ZAKA

ZAKA

ZAKA was founded in Prague by entrepreneurs Jan Kasper and Peter Zalesak, whose prior operating experience spans retail, ecommerce, energy, real estate, and agriculture. The firm remains anchored by an investment team that is majority former founders and operators. Its leadership structure places day-to-day capital deployment under Andrej Petrus, a Forbes 30u30 listee and Newton Venture Fellow who oversees the investment committee from Prague. The founding partners maintain visibility across 47 portfolio-affiliated companies across five countries, blending operator instincts with venture economics. The firm writes seed and pre-seed checks into tech startups in the US and Europe, with an explicit emphasis on Health & BioTech and Industrial Tech. Its portfolio of 92 names spans 15 sector filters on its website. Healthcare and life sciences account for roughly one-third of the disclosed book: confirmed positions include programmable mRNA delivery company ParcelBio, AI-based protein discovery platform DeepSeq.AI, single-cell simulation engine CellType, and CAR-T developer KiraGen. Outside biotech, ZAKA backs quantum hardware (Sygaldry Technologies), orbital fusion (Zephyr Fusion), robotics (Verne Robotics), earth observation (AxionOrbital Space), and battery manufacturing (Ateios Systems). The portfolio also contains direct fund investments, including exposure to B2B accelerator Startup Wise Guys. Geographically, the portfolio reaches 19 countries, with strongest density in the United States, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Germany, and Slovakia. The firm maintains a Silicon Valley presence led by Filip Orth from Santa Clara University, who runs origination in the Bay Area. In May 2026, a significant portion of the team was on the ground in Palo Alto, Stanford, and San Francisco conducting founder meetings and relationship maintenance, reinforcing the US-Europe bridge model the firm markets. That same month, ZAKA participated in ParcelBio's $13 million seed round, led by Breyer Capital. The firm's website lists a minimum ticket size for outside investors of $130,000, suggesting a hybrid structure that may accept qualified limited partners alongside the general partners' own capital. ZAKA's key structural differentiator is its operator-founded, single-GP-committee architecture. Unlike many European seed funds built by former consultants or bankers, ZAKA's general partners — and most of its investment analysts — entered venture from company-building roles. That shapes a portfolio that spans from AI-native drug discovery to hotel SaaS without adhering to a single thematic silo. The absence of disclosed AUM or regulatory filings typical of larger EU managers further indicates a lean, proprietary capital base whose investment cadence is paced by founder judgment rather than a deployment clock.