ZAKA unveils €15M ‘Fund I’

Prague and London-based ZAKA VC has established its first fund sized €15M and ready to support early-stage startups in the US and EU. 

Founded in 2020 by seasoned entrepreneurs Jan Kasper and Peter Zalesak, ZAKA VC has started as a family office investing purely private money in pre-seed and seed startups. Since then, they have grown into a team of 6 core members, with more than 55 invested companies worldwide in their portfolio and over €11M invested. Previous investments include ExcepGen, Sensible Biotechnologies, Miros.ai, Supliful, Lime Therapeutics and Webel. 

Originally, ZAKA VC primarily focused on its domestic CEE market but over time, it expanded its presence to the UK and US. Unlike most of CEE based funds, ZAKA’s focus is to explore and fund the European diaspora in US, US-based teams, or CEE-based teams with the ambition to scale to the US. 

The demand from external investors to co-invest alongside ZAKA led to creation of its first venture capital fund. ZAKA VC Fund I sized €15M is now starting with a €10.5M first closing in June 2024 with a minimum LP ticket of €130k.

Founder Jan Kasper commented on his motivation to create ZAKA VC: “The trigger to create ZAKA was my daughter Valentina who has introduced me to the emerging startup ecosystem. I recognized this opportunity as an exciting way to invest the capital we generated in our family businesses. I suggested this idea to my friend and fellow entrepreneur Peter who has always been a tech and innovation enthusiast.”

Peter Zalesak added: “Even before founding ZAKA, I invested and helped startups, but I realized that it was full-time business. After conversations with Jan, we decided to do it professionally – to hire the right team and establish rules and processes for selection, evaluation, approval and managing the best companies that are emerging around us.”

The team comprises former VCs, founders, venture builders and tech enthusiasts such as Andrej Petrus (Newton Venture Fellow, Forbes 30u30) and Jan Buza (multiple co-founder and business developer with previous VC experience). 

The family office has invested in over 55 companies and stands out as one of the most active VC family offices in Europe. Its strong network of investors, venture partners and scouts led to the ability to co-invest alongside top lead investors and sharing cap tables with funds such as First Round Capital, Y Combinator, General Catalyst, BlueYard, Pioneer Fund, Sam Altman`s Apollo Fund and many more.  

Andrej Petrus, Head of Investment Committee at ZAKA VC, believes in a strong investment momentum being currently in place: “Two interesting factors led us to the conclusion to double down on early stage investing in the coming years and to enlarge our capital base. Firstly, there is a strong disbalance between demand and supply of early-stage funding worldwide, compared to the peak in 2021. Capital is scarce but the number of new first time or repeating founders is increasing. The second and more exciting factor is a new technology paradigm. Advancements in AI are opening new, previously non-viable business cases across all sectors. Analog to the mobile and cloud era, we believe that current years will create new category defining future decacorns in the AI space.”

The venture capital fund aims to invest in pre-seed and seed-staged startups across Europe (predominantly Central Europe, Baltics, UK, DACH) and the US, acting as a co-investor, with the ability to co-lead. The main investment focus is on B2B software, cross-sectional application of AI in B2B and biotech and health tech.