Meet our mentors
Vladislav Poshmorga
Chief Investment Officer, SDVentures
Vladislav has over 25 years of experience in finance. Currently, Vladislav is working as a Chief Investment officer at Social Discovery Ventures. In 2019-2020 he was in charge of corporate restructuring at Qiwi Plc. Previously, he held the position of CFO at S.P.I. Group (a leading international producer of premium spirits) and worked at investment banking and investment management at Salomon Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley in the UK and Switzerland.
Igor Ryabenkiy
Managing Partner, Altair
Doctor of Business Administration. Created, invested and sold plenty of prosperous enterprises. Successfully led enterprises and exits. Has over 20 years of investment experience. Managed leading investment syndicates. 20+ years of investment experience, Igor began his angel investor career long before "startup" and "innovation" became buzz terms. Turning into a 'super angel', following his successes during the start-up boom, Igor put together a team and founded Altair Capital.
Mikhail Taver
Managing Partner, Gagarin Capital
Mikhail has done over 250 deals in 20 years of M&A and Private Equity. Ex-executive of Nafta-Moskva (one of Russia's most successful financial groups at the time). Former executive of AAR consortium (Alfa Group, Access Industries and Renova Group), management of 50% stake in TNK-BP, a joint venture of the largest oil companies of Russia and the UK. Mikhail holds CFA, ACMA and CGMA designations.
Anna Drobakha
Chief Marketing Officer, Avito
19 years in marketing: 11 years in FMCG (consumer electronics), 8 years in IT. 6 years @Google, working locally in Moscow and globally in Zurich @Google Switzerland, leading digital transformation of marketing for global headquarters of Swatch Group, Swarovski, Credit Suisse. 2 years @Avito, building digital approach to marketing.
Alexander Kudasov
CMO at Dating.com Group
Digital marketing expert & start-up manager. Experienced as a CMO of an international company with multi-million $ marketing budgets. History of 100%+ revenue growth by effectively managing teams of 40+ marketing specialists. Mentoring on: digital marketing, user acquisition, customer development, new markets expansion, efficiency assessment.
Iskander Mirmakhmadov
Co-founder EXPF
Iskander has 5 years of practice in data science. He has extensive experience in A/B experiments and metrics development for large Russian companies. His specialty is e-commerce, retail, edutech and finance. Clients: Mail.ru, Aeroflot, Skyeng. He is a regular speaker at conferences and writes articles about A/B experiments
Viktor Prokopenya
Managing Partner, VP Capital
A serial IT entrepreneur and investor, Viktor Prokopenya is the founder of the global investment firm VP Capital. A trained lawyer, computer scientist, and a Doctor in Business Administration and Behavioural Economics, Viktor is passionate about cutting-edge and innovative technologies. He has founded a number of technology businesses, grown them successfully into leaders in their field and subsequently sold them. Viktor has won the prestigious Belarussian IT entrepreneur of the year award three times.
Anastasia Shvetsova
Partner, Gagarin Capital
Anastasia is an expert in investors relations and public communications. She is also Managing Partner at MA Family, a tech-focused communications studio. She has a unique background as a reporter, an investor and a communications specialist. She did fascinating work with Facebook, Busfor, Houzz, and WeWork, was a Forbes writer and actively supports women in VC.
Yuri Mazanik
Co-Founder, Belka Games
An entrepreneur with 10+ years of experience in the technology business (IT, AdTech, Gaming). Passionate about innovation through technology. As a co-founder of Belka Games where he built marketing and product development from scratch, Yury has created one of the most dynamic growing game development company. As a result, Belka Games became a strategic partner for Applovin Inc. in the CIS region.
Anna Melnova
VP of Growth, Aliexpress Russia
10 years in IT Marketing: Beeline, Yandex, Avito, Mail.ru. Started to work with mobile apps at the dawn of industry, when all mobile apps of Yandex were managed by one team of several people. Diverse experience in IT from launching startups and failing, to managing huge resources on the biggest commerce platform in Russia. Now focused on understanding the Alibaba way and bringing the best to Russia.
Vitaliy Cheremisinov
Co-founder EXPF
Vitaly has been working as an analyst and data science consultant since 2014. He has developed data management and statistical experiment methodology at Russian and European companies. He launched several online education projects about data science and A/B experiments. Key clients: Mail.ru Group, M.Video, Citymobil taxi service.
Olga Starodubova
Senior Director, Digital Marketing at Veeam Software
Experienced Digital Marketing Director with a 10+ years demonstrated history of working in IT Marketing. Skilled in marketing management, passionate about digital transformation. Mentoring on: digital marketing, marketing campaigns.