/PRNewswire/ Geek Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in visionary immigrant founders, today announced the close of Geek Ventures Fund I, LP. The.
Geek Ventures is the latest venture capital firm to launch its first fund and has $23 million in capital commitments to invest in immigrant tech founders at the pre-seed and seed stages. Ihar Mahaniok founded the firm in 2021 after working for more than 20 years as a software engineer for companies, including Google, Facebook, WeWork and Lightning AI. An immigrant himself, growing up in Belarus, he saw how difficult it was for immigrant entrepreneurs to make connections within the U.S. venture capital ecosystem.
If you haven't already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. As you know, I love stories of entrepreneurs in different parts of the world finding success through grit and creativity. PandaDoc CEO Mikita Mikado's story from 2017 gives us insight into what happened in Belarus, and how he navigated his way to raising money in Silicon Valley. Sramana Mitra: Let's start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Mikita Mikado: I'm from Belarus, which is a small, former Soviet Union state on the western border of Russia. I was born in 1986. That's about the time when things went down. My journey began there. I went to a normal Belarusian school. I was a typical Belarusian kid at that time. Sramana Mitra: How so? Mikita Mikado: Belarus, just like America, has a typical middle class. I belong to that middle class. Sramana