Ukrainian venture capital group launches partnership to challenge sector ‘orthodoxy’

Ukrainian investment group Roosh has launched a partnership with Canadian startup builder Tiny Studio in a bid to challenge the “private equity orthodoxy” across Europe.

Roosh, which is based in Kyiv and London, is spearheading the project through Roosh X, one of its investment wings that focuses on scaling and building profitable businesses.

The partnership will deploy funding ranging from $500,000 to $10m, and target profit-focused tech companies with more than $5m in revenue and which aim to securely grow are currently “unmet by traditional financing options”.

Roosh also said it would make its platform of engineers, operation experts and business strategists available to the companies it invests in.

While the firm said it was seeking to invest in a range of sectors, it has centres of expertise in gaming, fintech, artificial intelligence and machine learning, consumer apps, marketing and entertainment.

Den Dmytrenko, co-founder and general partner at Roosh, said: “This is a radically different proposition to traditional private equity.

“Combining unapologetic ambition with our ecosystem’s extraordinary array of talent and Tiny Studio’s expert startup-building capabilities, this alliance will provide leadership teams with access not only to capital, but to support of breadth and depth simply not currently available from traditional financing options operating in the European market.”

Dmytrenko added: “We’re creating cash cows, not unicorns.”

Roosh, which was founded by Dmytrenko and Sergey Tokarev, derives its name from the Ukrainian for ‘go’ or ‘rush’.