Blog

Poland’s pre-seed layer went quiet in 2023–24. The old PFR programs wound down, private funds sat on their hands, and first checks got hard to find. That’s over. New FENG / PFR Starter vehicles have closed, a wave of small private funds launched, and a few later-stage funds started writing early checks again. This is […]

Sometimes, a breakthrough isn’t software. It’s science. When we first looked at intoDNA, it didn’t fit our usual pattern. It wasn’t a SaaS startup. It wasn’t purely software. And yet, it checked every box we care about: world-class founding team, global ambition, deep IP, and early commercial traction with real customers—including 8 of the top […]

Sometimes, the third time’s the charm. We first met the Juo team when they were still deep in product exploration mode—building and testing some of the most advanced web experimentation tools we’d seen. Not your typical web analytics stuff, but serious infrastructure-level tech. The ideas didn’t always hit the market the right way, but the […]

Sometimes, you back the founder—no matter what they’re building. When Bart Roszkowski told us he was leaving the software world to build fully autonomous insect factories, we didn’t flinch. We’d backed him before (as co-founder of Vue Storefront), and we knew what he was capable of. If Bart was taking on the future of protein, […]

Sometimes things just click. The moment I met Yuliia I knew she’s an exceptional founder who figured out a niche in a huge data observability market. I wanted to be part of her story.

We’re thrilled to announce Sasha Yatsenko joining SMOK Ventures. Sasha takes over the principal position to help us invest in top early stage startups in Ukraine and the Baltic states. First two investments have been finalized and will be announced shortly. A bit over a year ago when we announced that we planned to hire […]

Recipe for a successful pre-seed round? An experienced team, focus on being global from day one, stellar co-investors and a growing technology trend. Here’s why we invested in Bitskout.

SMOK Ventures launched in 2019 to disrupt early stage venture capital investing in Emerging Europe by connecting top local founders with VC and tech leaders in Silicon Valley and Asia. Now the fund is expanding to Romania and the rest of CEE and we’re looking to add first team members outside of the founding group. Someone […]

Big vision, successful repeat founders and technology that can literally save lives. There’s a lot to like in Shen AI, our most recent investment at SMOK.vc. Let’s break it down! The Vision In company’s own words: Most people around the world don’t have access to up-to-the-minute and readily-available diagnostics. Instruments are expensive and the healthcare systems […]

I’m proud and excited to announce that SMOK Ventures co-led the $1.5M seed round of Vue Storefront (now Alokai). Read the full article to find out why. What is Alokai? Alokai is setting the new standard in e-commerce by providing shopping experiences like native apps while boosting site performance. Technically it’s a headless frontend that works with all […]

12 months ago we launched SMOK Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund bridging Central European startups to Silicon Valley and Asia. I’d like to give you an update on how we’re doing. Year 1 in Numbers We’ve reviewed just under 1000 startups and made twelve investments, eight of which are public as of today. We’ve […]

Last updated: October 2021 SMOK Ventures launched in 2019 to disrupt early stage venture capital investing in the Eastern bloc by connecting top local founders with VC and tech leaders in Silicon Valley and Asia. Now the fund is expanding to Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltics and we’re looking to add first team members outside of […]

Sometimes, you just know. I met Jarek Sygitowicz at SXSW in 2021. Neither of us had cash for a hotel, so we crashed on the sofa of Przemek Żebrowski (now one of SMOK’s LPs). It was the kind of startup scrappiness that usually makes for a good story—and in this case, a great investment. A […]

Since launching SMOK in 2019 I’ve only had one goal in mind — to invest in every single globally successful startup founder coming out of Poland. We’ve reviewed about 1 thousand startups in the first 12 months of operation. inSTREAMLY is our third investment. What makes me believe they are one of the above? What […]

The idea that has always guided us in the Reactor was to help startup founders from all over Poland. The coronavirus, which grounded most home entrepreneurs, was one of the impulses for us to implement the program completely online – eliminating many restrictions for participants!

Yay! We’ve just made our first deal as SMOK! We invested $520k in SmartHotel, a smart new way for guests to interact with hotels or Airbnb hosts through Messenger chatbot and SmartTV app. Here is why. 1. The People I could actually start and end here. This investment is first and foremost about the team. […]