One Way Ventures

Fortune recently asked our Founding Partner Semyon Dukach to share his personal story with them. The resulting op-ed gives a more intimate insight as to why Semyon (and all of us at One Way Ventures) so firmly believe that immigrants are the obvious choice for investors. Semyon talks about fleeing the USSR, coming to the US as a child refugee, and the unconventional twists and turns his life has since taken. He explores his realization that not “fitting in” is a hidden super power. That some people in business are able to come in from the outside and, for that very reason, take their vision to phenomenal heights. One Way Ventures has proved as much over the years: Our 2018 Fund I is up 2.5x on paper with a lot of upside still ahead. Our portfolio is 56% founded by minorities, which is way above the industry. Semyon and our other immigrant partners have brought together a widespread community of people with extraordinary life stories across borders. We’re proud to be part of a network that is committed to seeking out the most resilient and stubbornly ambitious founders out there. 👉 https://lnkd.in/dA3nhx2Q #immigrantfounders #immigration #VC #diversity #immigrantentrepreneurship #immigrants

⭐ We’re excited to share that One Way Ventures was selected as one of 24 GPs presenting at RAISE Global Summit - one of the best GP-LP events of the year! We were chosen from over 900 GPs to showcase our fund and our thesis that immigrant entrepreneurs make the best founders. Our partner Leonardo Arango will be on the main stage - he’s One Way’s fintech wizz, Forbes’ 30 under 30, and an advocate for increasing Latino/a presence in VC with SomosVC. We’re looking forward to meeting top LPs, GPs and business leaders at his hotly anticipated event! If you’re at the event in San Francisco later this month, reach out to Leo - we’d love to tell you more about our fund’s unique mission. https://lnkd.in/e-_fWYRp #RAISEGlobalSummit #VentureCapital #EmergingManagers #VC #immigrantentrepreneurs

SO thrilled to share that I'll be joining as a mentor for the Yale Entrepreneurial Society! I get so energized talking to aspiring entrepreneurs - can't wait for this.

🎉 Series A fundraise alert! Corvus Robotics has just announced their latest raise, bringing their series A and seed up to $18M to power their fully autonomous inventory management robots. Corvus Robotics is the only autonomous, infrastructure- and human- free system of its kind. Its drones execute real-time, accurate #inventory tracking and navigate using an AI world model. 🌙 The team is also announcing the new Corvus One upgrade, which can operate in a lights-out environment without added infrastructure like reflectors or beacons. Meaning it can operate through day and night shifts to boost operational efficiency. We invested in Corvus Robotics’ pre-seed in 2020. Since then, they can boast the following: 👷🏽♀️ 10x labor productivity  📉 Hundreds of thousands of $$$ in labor savings ✅ 99.9% inventory accuracy 🤖 Robot as a Service (RaaS) model with free future upgrades to hardware and software 🤏 Ability to operate in aisles as small as 50 inch wide 💾 Optional warehouse management system (WMS) integration Users have called its ability to “run inventory checks 24/7 without operator assistance” a “game changer.” This latest raise was led by S2G Ventures and Spero Ventures. Reach out to the Corvus Robotics team to hear more! #warehousemanagement #inventorymanagement #logistics #warehouselogistics #RaaS #warehouserobotics #robotics #drone

Max Faingezicht has been a friend and a supporter of One Way since the very beginning. Thanks for taking the time to speak to Semyon Dukach about his unconventional career, and your mutual belief in supporting immigrant founders - both as a personal mission and a wise financial choice.

♣️ Does blackjack have anything to do with VC? Well, our founder Semyon Dukach’s investment career started when he took millions from the casinos counting cards on one of MIT’s famed #blackjack teams. ♦️ His new Fast Company op-ed tells the story of his journey from the flashing lights of blackjack to the high stakes of boardrooms. ♠️ As he explains, counting cards isn't magic. It relies on a probability model, nerves of steel and a belief in the science. “Back then it felt like the greatest thrill in the world to make fools out of the casinos. “But now I can take that rational, probabilistic thinking and apply it to the far greater stakes of trying to find the companies that are going to change the world.” ♥️ Since quitting blackjack, Semyon has spent over 2 decades investing in startups, eventually launching One Way in 2017 to exclusively fund immigrant founders. Along the way, he’s leveraged blackjack’s probabilistic thinking, cool-headed decision making and pattern-matching to find founders who can beat the odds. Semyon’s op-ed offers some learnings for all VCs: ➗ It’s not random chance, it’s math 🤯 Don’t make emotional decisions 🚀 Nothing’s impossible until you get the proof Full article here! https://lnkd.in/dGhPwYhB #VC #VCstrategy #investmentstrategy #immigrantfounders

🏅 Proud to see our portfolio company Buddy.ai recognized by Forbes Centroamérica as one of the Top 10 #AI startups scaling in Latin America! 🌎 Buddy is the world’s first conversational AI tutor for kids. 🚸 Its animated virtual character responds specifically to children's speech and guides them through game-based classes for accessible 1:1 learning. 📈 It already has 11M users in Latin America. Ivan Crewkov’s inspiration for building Buddy was his daughter, who struggled to learn English after the family moved to the US from Siberia. 🇧🇷 After seeing phenomenal growth worldwide, Buddy is now launching a program for #teachers, with a pilot project planned for #Brazil schools. Buddy’s team is doing amazing things to bring children accessible English language learning through AI. Reach out if you’d like to hear more about their work! #edtech #edtechAI #LATAMedtech #LatAm #LatinAmerica #LatAmtech Forbes coverage here 👉 https://lnkd.in/dWNtygGf

🌆 Our Partner Leonardo Arango is supporting SomosVC’s Annual Summit on October 9-10 in San Francisco! 🦄 The star-studded lineup includes Micky Malka of Ribbit Capital, who's in his 4th year running on Forbes' Midas List; and Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, who coined the term “unicorn.” 🔼 SomosVC aims to increase the number of Latinos/as in the #VC ecosystem - right now, they only represent around 2% of the industry. At One Way Ventures, we’re proud of our Latino/a founders at Nuvocargo, Brex, Remoov, Minus: A Compound Foods Company, and more. If you’re at the Summit and have some questions for Leo, reach out ahead of time! #VCdiversity

We're proud of Masha Levin's work with our portfolio and pleased to see her featured in Inc. Magazine!

🖥️ Excited to see our portfolio company BRELYON on the front page of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for their “virtual reality without headsets” desktop monitors. 🏔️ Brelyon’s monitors create a 122" panoramic view filling 110° of your vision field - larger than most headsets. 👓 Founder Barmak Heshmat talks about his study of computational #imaging at MIT as a postdoc, and realizing that people don't like wearing #headsets. 💡 That led Barmak to develop a display that passes light through a processing layer to recalculate the image for the viewer - generating an ultrawide, immersive visual experience that simulates the sensation of looking out of a window. 👩🏾💻 Brelyon’s customers are using it for flight simulators, #gaming, and teleoperations, and they’re scaling up production to meet demand. “We are adding a new layer of control between the world of computers and what your eyes see,” says Barmak. Brelyon has won several awards in the past year, including Optica's 2023 Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award. 👉 Read their full profile here! https://lnkd.in/e-y33HUY #VR #desktop #display #monitor #virtualreality #simulation