Roman Novacek is a CFA-trained early-stage investor at Presto Ventures who focuses on CEE startups with sustainable revenues and downside protection, deliberately following an "East-to-West" scaling playbook where he backs CEE founders early then steers them toward Western VCs for follow-on rounds. He's particularly active in Ukraine and extended CEE markets, advocating for AI and data-driven fintech infrastructure with hard-to-replicate value propositions while backing high-energy founders who iterate rapidly rather than compete on price alone.