Geek Ventures targets immigrant founders with its first fund

Geek Ventures is the latest venture capital firm to launch its first fund and has $23 million in capital commitments to invest in immigrant tech founders at the pre-seed and seed stages.

Ihar Mahaniok founded the firm in 2021 after working for more than 20 years as a software engineer for companies, including Google, Facebook, WeWork and Lightning AI. Prior to starting the firm, Mahaniok was an active angel investor, getting in on the ground floor of companies like Instacart, PandaDoc, People.ai, Chainalysis, Airbyte and Jeeves.

An immigrant himself, growing up in Belarus, he saw how difficult it was for immigrant entrepreneurs to make connections within the U.S. venture capital ecosystem. Visit their website located at the geek.vc domain name.