🇵🇱 Poland’s SMOK (that's us!) closes $25m second fund. We want to invest in 25-35 early-stage SaaS, AI and gaming startups from across Central/Eastern Europe and the region’s diaspora abroad with cheques of $100k-1m. sifted.eu/articles/smoks-sec…

Announcing our 2nd Bulgarian 🇧🇬 deal, Paypercut, a fintech by ex SumUp, Rippling, and Payhawk VPs. Paypercut is building the payment infrastructure for online merchants across Central and Eastern Europe on stablecoin, challenging Stripe in the region. tech.eu/2026/06/03/paypercut…

I’ve published 700 posts on X over the last five years. Scattered through them is the same advice I keep repeating in DMs and 1:1s with founders. I went back, pulled the 50 highest-engagement posts that contain actionable guidance focused specifically on Eastern European founders, Bookmark it. Send it to your co-founder. The Ultimate CEE Founder FAQ: medium.com/p/the-ultimate-ce… If your question isn’t here, ask by commenting on this post and I'll answer.

Looking good: Primio April numbers in. - ARR: $282K - Mo1 NRR: 217% (vs 147% in March) - Mo1 retention: 85% (vs 74% in March) Lots of tourists. The ones who stay upgrade fast, often same day. Support tickets mostly store submission related, not the agent quality anymore.

As a VC I back human creativity. Usually via term sheets, but last night it was at an art auction. Thrilled to own a piece by Ukrainian artist Hanna Pushkarova. Her "Dancers" show resilience as inspiring as any founder’s pitch. Supporting talent on all fronts #HumanCreativity

"What are people building on Primio?" We sampled 300 projects from the last six weeks. Not what you'd expect. No to-do apps. No calculators. A parish management system. An FX signals dashboard. A vocal stem isolator. A rental property app in Spanish. A Greek restaurant ordering app. CRMs, dating apps, fintech dashboards, fitness trackers, games. When the cost of building drops to near-zero, people build what they actually need.

“I’m a smart student interested in venture capital. I’d love an internship at your firm.” I get these emails all the time. I rarely reply to those nowadays. If you’re one of the ghosted students, this article is for you. medium.com/@michuk/this-is-t…

Age verification and proof of human can (and will) be done using the same open standards. The key here is privacy preservation & zero knowledge proofs so no ID or biometrics is sent to anyone. I'm not sure I've seen @vonderleyen being in agreement with @pmarca before. Tomorrow we are showing how this will work so stay tuned.

When your portfolio company organizes a summit I guess something has worked out. Good job @authologic! #smokportfolio

I built the first emergent AI simulator — 1 Million player interactions: 600,000 conversations, 13.4 hours straight peak play time. I distilled the lessons from this unique dataset — and wrote about what's on the horizon of this technology LifeSim: Real-time Simulation of Artificial Life

Disinformation campaigns 📢 are getting more sophisticated—but also more fragile. Proud to see LETSDATA 🇺🇦 uncover a campaign that ultimately backfired on its creators, demonstrating the “boomerang effect” 🪃 in action. Excited to back the team! resiliencemedia.co/letsdata-…

Our partner @michuk is warning founders not to take money from unverified investors. "Always due diligence your potential investors just like they due diligence founders". Watch the whole Forsal.pl interview (in Polish): youtube.com/watch?v=d1rGJcm5… #venturecapital

Thank you @forbes_ukr 🇺🇦 for covering our investment in Principle! forbes.ua/news/ukrainskiy-st…

Principle wins the KPMG Enterprise Innovation award at @sxsw - congrats to our portfolio founders Artur Kiulian & Anton Polishko, PhD. Principle 🇺🇦 is bringing Pentagon-style wargaming to the corporate boardroom. Source: startupreporter.eu/principle… #smokportfolio #ceevalley

Many investors fuck around and waste your time. Mine: quick decision, wire the money, let me cook. Shoutout to @fdotinc & @smokvc: @michuk @hthieblot @tomasz_k97 @FurqanR @ruslanjabari @bragiel @adriannalakatos @mdjshin @stavan & the entire team

Want to scale globally & secure smart investment?🌍 Join Diana Koziarska, Founding Partner at SMOK Ventures, on Mar 26 for a Fireside Chat at WITW. Learn how investing with care can help women-led & early-stage startups thrive. 👉 Join: luma.com/nbl2a5jd #WITW# #VC#Startup

"When ChatGPT launched, I didn't see a chatbot; I saw the missing piece for building worlds where everything's alive and every behavior emergent to the player" says our portfolio founder @crislenta who's building the Sims for AI. techtimes.com/articles/31509… #gdc #gamedev

The competition for tier-one founders in Poland is reaching a fever pitch. It’s a privilege to be in the trenches with these visionaries from Day 0. The #CEEvalley momentum is just getting started. 🚀 Check out the full @Sifted list here: sifted.eu/articles/polish-st…

Great to see three of our portfolio companies intoDNA 🧪 @Authologic 🛡️ & Juo 💵 named by top VCs as the Polish 🇵🇱 startups to watch in 2026! Our own @dianakoziarska named our top anti-portfolio companies AI Clearing & VitVio. Congrats to all founders! sifted.eu/articles/polish-st…

We're invested in 17 startups across CEE since launching the network in July 2025. Namely: Lysk, @BioCamAI, @IntoDNA, Proximity, Skyline, Petsy, Proteine Resources, @TasteRay, @ShenAI_tech, Kocia Szamka, @inStreamly, SmartGuest, Fusiomica, Aleet, Pupilmed, Fresh32 & @Reason8ai

I am thrilled to share that I’m a speaker at the upcoming CEE VC Summit, hosted by @vestbee_com in Warsaw on March 24-25! If you care about where European VC is heading, this is the room you want to be in. #CEEvalley