Global VC. Iro Tsagareishvili on building early-stage capital and scaling startups from Georgia to Central Asia

About me

I have been in the startup and tech ecosystem for almost 10 years. I started my first venture at 18, launching a crowdfunding platform in Georgia. The original idea was equity-based crowdfunding, but due to limited experience in regulated financial environments, we pivoted toward impact-focused social initiatives.

Later, I joined a leading university in Tbilisi, where we established an innovation center. At that time, entrepreneurship was still emerging in academia, and this became one of the first structured startup support initiatives in a public university in Georgia.

Through this center, I managed donor-funded programs including accelerators, bootcamps, and hackathons. With no internal budget, we worked entirely with external funding, where I acted as trainer, mentor, and program manager.

In parallel, I was involved in small business ventures outside of tech, focused on execution and growth in co-founding teams.

After this experience, I joined Axel, returning to the original idea of crowdfunding in a different form — angel investing. Today, I am the Director of Axel, a business angel network founded in Georgia and expanding beyond the region. Axel brings together 100+ members investing in early-stage startups. We focus on scalable tech companies with global potential across Georgia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.

Alongside Axel, I am involved in mentoring, lecturing at universities, and supporting ecosystem development initiatives for early founders.

On investments

From AXEL’s perspective, we invest through syndicates and SPVs alongside experienced angel investors. We have deployed over $2 million across ~25–30 deals, initially focused on Georgian startups and now expanding into Europe and Central Asia.

We are early-stage investors, often among the first on the cap table. This allows us to act as a bridge to follow-on VCs, helping startups move toward Seed and Series A rounds.

A key challenge we see is investment readiness — founders often underestimate the importance of structure, communication, and documentation. This becomes critical at later stages when data rooms and reporting are required.

Our investment strategy is primarily focused on the team. As early-stage investors, we usually enter at the first or second check, where people matter more than the product. We have repeatedly seen startups pivot completely while the founding team remained the same, which reinforces this approach.

Even when evaluating market, product-market fit, or innovation, the decision ultimately comes down to people — their experience, network, and ability to execute. We are cautious with easily replicable business models, even if they generate short-term revenue, as we focus on long-term scalability and exit potential.

Our due diligence is therefore heavily founder-focused — their background, reputation, past experience, and track record. Ultimately, we invest in people and their ability to build and scale companies.

Geographic focus

We invest in startups beyond our home market, including Central Asia, while Georgia remains part of our core region. At early stage, proximity to founders matters, which is why we initially focused on Georgian startups.

Over time, we expanded internationally, investing in startups from Slovenia, France, the UK, and a French-Swedish space tech company. Our early motivation was learning from other ecosystems and applying best practices in Georgia. Today, we are actively increasing exposure to Central Asia, with startups in our pipeline from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan.

Beyond capital, we support startups through our syndicate model with networks, introductions, and hands-on help. This has included helping close a $1M round and supporting market entry into Uzbekistan via local partnerships. We also assist with financial modeling, fundraising preparation, and business development depending on needs.

A key challenge in the region is investment readiness — many founders lack experience in structuring, communication, and investor materials, which becomes critical at Series A/B stages.

Our strategy is team-first. At early stage, we invest mainly based on the founding team rather than the product, focusing on execution ability, experience, and resilience. We also consider product-market fit and scalability, but always through the lens of the team.

We invest via a syndicate/SPV model, pooling capital from members. Average tickets are $80 000-$90 000, typically at early-stage entry points.

Overall, we combine capital, network, and active support with a strong focus on early-stage teams and long-term scalability.

On startup and venture industry in Georgia

We have been actively involved in the ecosystem in recent years, and one key feature of our region is that we are growing together. Each country’s market is relatively small, which is enough for local startups but not for global ones. Even Georgia, the smallest in the region, has a population of around 3.5 million, which is limited for companies aiming for global scale, especially in B2C.

At the same time, countries learn from each other — when Kazakhstan moves forward, Uzbekistan and Georgia often follow. This creates healthy competition and drives progress, while governments share similar ambitions around unicorns and global visibility.

In Georgia, the startup ecosystem has significantly matured over the past decade. Founders now often come with experience from failures, successes, and international exposure, which strengthens the next generation. We have also seen several exits, including in the US, though most are not publicly disclosed. While there is still no unicorn, the focus is more on building strong, exit-driven companies rather than chasing unicorn status itself.

Because the local market is small, most startups are forced to think globally from an early stage, which is actually a strength. They engage with international customers and investors early, making them more scalable by design.

The VC market is still relatively small, but international investors are increasingly active in the region. The angel ecosystem is currently more developed than VC, but this balance is expected to evolve as the market matures.

Early government support helped kickstart the ecosystem, and today more structured programs are emerging in partnership with global players like Founder Institute, Plug and Play, Startupbootcamp and 500 Global.

Overall, this shift toward greater private-sector involvement is positive. As most startups are B2B, long-term growth will increasingly depend on corporates and private capital, while government support remains important mainly at the early stage.

Investor’s advice

When preparing for fundraising, founders should expect many questions they may not have considered. A good starting point is to review VC and angel network websites and study their application forms to understand what investors are actually looking for.

We often see founders reaching out without this preparation — in the past period alone, over 200 startups contacted me via LinkedIn or WhatsApp with questions that are already publicly available. This signals low preparation and inevitably affects how they are perceived.

Founders should also be clear about who they are targeting and why. Broad, non-targeted outreach to all investors usually leads to low response rates. In contrast, startups that refine their approach by focusing on relevant sectors, geographies, and fund sizes see significantly better results.

Fundraising is not about changing the truth, but about clearly presenting the right information in a way investors can quickly evaluate. Often, the data exists but is not communicated effectively.

Even basic investment concepts matter — in some cases, founders struggle with terms like pre-money and post-money valuation despite them being clearly explained in application materials.

Finally, relationship-building is key. Many early investors come through direct connections made at events, summits, or informal meetings. Consistent, targeted networking remains one of the most effective ways to raise capital.

Plans

We are now considering expanding our investments outside of Georgia, with a focus on Central Asia and the Caucasus. Startups from the region are very welcome.

We prefer startups that already have at least one investor on the cap table. As mentioned, our investment process includes due diligence and KYC on the team, and it is significantly more efficient for us when there is already an existing investor we can rely on. In that case, we can follow into the deal rather than evaluating everything only based on the company narrative.

From a technology perspective, we are increasingly focused on deeper, more technology-driven startups. In the past, we invested a lot in standard SaaS products, but we are no longer focused on “vibe-coded” or easily replicable SaaS solutions. We are moving beyond that stage.

As an angel club, we are looking for startups that are truly tech-driven rather than only tech-enabled. This includes avoiding overly simple products such as basic automation tools or invoicing platforms, which we have seen many times in the region.

In FinTech, for example, we are interested in deep fintech solutions — products that are embedded in the financial infrastructure and solve specific B2B problems in a meaningful way. We are not actively investing in B2C, based on current investor interest within our network.

We do not follow a strict investment thesis; our direction is largely shaped by what our investors are interested in at any given time. While we initially started investing in Europe, we are now increasingly focused on Central Asia and the Caucasus, and we also welcome investors from these regions to co-invest and share deal flow across markets.

Overall, we are prioritizing more complex and technology-heavy solutions, as in today’s rapidly changing environment — especially with the development of AI — many simple startup models are becoming less competitive. What previously took months can now be built in hours, which makes it harder for generic SaaS models to stand out. For this reason, we are shifting our focus toward deeper technologies, including data-driven and hardware-related solutions.