ZAS Ventures

ZAS Ventures

ZAS Ventures was founded by Andriy Zinchuk, a Ukrainian entrepreneur who previously co-founded BeFunders and advised accelerators including TechStars and Antler. The firm is built around the thesis that Ukraine’s outsized technical talent — the country has produced more than a dozen unicorns — only needs an institutional on-ramp to US capital and go-to-market networks. Zinchuk operates the venture alongside tech and operations lead Artem Volkhonskyi, a former chief digital officer at NovaPoshta and UMH, creating a partnership that marries startup-building experience with large-scale operational know-how. The firm targets pre-seed and seed-stage startups in Central and Eastern Europe, with a concentrated emphasis on Ukraine. It invests across software verticals including SaaS, cloud infrastructure, and digital health, using SAFE agreements in increments of $50,000 to $200,000. Confirmed positions include sustainable-packaging startup S.Lab, AWS-cost-management platform Cloud Avocado, and Mantis Analytics, which builds adversarial-misinformation monitoring tools. The portfolio extends into AI-enabled drug safety through DrugCards and mental health treatment via Aspichi. Beyond capital, ZAS provides a structured post-investment program of strategic audits, go-to-market coaching, and direct introductions to later-stage funds — explicitly designed to reduce the time founders spend on fundraising. The firm has deployed over $2 million since inception and absorbed the fundraising, memo-writing, and pipeline work of over 1,000 startup evaluations, according to its website. ZAS does not publicly disclose its total assets under management. Its advisor bench is functionally a roster of current or former operators from Google, Meta, Amazon, and eBay — with specific names including Google’s Deniz Pecel, Shopify’s Anya Rasulova, and eBay’s Yuriy Zaremba — who provide technical and market-entry mentorship. The firm partners formally with the Ukrainian Startup Fund, UNIT.City innovation park, and Founder Institute Kyiv chapters, embedding itself within the region’s primary startup infrastructure. What distinguishes ZAS is its structural identity as a venture firm built to be a logistical conduit rather than a pure financial allocator. The partnership’s operating history sits inside the Ukrainian ecosystem — Zinchuk’s prior ventures span real estate, gaming, and crowdfunding — while its venture partners and advisors are largely US-based corporate practitioners. This bilateral architecture means a portfolio company in Lviv can test pricing with a former Amazon product lead and a Google cloud engineer before it ever opens a US bank account.