1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach, Managing Partner at One Way Ventures (Part 1)

Semyon Dukach is Managing Partner at One Way Ventures, a VC fund focused on immigrant founders.

Sramana Mitra: We are going to have a conversation with Semyon Dukach, the Managing Partner at One Way Ventures. Let’s introduce our audience to yourself as well as to One Way Ventures. 

Semyon Dukach: One Way Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund that backs startups founded by the strongest immigrant entrepreneurs in the US and Canada.

Sramana Mitra: What is your background? 

Semyon Dukach: I was an immigrant-refugee as a kid from the Soviet Union. I have a computer science background. I did some work at Columbia and MIT on internet protocols. At my first startup, I ran the MIT blackjack team, which was the basis for the movie 21.

After that, I started a software company called Fast Engines, which grew in the 1990s and sold in the early 2000s. For the last 20 years, I have been a full-time investor, most of the time as an angel. Six years ago, I took on the TechStars accelerator in Boston, which I ran for a few years. In 2017, I left TechStars to start One Way Ventures. 

Sramana Mitra: How big is One Way Ventures? What is the fund size?

Semyon Dukach: Our first fund was $28 million. We are currently raising a larger second fund. 

Sramana Mitra: What stage do you like to invest in?

Semyon Dukach: Our sweet spot is the seed stage – the institutional seed round of a couple of million dollars. We do a little bit of pre-seed and quite a few series A. We don’t lead the series A round, but we participate when it involves high-profile immigrant founders. 

Sramana Mitra: Is your definition of a seed a two-million-dollar check?

Semyon Dukach: The typical institutional seed round these days is around $2 million to $3 million. Sometimes, it’s $5 million. For our fund one, we typically had a $500,000 check size. We would sometimes lead these $2 million or $3 million rounds. For our next fund, we are going to lead more often at the institutional seed stage. 

Sramana Mitra: What kind of businesses do you like to invest in? What is your investment thesis?

Semyon Dukach: Our investment is around immigrant founders. We are agnostic to the vertical. We have four investing partners right now and each of us has our areas of interest where we look more than others. These change over time as well.

I’ve done a lot of AI for various industries. I’ve done some stuff in outer space. I funded one actually. I also invested a lot in FinTech. My other partners did some enterprise tools. There is a range of industries that we cover. 

Sramana Mitra: What about geography?

Semyon Dukach: We invest mostly in places where we are physically located. I’m in Boston. I also cover New York quite a bit. We also have a venture partner in Montreal. Our other partner is on the West Coast, in the Bay area. It’s usually those locations.

Sometimes we participate when there are very strong VCs who we know well in other places. We don’t lead the company when we don’t know about them and when they are not in our core geographies. 

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach, Managing Partner at One Way Ventures
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