Social networks and venture: strategic silence, logic, and long-term work

Marianna Inozemtseva, founder of Linkifyo agency, LinkedIn

A public social media profile often plays an even bigger role than a person’s personal website. Social networks reveal mutual friends, comments, and audience reactions. Through such a profile, one can assess competencies, areas of interest, and even the reliability of a potential business partner.

Every investor has a choice: to “make noise” or to build a strategy around targeted, well-thought-out messages, with social networks playing a particularly important role in this.

Avigail Menashe connects investors from Turkic countries and the diaspora with early-stage venture deals in the US and Europe. Her approach combines diplomacy, systemic connections, and the building of long-term relationships.

The foundation of an investor’s online reputation is real-world business connections

Avigail entered venture capital through the development of technological ecosystems. For several years, she led KARPWU — the Association of Software Developers and Services of Kyrgyzstan.

Under Avigail’s leadership, the team worked on legislation in the field of high technologies: the law on venture investments and the technology export program.

In 2024, the turnover of the High Technologies Park in IT services exports exceeded $130 million.

Together with Silicon Valley partners, Avigail launched acceleration programs. During the same period, they organized the first business tours to the US, which involved over 100 entrepreneurs from the region. This experience gave her a practical understanding of market operations, founders’ needs, and gaps in investor training.

These projects became the foundation for her further work with investors, funds, corporations, and communities.

When Bloomberg produced a film about Kyrgyzstan’s IT sector, highlighting Avigail’s contribution, professionals, entrepreneurs, and investors from the US began reaching out to her via LinkedIn, interested in collaboration.

It is important to stay in context with the audience and bring genuinely new ideas

Currently, Avigail is developing the Turkic-American Angel Network — a community of investors from Turkic countries and the diaspora, which connects deals in the US and Europe with regional capital.

The community is launching workshops with international experts. One of the recent speakers was an investor included by TechCrunch in the top 5 most significant VCs in the FinTech sector worldwide. This provides an opportunity for local investors to learn from those who truly shape the market.

The co-founder of the community is an experienced investor with successful exits and deep expertise in startup investments. Together, they are building a co-investment practice and a format in which investors gain access to deals, knowledge, and a supportive community.

The goal is simple: to give local investors the opportunity to learn from the best. The experience of business tours showed that being surrounded by international investors helps change mindsets. Similarly, workshops and retreats will create an environment where a venture mindset is formed.

Such a mindset does not appear overnight — it is developed over years. But it is precisely this mindset that becomes the fuel for startup ecosystems. Investors with a venture approach understand important things that are unclear to “traditional” investors.

First — community trust, and only then — loud announcements on social media

Avigail did not start with loud statements. First, there was only a small circle of trusted people interested in co-investing and learning at workshops with leading invited guests — experts in venture investing.

Now, the community team is studying which formats suit the local market. Later, there may be scaling and acceptance of new participants; at this stage, having more people is not a priority.

The first investor retreats will soon take place in Georgia, followed by the UAE, Switzerland, Singapore, and the US. Each such event is a test of the hypothesis: which formats yield results, what helps people learn and find common ground with international investors, in order to build long-term trusting relationships in the future.

Avigail does not view social media as an “obligatory daily ritual.” For her, it is a continuation of offline work:

— Instagram makes it easier for her to maintain contact with the regional business community
— LinkedIn is a space for global conversation: topics of the diaspora, co-investments, and systemic changes are appropriate here.

According to her observations, posts with live participation of people work best — updates from forums and retreats with participant tags. This format strengthens the network and creates new contacts.

Plans and next steps

Notably, entrepreneurs whom Avigail previously did not associate with venture capital or technology companies are increasingly reaching out to her.

This may be the effect of the AI boom and the fear of missing out on something important — FOMO. In any case, this is a signal to strengthen venture culture in Kyrgyzstan, “vote with capital” for the desired future, and support founders with a clear public mission.