SMOK Ventures

The partnership is led by Diana Koziarska, Borys Musielak, and Paul Bragiel. Additional investing partners include Dan Bragiel and Oleksandr Yatsenko, who cover specific geographies such as Ukraine and the Baltic states. Each partner's sector focus and past deals are publicly listed on the firm's team page.

The firm sources through a deep network built from founding Poland's startup ecosystem infrastructure — including the Reaktor coworking space, ReaktorX accelerator, and Startup Poland — combined with Paul Bragiel's Silicon Valley pipeline. This creates a bilateral flow that surfaces CEE-trained founders early and connects them to US go-to-market resources.

SMOK operates as a traditional venture firm, not a family office. While the underlying fund structure is not publicly detailed — AUM is undisclosed — the firm's public positioning and partnership model align with an institutional early-stage VC rather than a single-family investment vehicle.

The firm's public materials describe only direct, early-stage investments in software companies. There is no public indication of fund-of-funds commitments or LP activity. The portfolio page and team deal lists reflect principal investments at pre-seed and seed stages.

SMOK targets pre-seed and seed-stage software startups. Its team members list investments in companies from the earliest founding phase, and the firm's 'What we look for' criteria emphasize founder-market fit and early-stage sector understanding rather than later-stage metrics.

Paul Bragiel is managing partner of Bragiel Brothers, an early-stage fund with over 30 pre-seed and seed investments, and Dan Bragiel is a managing partner at BRISE Capital, a CEE-focused family office. Both operate under separate mandates while the partners serve simultaneously at SMOK, creating overlapping but distinct investment vehicles.

Yes, SMOK lists a Kyiv office and partner Oleksandr Yatsenko leads coverage of pre-seed startups from Ukraine and the Baltic states. The firm has publicly backed Ukrainian-related companies such as LetsData, and its post-invasion operational posture appears to maintain the same early-stage commitment to the region's startups.