Raising a VC fund during wartime

There are now multiple cohorts of Ukrainian founders who have raised, scaled, and exited during the full-scale war. The companies that get covered in Western press are usually the obvious ones — defence-tech, cybersecurity, satcom. The wave Andrew is most interested in is the boring one: SaaS, fintech, devtools, supply-chain. The companies that raise $1–3M seed rounds, ship product to global customers, and demonstrate that Ukrainian engineering and operating talent is competitive on its own terms — not just because of the political moment.

That’s the thesis behind ZAS Ventures, and it’s the lens this episode brings to bear on every other topic we cover: how LPs actually evaluate emerging-market managers, why the diaspora is doing so much of the routing of capital, and what the next two years of consolidation might look like.

The conversation is dense — write things down.