Ihar Mahaniok is a venture capital investor at Geek Ventures who built his career as a self-taught teenage coder in Belarus before working 20+ years in engineering at Google, Facebook, WeWork, and Lightning AI, then transitioned to full-time investing after quietly angel investing in 100+ startups including five unicorns like Instacart and PandaDoc. He specializes in helping immigrant founders navigate U.S. fundraising by leveraging his own immigrant experience from Belarus and his deliberate LinkedIn-first networking strategy where he personally knows nearly all of his 5,000 connections, focusing on AI/ML and robotics investments where he can evaluate technical depth as an engineer.

• Strong preference for Anthropic and Claude over other AI models like ChatGPT or Gemini, often encouraging followers to switch subscriptions. This extends to an appreciation for tech leadership that demonstrates moral courage, such as the CEO of Anthropic speaking out on social issues while others remain silent.
• Advises founders on the logistics of fundraising, specifically stating a dislike for static PDF attachments. He emphasizes that live, updateable DocSend links are vastly superior because they are easier to view, share, and keep current without requiring large downloads.
• Focuses heavily on the importance of immigrants and diversity within the tech ecosystem. He frequently validates that being a woman in the startup world is more difficult and highlights data showing that immigrants are crucial to the industry, signaling a strong interest in backing founders from these backgrounds.
• Critiques the current state of voice recognition technology in major AI tools, noting that industry giants still struggle with accuracy. He points to specific smaller apps like Rosebud as having superior performance in this area compared to the major platforms.
• Values high-quality journalism regarding the tech and startup sectors, recently expressing disappointment with legacy media outlets like the Washington Post. He actively asks peers for recommendations on paid niche publications that provide better insights into AI and the startup ecosystem.