Ukrainian Anton Borzov and two of his colleagues from Dnipro were among the first employees at WhatsApp. After the deal with Facebook, all three moved to the US.
After 10 years at WhatsApp, Anton Borzov moved to the position of Head of Design at Neeva (a personal search engine with a focus on privacy). Borzov worked there for three years.
Anton Borzov always had a desire to maintain relationships with founders from Ukraine, so he made his first angel investment - in Petcube. Anton Borzov knew Petcube co-founder Alex Neskin even before Petcube, both of them were interested in technologies from the time of Flash and VR, talked about this topic in Dnipro.
After that, Borzov had a number of angel investments in Ukrainian startups: 3DLOOK, Spin.ai, Pawa, Fuel Finance, Propertymate, Workee, Nutrisense. Checks from $50 thousand.
Borzov works closely with his portfolio companies, helping with advice on design, product, product market fit, etc.
Now, together with his WhatsApp ex-colleague Summer Kim, Anton Borzov is launching a venture fund with the idea of combining UX and AI. The first STRATMINDS fund was created in 2018, and fundraising for two new STRATMINDS funds for $100 million is underway.
The fund will invest at stages from pre-seed to Series A. Depending on the company, the fund's checks will range from $250,000 to $500,000, in some cases up to $1 million. Most of the investments will be directed to American startups.
