Odessa-born Brooklyn-raised Harvard-educated US expat living in Moscow. Partner at Kismet Capital Group, which raised the first Nasdaq SPAC out of Russia in 2020. 13 years at Goldman Sachs Special Situations Group, most recently as Executive Director. Executed GS investments in HH (Nasdaq: HHR), Kaspi (LSE: KSPI), and other tech leaders. Angel & board observer in Miro and Dostavista.

Key expertise: negotiations, fundraising, investment analysis, equity story.

Andrey Khusid

Founder and CEO at Miro — leading whiteboard platform with 10m+ users and 95% Fortune 100 customers. Raised over $75 mln from top global VCs including Accel, Iconiq and others. Built a team of 500+ awesome Mironeers across the globe.

Key expertise: B2B SaaS, team building, product design and GTM strategy.

Aleks Shamis

As a partner and head of growth, helped grow Dostavista.global from $5m to over $100m in GMV and operations in ten countries. We built a product that gives jobs to millions of people and powers millions of small businesses across the globe.

Key expertise: marketplaces, product development, fundraising, product strategy, people.

Founder and ex-CEO of Food Party, later Yandex.Chef — Russian largest meal kit delivery service acquired by Yandex ($YNDX) in 2020.

Key expertise: D2C e-commerce, FoodTech, marketing & brand building.

Founder of Webinar Group, one of the leading B2B SaaS companies in Russia and Eastern Europe with 8M monthly users and 200+ employees, which includes the leading Russian web conferencing service Webinar.ru, virtual events service COMDI, and knowledge-sharing platform We.Study. Webinar Group is venture-backed by Intel and EBRD in 2014th.

Key expertise: B2B SaaS, video collaboration.

Anatoly Marin

An ex-military officer served at two armed conflicts. Failed twice before founding a super-effective fintech company Payment Systems with 20m installs / 5m MAU and profit per employee > Amazon, Tencent, and PayPal. Runs our legendary community's camp on Burning Man.

Key expertise: human connection, interpersonal dynamics, FinTech, mobile marketing

Leo Batalov

Partner, Global Co-Head of Emerging Growth Companies & Venture Capital at DLA Piper, top international law firm.
Also, swam across the Bosporus Strait.

Key expertise: legal expertise in corporate finance transactions, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital transactions, private equity transactions and general corporate matters for companies in the technology and emerging growth sectors.

Kazakstan-born, ex-physicist, Russian with German roots. Founder and CEO at Profi.ru - leading services marketplace in Russia and Eastern Europe (Russian Thumbtack). Raised over $70M in venture capital. Co-founded Hands.ru - first Uber-like marketplace in home improvement market. Invested in 10+ companies as a business Angel. Together with S16 partners, build the Smith16 community of entrepreneurs: CEO-clubs, media, festivals, Burning Man, etc...

Key expertise: people management, executive coaching, marketplaces, community building, design & product management, fundraising.

Our strategy of building a Founders for Founders Fund is: ① To attract world-class global entrepreneurs and operators as LPs ② Invest at late seed / Round A in stellar entrepreneurs and teams with global product and vision ③ Connect Founders with fund Partners through our Advisory platform and help them grow.

How we invest:

Quick decisions, 1-2 Zoom calls. Fast and 100% clear feedback to Founders.

Seed to Round-A stages with average check of 300K.

Companies with a focus on global markets, especially US and European with market size > 1B.

Existing traction confirming strong product/market fit.

We follow, don't lead. But we can help to bring lead and advice on who to choose if multiple.

Access for Founders to our unique S16 Advisory Platform.

S16 Advisory Platform

We've started this more than 10 years ago just for fun because we loved it and felt it's the right thing to do. We helped each other grow in different ways until we found ourselves as leaders of one of the largest tech Founder community in Eastern Europe with over 300 bright leaders.

Today, we transform it into a powerful instrument for Founders' growth and call it the S16 Advisory Platform. It's a network of successful and like-minded Founders and Operators based on our existing community and an outstanding list of our LPs. Its aim is to accelerate your and your company's growth on a daily basis.

① Regular invite-only online and offline events with global industry leaders and subject matter experts.
② Fundraising terms advising e.g. advising on negotiation strategy, matching Founders with best-fit lead investors.
③ Network of successful global founders and operators.

① Building leadership team (hiring, coaching, team building, managing leaders, offsites, planning, etc).
② Fundraising (when, from who, intros, etc) and terms.
③ Learning from those who did it successfully (top Founders and Operators who can be mentors and advisors).

We provide Founders with:

To help Founders
grow we focus on:

We've invested and already helping:

A B2B browser designed for modern work, backed by Kleiner Perkins. Meetsidekick.com

Leading end-to-end software localization toolkit, prefered by 1500+ companies over the globe, including Revolut, Tesco, Daimler and many others. Lokalise.com

Meeting S16VC in the summer of 2019 was truly a defining moment for Lokalise. Thanks to Andrey, Mikhail, Alex, and others, all of whom are repeatedly successful founders in significant markets, we realized the business horizon could be found much further afield, than we used to think about it before. We combined their encouragement to explore making a global impact with the ongoing validation we have been seeing from our customers. With this, we managed to change our mindset to one of hypergrowth, where VC-backing would make actual sense. Thus, we raised our first funds, series A, and are happy to see S16VC among the investors. We plan to continue benefiting from their feedback, ideas, and suggestions. In turn, we will be developing Lokalise into the localization category leader.

— Petr Antropov, co-Founder & Head of growth of Lokalise

We were happy to help:

Anatoly helped convincing our ideal candidate for a CTO role to leave his secure job at Yandex and join us.

— Dmitry Pushkarev, Founder & CEO of Sidekick

AI-powered mobile companion for mindful nutrition and intermittent fasting from the Founders of FLO — #1 mobile product for women's health in the world. Simple.life

All-in-one service to win in app stores: app monitoring, app store optimization and customer support. Appfollow.io

Andrey introduced me to two advisors who are helping us structure our global GTM strategy.

— Anatoly Sharifulin, CEO of AppFollow

Oleg was of great help in advising us on our fundraising process and consulting on deal terms.

— Eugene Kruglov, COO of AppFollow

Next generation software that breaks down barriers between applications, gives back privacy and data ownership to users. Anytype.io

An accounting and corporate compliance app for small and medium enterprises. Osome.com

A best-in-class experience for the 25 million Americans that struggle with hypothyroidism, a highly impactful chronic condition. Palomahealth.com