The Native

Founder Sergey Skatershchikov drives investment decisions. He has a background in Russian finance and real estate through Indekon Group and served on the board of RGI International before establishing The Native in Switzerland. Izabela Depczyk, formerly CEO of both Paddle8 and The Native, played a key operating role, though her current involvement is not publicly confirmed.

The Native acquired the online auction house Paddle8 in 2016. Paddle8 had been backed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and focused on art, luxury goods, and collectibles. Izabela Depczyk, who was Paddle8's CEO, joined The Native in the same role after the acquisition. The Paddle8 brand and intellectual property remain part of The Native's portfolio, though the auction platform is no longer active in its original form.

The Native operates as a Swiss holding company, not a regulated fund, suggesting it deploys proprietary or closely-held capital. It does not publicly market itself to institutional LPs, and no evidence indicates it accepts outside commitments. The involvement of figures like Adam Lindemann as a significant investor points to a network of private co-investors rather than a traditional limited-partner base.

Youngtimers AG was a publicly listed vehicle associated with The Native, focused on acquiring and operating classic-car and collectible-asset businesses. The entity subsequently acquired C Capital Acquisition Corp, a Hong Kong-based investment firm, completing the transaction in November 2024. Ben Cheng, who previously worked alongside Skatershchikov, became CEO of Youngtimers following the C Capital transaction.

The portfolio is unusually diverse for a firm of its opaque size. The Native holds or has held positions in online art auctions (Paddle8), Australian mixed-use real estate (Richmond Funds Management), blockchain and crypto-index vehicles (Blockchain Lab AG, Jakota Index Portfolios), and the classic-car market (Youngtimers AG). There is no stated sector exclusion policy, but the firm's bets cluster around assets where cultural cachet and financial value overlap.

Swiss incorporation gives The Native access to a stable legal framework, a network of private banks and wealth managers, and favorable holding-company tax treatment for the kind of cross-border, multi-asset portfolio it maintains. The firm has no publicly stated operational presence in Switzerland beyond its Lausanne headquarters — its actual business activity appears concentrated in New York, Tokyo, and Sydney.

The Native does not fit cleanly into the single-family office category because the source of underlying wealth has not been publicly disclosed and the firm operates through operating subsidiaries rather than a pure asset-management mandate. It functions more like a permanent-capital holding company with a concentrated decision-maker, sharing some characteristics with family offices but lacking the wealth-origin transparency that typically accompanies that label.