In January 2012 Javelin Ventures, a San Francisco-based VC fund lead $4.5M Series A round of Thumbtack, 8-person local services startup based in Bay Area. Four years later the company has 800 employees and raised more than $270M of funding being valued at $1.25B in the most recent round. Â
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One of the last month's big startup news in Krakow was Estimote getting a $10.7M Series A Funding from Javelin Ventures where Alex Gurevich is a Partner and was a lead investor in that round joining Estimote's board.Â
Alex, prior to joining Javelin, was helping to establish one of the first venture capital funds focused on high tech investments in Eastern Europe & Russia. Before getting into VC world Alex was the first employee at ooma, a venture-backed company in the consumer electronics, VoIP (voice over IP) space, where he led the company’s initial product roll out, customer acquisition, and retail distribution strategy in product management and business development roles. Â
Alex is visiting Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week where Estimote will be launching their new product. We used that opportunity to bring Alex to Krakow, so he can share with us his perspective on raising capital from US investors and building $1B+ companies.
At Javelin, Alex is a generalist, looking for disruptive opportunities across a variety of sectors, including digital media, marketplaces, e-commerce, education, mobile, and enterprise SaaS. He is a board director or board observer for Engrade (acquired by McGraw-Hill), FEM, KitchIt, KopoKopo, Pixalate, Plug.DJ, Spotsetter (acquired by Apple), Skytree, Telerivet, TheHunt (acquired by Pinterest), Thumbtack and Weddington Way. Alex holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was co-President of the Venture Capital Club, a leader of a Global Study Trip, and a Board Fellow.
Co-Founder and CEO of Estimote, Inc. a sensor-based analytics and engagement platform for retail stores.
Prior to founding Estimote he co-founded AdTaily, the largest self-service ad network in Poland where he served as Board Member and the Head of Product. Jakub graduated in 2005 from the Jagiellonian University with a degree in Applied Computer Science and Computational Physics. He is also an alumni of YCombinator (S13), an influential startups incubator based in Silicon Valley, USA.
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