European Guide to Acquiring US Investment - Sasha Voloshyn, Venture Capitalist & CBDO at Soft Way

Selling America

Today’s episode welcomes Sasha Voloshyn, Chief Business Development Officer at Soft Way - an all-in-one B2B travel platform for managing travel and business spend for clients such as Volvo, Chanel, McDonalds, and Lifecell. Over his career, Sasha has held positions in health tech and venture capital, and founded multiple companies - including an outsourced sales development agency.

Sasha’s outbound agency was his first entrepreneurial pursuit. Building Pilot made him realize that he wants to abandon the 9-5 lifestyle to build his own ventures. One of their biggest advantages was Sasha’s co-founder in the United States. He knew from day one that the US market was a priority, and that a local presence would be huge. Not only does a US presence help you better understand the current market trends, but it also unlocks investment opportunities that would otherwise be almost impossible to acquire.

After Pilot, he realized that his next step was moving towards developing products. Sasha’s next company was Postello.ai, a tool that helps create written social media content. Postello attracted a total of $60,000 in government sponsored Ukrainian and European Union investment funds at 0 equity, which got them off the ground pretty quick and led to an acquisition later on. Sasha went on to leverage his AI tool to write a speech for the Ukrainian government, bringing a lot of new eyes on their product.

Breaking into venture capital is the dream of many finance graduates, entrepreneurs and executives. Sasha’s VC journey began when he partnered with the €50,000,000 Spanish business incubator Demium, helping them relaunch in Ukraine and maintain their activity after the war began. Since then he’s helped numerous startups raise capital, win awards, and he even played a role in securing a $2,000,000 investment for the startup that ultimately acquired his company, Postello.ai.

Tune into the full episode to learn more on how to secure venture capital!

KEY INSIGHTS:
01:31 Sasha’s entrepreneurial journey
07:27 AI-written government speech
09:09 Sasha’s road to venture capital
13:14 Entering the US scene
16:18 Raising US venture capital
18:57 Should you hire US based sellers?
21:32 Adjusting messaging for the US market
27:30 Should you invest in Product or GTM?
35:42 How should technical founders approach GTM?
39:58 Picking the right startup incubator
43:47 What are the current priorities of Soft Way?
46:21 Why don’t EU companies move into the US market?

Connect with the guest, Sasha Voloshyn
Connect with the host, Sergey Olexa