to go for.
Vlad Cazacu: I would actually want to spend a second on that moment when you started Geek Venture. So you spent almost, what, 16 years in software engineering across a variety of big tech companies like Google, Facebook, WeWork, et cetera.
Vlad Cazacu: You were an angel investor at this point with an extensive track record. So what was the motivation behind actually going full-time and doing investing? At what point it crossed the path between a passion, or a nights and evening project to something that you were willing to do full-time and give up software engineering as a result of that?
Ihar Mahaniok: You know, um, I found in my life that in order [00:08:00] to find really, really great opportunity, you often need to give up something good, right? So a lot of great opportunities that I ended up taking were only. In comparison to some, another good opportunity that I had to give up, right? And this is all about like, we need to focus on something good.
Ihar Mahaniok: So to actually get the full benefit personally from it, right? And in 2021 it was right that I had the luxury of getting several offers for a VP of engineering roles at amazing companies. Fairly early stage or mid stage. But at the same time I was thinking like, okay, I really have been doing engineering leadership for a while, and it was like my day job while on the, on evenings and sometimes weekends, I would do meetings with founders.
Ihar Mahaniok: I would talk with my existing founders on, or potential new founders. I would go to this networking events. Or demo days where I meet more founders. And [00:09:00] I realized that for a while I was kind of splitting myself a bit thin and I realized that my shower thoughts have been leaning away from engineering shower thoughts to investing shower thoughts over the years in sense that this is what I really, really felt passionate about.
Ihar Mahaniok: And this is where my passion started to move. So I was also thinking of this as like kind of Venn diagram. Where, what I enjoy, where I can bring value and what people are willing to pay for. And in 2021 I realized, maybe venture investing is that. I think that it was also there were like really good moments.
Ihar Mahaniok: Like, for example, one of my early investments, PandaDoc, hit the unicorn status, right? So all of that is like, okay, you have some conviction that my initial investments worked. And it helped me to get out of this kind of impostor syndrome problem that a lot of angel investors have in the beginning that I don't know what I'm doing [00:10:00] and helped me to start Geek ventures.
Vlad Cazacu: I do have to ask this because I would say a lot of people that we interviewed on this podcast took that journey from angel investor to maybe a syndicate leader or at least bringing some of their connections into specific deals and then sort graduating towards a venture fund being a gp, I'm wondering what made you, to some extent kind of skip that step and take the bolder risk and actually being responsible for people's money as a gp.
Ihar Mahaniok: Uh, I, it, it's a good question and several of my friends are doing syndicates. What I found is that the syndicate model just didn't appeal to me from the common incentives perspective, right? So syndicate lead on every single deal. Their incentive is to sell it to as many LPs as possible, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: They need to come and maintain a group of LPs and they need to make sure that this deal looks really great and really successful. Syndicate leads can do like several deals a week, right? And they have like [00:11:00] their benefit from having a volume, but at the same time, They don't necessarily need to pick the right valuation or help the founders after, things like that, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: So what I found is that I. I prefer to convince LPs in my strategy than convincing one deal. What I found is that the deals that work for syndicates are not necessarily the same deals that work for a fund. Imagine Airbnb early stage when nobody believed it. They had 200 rejections or something, and one fund finally believed it and it was like contrarian take, and they ended up being a future turner.
Ihar Mahaniok: If that fund tried to do an S P V like syndicate for them, they would raise no money because it was impossible to explain to others why this deal is good. And I love investing in deals that is really difficult to explain because it's something special about the founders. It's something really unusual about the market.
Ihar Mahaniok: It's their take. It's [00:12:00] something, you know, it's something where I can make a decision, make it like, really strong, convinced decision and I don't need to sell it to several hundred people and only then be successful, right? So people see my strategy, people see my track record, they invest in the fund, and then I have freedom to make decisions that I don't need to explain.
Ihar Mahaniok: But then a couple years later, they make perfect sense because the company has improved, has raised a few more rounds, and so on.
Vlad Cazacu: Absolutely, working with LPs to believe in you rather than believing in the deal itself and Right. Having to convince them once in the beginning and then trusting them throughout your process for making the right decisions on their behalf.
Vlad Cazacu: That's what I'm hearing is one of your core rationale be behind making a decision to go with a fund rather than a syndicate. Exactly. I would like to dive a little bit deeper into this: believing in you as a GP and that relationship with the LPs, [00:13:00] specifically with some of the first LPs.
Vlad Cazacu: So if we were to, peek behind the curtain into some of your first LP conversations how were they, how did you overcome that imposter syndrome of if you're a, now I'm actually responsible for other people's money and I'm asking those people to believe in me that I'm gonna make the right decision for their capital.
Vlad Cazacu: So walk us through some of your first LP conversations and specifically the first, yes.
Ihar Mahaniok: I think that one of the very, very first conversations that I remember, it's actually two conversations, 'cause two guys were very similar. One of them has been co-investing with me, his name is Yuri and he has been active angel investor and for a few years.
Ihar Mahaniok: I know him very well and he knew my track record. He missed PandaDoc and other start because we were not invested then. But then after a few years, I was, if I tell him like, Hey, Yuri, I'm invested in that deal, he would like, can you put some check for me as well? He would co-invest blind without often even meeting the founder.
Ihar Mahaniok: And then at some point he is Hey, I'm tired signing all this separate [00:14:00] s can you just, take my money and invest. He actually was one of the catalysts. For me even started, that's one. Another one was Baskar. He was not a prominent angel investor, but he was one of my early managers at Google and he knew I was angel investor and he followed my track record.
Ihar Mahaniok: And when I told him I'm thinking about starting my fund, he's like, I believe you'll be able to do it. I'll invest. The point is that I didn't have a thesis that like formulated. I didn't have a brand, I didn't have a name, I didn't have a. Portfolio started, didn't have size. I didn't have anything, but there were like several people.
Ihar Mahaniok: He was like, Ihar I believe in you. I'll invest. And I think that's, I really, you know, think that really helped me. And I only think that other VCs that start, if they can get that very, very early, like at least like 1, 2, 3 people who tell me, I believe that you'll be able to do it. I'll invest. This is really helpful.
Vlad Cazacu: And I'm curious, when you finished that group of people that early [00:15:00] believer and you started creating a little bit of momentum towards the fund, what type of LP did you see most excited about your strategy? And maybe even before we speak about this, can we briefly chat in a few sentences what your current strategy at the fund?
Ihar Mahaniok: At the fund, we are investing early stage, Pre-Seed, seed companies that are US focused US domiciled by immigrants to the US and we are looking to invest in about 60 companies from the fund. And we have a heavy follow on components.
Ihar Mahaniok: So we invest in fairly small check in the beginning and then we concentrate in our winners at later stages. We are also investing in different sectors as long as it's a tech company. So we are not very tied to very specific sector, but we love AI enablement. We love B two B, like recurrent revenue and things like that.
Ihar Mahaniok: And the important part of the strategy is that we are coming so early stage that we focus a lot on the [00:16:00] founding team. We are almost always with like almost few exceptions. We come before product market fit, but we come when we believe this team is in the right market that is big enough to build a unicorn.
Ihar Mahaniok: And this particular team knows this market in and out, that they will build a product market fit. We are looking for market founder fit. We are looking for some initial promise that this team has already done customer exploration, either in terms of interviews or maybe first revenue, things like that.
Ihar Mahaniok: And we are looking for really deep expertise and we are looking for huge vision. So we only invest in companies where we believe there is a path to big outcomes. 50 x a hundred x, 200 x. The strategy is like going for outliers, right? If we get several outliers, several hundred x outcomes like, you know, Instacart was one of my initial investments is [00:17:00] definitely an outlier.
Ihar Mahaniok: So that kind of a deal, then our fund will be very successful.
Vlad Cazacu: So outliers immigrant focus very, very early. Sounds like a very risky strategy. So I'm curious to understand who are the LPs that said, I understand the risk associated with this. I understand the upside associated with this, and I believe Ihar is the right person to make those decisions after moving from that early group of early believers, people you worked with in the past, people who knew you already and people who maybe co-invested with you so far.
Ihar Mahaniok: So, uh, by the way, I want to address that risk thing because we have really good approach to risk management.
Ihar Mahaniok: First by doing a lot of shots on Goal 60 companies is higher, much higher than average Venture funded. A lot of them doing 10, 20, sometimes 30 companies, which means that there is much higher chance that we will catch several good outcomes. And second high follow on [00:18:00] strategy with doubling down on your winners and getting a significant ownership.
Ihar Mahaniok: Basically barbell strategy where we have. Broad exposure and concentrated in the vendors. And there are several archetypes of LPs that worked really well for me.
Ihar Mahaniok: Like one, for example is tech big tech people people like directors VPs and or engineers, experienced engineers, product managers and companies like Google Facebook Microsoft, salesforce and so on, because these people understand engineering technology numbers really, really well. And they also need a risky venture fund as a counterbalance to their public stock. That vast majority of their net worthing, maybe they have a house, maybe they have a, public stock, but they often don't have enough riskiness in their portfolio.
Ihar Mahaniok: That's one angle. Another angle is experienced angel investors. I have an LPs who have dozens [00:19:00] or 50 angel deals already, and they want to invest in my fund because they see that I have higher deal flow than them. I have higher quality deal flow.
Ihar Mahaniok: I can process it with more rigor and more due diligence. And they not only benefit from a return and add into their angel portfolio with like with more breadth, but they also can benefit from seeing my deals and co-investing because big part of my value add for LPs is that I offer co-investment opportunities for them.
Vlad Cazacu: Got it. So there were a number of people there that were seeing this as also an extension of their existing investment in the private markets and a number of people who were seeing this as their allocation towards the private markets. Yeah. So there was a mix. I'm just curious from a, fundraising process perspective, how did you see close rates differ between the peoples that you kinda had to bring.
Vlad Cazacu: Into the private markets and the people who are already in the private market to just offer [00:20:00] them another opportunity to diversify and access to different types of deals, what they would otherwise get.
Ihar Mahaniok: Great question. I don't have an exact number difference for you right now, but I can tell you that of course, the closing process differed, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: So for people who never invested in. Funds or angel deals. My biggest, like biggest step was to explain to them how the venture asset class works. What's the liquidity, what's the exit approach, right? So how long their money will be locked up, how does this compare in like risk reward sharp ratio things to public stock, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: This is a big, big educational process and I even held like a special seminar to just educate people on that. And on the other hand people who have some, their own deal flow, their own deals, the, their biggest skepticism. And the question is do I have better deal flow than that?
Ihar Mahaniok: Right? And there my end is like, okay, let's go through my deal flow piece by piece. Let's see how my companies from like last year or two years ago performed. Let's see how [00:21:00] my companies from last month look. And that's a different convincing angle, I think.
Vlad Cazacu: Which one you think was easier to convert and get them on board with your strategy?
Vlad Cazacu: Where'd you find more success in?
Ihar Mahaniok: As I said, these both are my typical archetypes and both of them worked. I don't have exact answer. They were very, very similar close rates.
Vlad Cazacu: Got it. Have you tried at all institutional more, pension funds, fund of funds, et cetera.
Vlad Cazacu: Have you attempted to raise capital from them?
Ihar Mahaniok: I spoke with a few. I realized that a vast majority of bigger institutions like pension funds or endowments, they're not set up to invest in first funds, even if there is a track record of angel investment because for them it seems extremely risky.
Ihar Mahaniok: And that's pretty much a waste of time for first time fund managers. Fund of funds, there is an interesting angle that a lot of smaller fund of funds in 2022 just had no liquidity because [00:22:00] they worked with pension funds and endowments who in 2022 just pulled back significantly the funding.
Ihar Mahaniok: So I had a case of couple funder funds that I passed all the due diligence they wanted to invest and then they said, well, you need to wait for our fund close. That might happen in three months and six months and 12 months. So I ended up, going without them. There is one fund of fund that I really, really glad I ended up able to work with is Decile premier capital.
Ihar Mahaniok: So that's a fairly new fund of funds that's created by Decile Group, the makers of VC Lab that's founded by Adeo Ressi, the same guy who started Founder Institute and in their inaugural fund of funds they invested. My fund was one of the first like couple of deals and yeah, I think it's, it was a big signal of quality because they have seen hundreds of VC firms that they passed on [00:23:00] going through their program and elsewhere and they decided to invest in mine and then they helped me a lot with with other connections.
Vlad Cazacu: Fantastic. And I would actually like to to spend a second on VC Labs because we had a number of people who went through the program and 'cause always this conversation around, you know, building a fund can be a lonely experience and being surrounded by other people joining you in a similar process can be rewarding.
Vlad Cazacu: I'm curious, what do you think would some of the biggest benefits of going at War Linked Hands with a couple other people that were also on the same path as you.
Ihar Mahaniok: Yeah. This is amazing. I think that I was so lucky that I discovered VC Lab back in 2021 when very few people knew about it and I applied.
Ihar Mahaniok: I had no idea that I would be accepted. It's a free acceleration program for people who think about starting a VC firm and they help you to go from being an angel investor with no operations behind you to [00:24:00] being a proper VC with fundraising, with legal background.
Ihar Mahaniok: Backend with like accounting and everything, and they helped me to really understand what to do, but also through the community to work with others. So I have a really good working group that I met back in VC lab that I still keep in touch every week just because, we are going through the same journey.
Ihar Mahaniok: And I would totally recommend VC Lab, caveat, uh, or like, you know, disclosure that I liked the company's the VC lab program so much that I ended up investing in VC lab from my fund. So now VC Lab is our portfolio company, and I really, really invested in their success from that angle as well.
Vlad Cazacu: Fantastic. It's a true moment of coming back to the roots, right. Being able to then raise the capital Yeah. To support your early supporters. Um, yes. So I'm curious, as we discussed about this curriculum, all this knowledge you got with time and with other people that were part of the process, what were [00:25:00] some of the.
Vlad Cazacu: Early mistakes that you've done in the fundraising process. Now looking back, you realize that, you'll never repeat them
Ihar Mahaniok: again. Yeah. The biggest fundraising mistake was to relax and stop fundraising for a few months after the first close. Here's my lesson, to other VCs and to the founders, never stop fundraising.
Ihar Mahaniok: I actually had one or two LPs that committed the funds, but because I didn't do a close in the in a reasonable time to actually sign them up and take the funds when the markets turned those LPs through their commitments, right? So it's very, very important to actually keep talking to LPs or potential LPs get commitments anytime, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: And first close is very minor milestone. Do the fundraising after that.
Vlad Cazacu: And what was that exact timeline right post for a close where you started [00:26:00] realizing that it's maybe a little bit, too late or you waited a little bit too long just to put a number around it.
Ihar Mahaniok: So it was a couple months, but it's, it's like it's, you know, you never know how the markets and the future will turn.
Ihar Mahaniok: But in the hindsight, it looks so obvious, right? So my first close was in early December, 2021. So Decem, and that was like the time when everybody was looking to invest. I remember that in November, I had a really good success pitching LPs. In December, I stopped pitching LPs, even though they were still interested in giving money.
Ihar Mahaniok: And my, in January, February, I had very limited fundraising activities. I mostly focused on deal flow. And then 24th of February, 2022, the war the active phase of war started when Russia attacked Ukraine. And then immediately after that there were issues with the market. There was about the same time, March, 2022 when fed in us, started raising rates media significantly, and in [00:27:00] March, 2022, Suddenly nobody wants to invest in the VC funds, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: And I was like, oh man. Right. So I actually was thinking maybe now it's bad time to raise, maybe I shouldn't, but no, I actually took it in opposite way. I was like, okay, I own my mistake. It was wrong that I didn't raise for three months. I should start raising again.
Ihar Mahaniok: And I started raising very active from March, 2022. My success rate in closing, LPs went down, but I was still able to close because, track record was still there. The initial investments by that time we had like about five companies in portfolio were doing really, really well. And I was able to keep closing new LPs in Q 2 20 22 and Q 3 20 22, when a lot of other VCs have struggled raising.
Vlad Cazacu: So I have to ask, as you're thinking about the future of Geek Ventures, do you see the firm evolving to get new partners in expanding the [00:28:00] team or keeping a smaller team as a strategy? What are you thinking about the future of Geek ventures?
Ihar Mahaniok: So we are right now four people and it's great.
Ihar Mahaniok: We grew steadily. So Vadim joined very early then during. 2022 max and SATA joined us on investment side. Right now we are looking for a fifth person on investing side and we have six person joining on the operational side. So the firm expands. So it's very difficult and to say about partners, I am I'm very open-minded on that front, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: So I can be managing partner or general partners by myself for a long time, or I might be adding a few more people as a full-time general partners, right? So we'll see how it works depending on whether somebody will be my orbit that really can fulfill that role and compliment.
Vlad Cazacu: And how are you seeing your role evolve, right from starting the fund by yourself to now [00:29:00] soon to manage six individuals or being part of a team of six in terms of your time, dedication towards fundraising, speaking with LPs, meeting new founders now also managing the team and having to be an actual owner of an entity on top of as an investor.
Ihar Mahaniok: So the one thing that I think of is always, Clear to my LP is that while I bring to the table my experience and understanding of how to make right decisions to invest and my network and my deal flow, I need to scale up. I cannot, uh, manage their money as just like single person, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: It's always about okay, how can I grow the team that is. As a whole is much better than what I can do myself. It's not like just about delegating and so on. It's about growing team. That's better. First of all, it's by hiring people who can do something that I cannot [00:30:00] do, right? So it's like who have knowledge that I don't have, who have some personality skills?
Ihar Mahaniok: Like for example, I have two analysts that have much better than my personal, ability to dig very deep and analyze and find numbers and details on some things, right? But at the same time there is also about volume, right? So I want to keep looking at more deals, right? As an angel, I looked at maybe 10 deals a month.
Ihar Mahaniok: As a fund, we are looking at 150 deals a month, and I want to increase that to looking at 300 deals a month. I want to make sure that we maintain really, really high standards and quality and understanding, that we still invest in just one or two companies a month, but we need to have a team able to reject a lot of these 300 deals a month to come down to one or two.
Ihar Mahaniok: And of course we need to offload like operations and other tasks, right? And of course we want to provide more value add, right? So I'm looking to maybe find [00:31:00] platform people, I want to have more partnerships with others. So all of that angle, while fundraising is a very interesting angle, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: So I always tell CEOs of our portfolio companies that a good CEO spends about 30 to 50% of their time fundraising, and the rest of the time is hiring, delegating vision and strategy. That's pretty much it. Right. And in some way for me it's the same way, right? Same thing. I still have a significant percentage of my time doing investment decisions, but with a big team helping to process vast amount of data and information, I actually need to spend less hours every month on investing and on investment decisions, and thankfully a lot of the investing moving pieces and administration work can be taken care of by the team.
Vlad Cazacu: Fully understood on the investing side, but I'm curious to understand a little bit on the value add side, right? As the Geek Venture team [00:32:00] expands, how are you thinking about the relationship between founders and the firm moving from a kind of one-to-one relationship with the GP or one of the partners to now being involved with the rest of a team a head of platform, other form of support roles. How do you see that relationship evolve as a team grows?
Ihar Mahaniok: First of all, I've seen a lot of good examples in other firms, right? So where it's a bigger team helping the founders and the founders often really benefit from that, right? So it'll be quite narrow-minded of a founder to only want an advice or time of a one specific general partner, right?
Ihar Mahaniok: Because often it's not about necessarily an experience. Or like 20 years of experience of a person giving you advice, but about dedication and time and focus, but it also is about different angles, right? For example, I was not a founder or CEO myself and my partner Vadim is a CEO of 3DLook in addition to his work in our fund.
Ihar Mahaniok: [00:33:00] So he does a lot of value at founder support because he can. Give them some of the wisdom from his experience as a Series A later stage founder. At the same time, a lot of help that I can go do from connecting to my network can, doesn't have to be done from me, right? So I can download my network and connections to people in my firm.
Ihar Mahaniok: And we already do that. Where, like my Max, for example, is doing a big part of connecting our portfolio founders to a lot of investors that I initially meet and I bring to connection to our network. Yeah.
Vlad Cazacu: So to switch gears a little bit and understand your relation with other funds. You mentioned how you're building relationship with other funds and now also delegating some of those relationships to other people around the firm and trying to get the actual firm connected with other firms out there. What's your [00:34:00] perspective on collaboration around pre-seed and seed and has it changed at all over the past two years as we've gone through this market?
Ihar Mahaniok: So we are extremely collaborative firm, and I'm always surprised when I see VCs that are non-collaborative. We invest fairly small checks and we never take the round. So we invest typically between 100k and 200k, and we love co-invest with our investors because my angle is that it's always better for a founder to get 10 investors 100k each than one investor for a million.
Ihar Mahaniok: Money is the same, but you will get 10 partners, 10 firms doing all they can to help you all with their own LP base as opposed to one fund with one partner and one LP base trying to help you. So from our perspective, it's like the moment we put our check into the company, we ask: do they have allocation for others?
Ihar Mahaniok: If they do, We [00:35:00] send out note to our friend VCs, like, Hey guys, we invested in this company. Take a look. Maybe you want to invest as well. And I really want to make sure that they, first of all, the founders closed the round and their allocation really, really fast after us so they can get, the money on the account and safety and runway.
Ihar Mahaniok: By the way, runway is really important. Some other people put more money in more safety and less risk for us. But also it's a one more head of few more heads that are thinking about how to help this company. And then it's opposite, right? So it's like we love to be invited to co-invest, right? So we have this like really good relationship with a lot of VCs, especially similar size to us that they invite us to their deals, we invite them to our deals.
Vlad Cazacu: And a really important point here. Do you believe in intros before you make the investment or only after you are committed and economically incentivized into that particular
Ihar Mahaniok: company? So, we have a [00:36:00] policy that we do introductions only after we invest. And that's also dictated by our volume because we do about one or two companies every month.
Ihar Mahaniok: And in total we have more than 30 companies in the portfolio already. And our fiduciary duty, like our duty is to help these companies. Right? And with a large network of our co-investors, I need to make sure that they see the deals that are like extremely vetted by us. And obviously extreme vetting is: we put our money behind it.
Ihar Mahaniok: Another angle that sometimes I ask other investors for their opinion on a very specialized deal, like, or if it's a genome company, I have like a genome specific VC to take a, to look and say, help me, to say their opinion. But yeah, in general this is what we do.
Ihar Mahaniok: But also it is other way. When somebody recommends us a company, I always ask, did you invest? And if they didn't invest, the question is why didn't you invest? And [00:37:00] then of course if they invested and they recommended to us this, the value of this recommendation is much higher than if they didn't invest and they recommend to us.
Vlad Cazacu: What for you and your firm is probably one of the best paths of introduction. Is it another investor, is it another founder? Is it a portfolio founder?
Vlad Cazacu: What would that be? Something that you're saying, I'm gonna take the call without even looking at the deck.
Ihar Mahaniok: The best is the investor that I know, investor that I trust that already invest in the company and I have a, like a list of this and I do take calls without even looking.
Ihar Mahaniok: And thankfully we get about. I know 30 companies like that a month, 20 to 30 companies like that a month just because other investor that I trust that made a decision and invested sends it to us. That's first. Second is the founders that I really, really respect and including portfolio founders.
Ihar Mahaniok: But for those, it's okay if you didn't invest because a lot of these founders don't have their [00:38:00] own budget to invest as an angels. I'll ask, what can you tell me about that? It's not just oh, I met this guy on the internet and they asked me for an intro to you. That's not good enough if they tell me I worked with this guy, or I studied with that person, or, I really, really trust and believe in them because I've seen them do business before.
Ihar Mahaniok: That and an introduction when I take a call without looking at the deck, and of course on our LPs, send me deals. It is also something that I look at very seriously because, they are most incentivized for us to do right decisions.
Vlad Cazacu: I wanna move on to the last two rapid fire questions that are not investing related, just to get a chance for some of the listeners to learn more about Ihar. The first one is, what would you say about yourself that a lot of people don't know about you yet?
Vlad Cazacu: Something that is not really aware in the larger public.
Ihar Mahaniok: So maybe not all of you realize what this is about. That stands for Manchester United, [00:39:00] and that's a team I support. Another thing is I have a daughter that was born right in the middle of the fundraising and I still took paternity leave.
Ihar Mahaniok: It was several weeks of paternity leave. No investing. No fundraising. And I think everybody should take the paternal leave that it doesn't matter if you are a woman or a man, take a leave when you have a baby. And I also support investors and founders whenever they have children, because I think that everybody should have this opportunity.
Vlad Cazacu: That's a fantastic answer. And the first time bringing parenthood into this question, which may be also the answer to the second one, but I don't want to spoil it for you. We like to end our podcast with a point of gratitude.
Vlad Cazacu: So we've always asked every single guest on this podcast to take a second, and if they were to pick one person, unfortunately, only one, looking back at their career and their growth that they're most grateful for, who would they say
Ihar Mahaniok: thank you to? Oh [00:40:00] man. Yeah. I don't know how you can constrain it that much.
Ihar Mahaniok: Right. So, but basically from perspective of me being here at this point in the fund, I have to be, uh, to, it's like no competition. I'm thankful to my partner Lisa Arnold, who is also a founder of A players because first of all, she drives me every day and helps me be better person. We have an amazing daughter together and she introduced me to a bunch of amazing companies that I ended up investing from the fund, and she helps hiring for our portfolio companies through her a players company.
Ihar Mahaniok: It's like, you know, it's the best person support I could have for my venture firm.
Vlad Cazacu: Fantastic. It really seems like it's a, it's really a match made in heaven, both from the, the family wise and their career wise. Ihar, it was such a pleasure having you on this this podcast. Thank you so much for your transparency, your honesty, and your amazing answers.
Vlad Cazacu: And I am [00:41:00] certain that a lot of people will listen to this and get a lot of value out of it. And I do hope we're gonna get the chance to do this again at the end of the next fund and the fund afterwards, where we're gonna be debriefing as your strategy changes fund after fund.
Ihar Mahaniok: Great. Thank you very much, Vlad. It was my pleasure.
Vlad Cazacu: What a great conversation. If you enjoyed it, make sure to like and subscribe to our podcast and be on the lookout for a new episode in two weeks, featuring another amazing fund manager and their story. This podcast was made possible by Flowlie. If you are a fund manager, angel investor, family office, or syndicate lead who receives a lot of deals or simply once help sorting through the noise, create a free account today on Flowlie at flowlie.com, that's FLOWLIE.com, and get access to an AI assisted deal screening engine and network manager that will dramatically improve how you work.
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Vlad Cazacu: Find the discount code in the show notes and sign up [00:42:00] today. That's it for today's episode. See you next time.