Semyon Dukach is a venture capital investor at One Way Ventures who came to the U.S. as a Soviet refugee and uses his personal immigration experience as a core filter for identifying founders with extreme grit, viewing immigration itself as equivalent to having half a startup under your belt. He combines his background leading the MIT blackjack team with a hands-on mentoring style, focusing exclusively on immigrant founders while building what he calls an immigrant mafia network across 40+ countries to create differentiated portfolio connections.

• Strong belief in immigrant founders as a superior asset class. He frequently emphasizes that backing immigrants is a strategic financial decision based on their inherent grit and resilience, rather than an act of charity. For instance, he recently highlighted a summit he organized specifically to spotlight these founders, reinforcing his firm's dedication to this demographic as a primary investment thesis.
• Enthusiasm for hard tech and physical industries over purely digital plays. He shows a distinct interest in complex sectors like robotics, space, warehousing, and defense. A standout example of this is his excitement regarding a portfolio company developing fulfillment robots that can drive on the ceiling, demonstrating his taste for novel engineering feats that solve tangible infrastructure problems.
• Preference for authentic customer obsession over formulaic pitching. He explicitly advises founders against trying to learn a magic pitch technique from podcasts, suggesting instead that they should focus on how they are actively changing customers' lives. He values founders who are willing to break the rules rather than those who simply follow a standard script.
• Connection between high-stakes risk and venture capital. He often draws parallels between his current work and his past experiences with the MIT blackjack team. He uses this background to illustrate his comfort with calculating odds and finding edges in zero-sum games, framing his investment style as a hunt for outliers and smart bets that others might shy away from.
• Skepticism toward the current AI hype cycle. Rather than chasing every new artificial intelligence startup, he has expressed a preference for doubling down on companies that successfully integrated AI during earlier waves. This indicates he looks for proven execution and practical application rather than simply following the latest trend.
• Advocacy for defense technology as a form of impact investing. He argues that the tech community has a critical role to play in national security and global stability. He has urged other investors to reconsider their hesitation to back weapons and defense startups, viewing these sectors as essential for resolving major geopolitical challenges.