I've analyzed 155 YC startups from Central & Eastern Europe. Ukraine 🇺🇦 (37) and Poland 🇵🇱 (34) lead followed by Romania 🇷🇴, Bulgaria 🇧🇬and Slovenia 🇸🇮. We funded 8 of them via @smokvc. Reply "show me the data" if you'd like to see the sheet with source data of my report.

Guess which CEE VC fund backed the most CEE YC teams? @YCombinator directory lists 30 startups from Central & Eastern Europe. I counted 155 (with the help of my agent). The difference: YC tags companies by HQ, and most CEE founders move to California. 100 of the 155 are based in the US. @gitlab , @PeoplePlusAI, @gowithquo, @browser_use: all "American" by that measure. So I went through all 6,267 YC companies founder by founder, then checked 260 CEE funds' portfolios and every funding announcement we could find. A few things that surprised me: 🇺🇦 Ukraine (37) narrowly leads 🇵🇱 Poland (34), but 2026 was Poland's best year ever 🇸🇮 Per head, Slovenia is in a league of its own 📈 The count grows every few years, but CEE's share of each batch has been flat at 2–3% for a decade 💸 Only 53 of the 155 have a CEE fund among their known investors. @pioneer_fund, @RebelFund_VC and @svangel back more of them than almost any CEE VC. Full write-up, with all the charts, the fund ranking and the method: michuk.medium.com/the-hidden… Did I miss your company, or your fund? Tell me in comments. I'll update the data.

Our pre-seed investment from 2021 @ShenAI_tech is now a medical device in your pocket. Now officially approved by the EU: shen.ai/medical-device Timeline: 2020 Idea and first proof of concept work 2021 @smokvc invests still without a working product 2022 Product launched 2023 Still no significant revenue. R&D continues to get to the quality of blood pressure measurement the market needs 2024-25 $200k ARR from early B2B customers 2025-26 $2M ARR still before certification 2026 Medical certification in the EU opens up truly diagnostic use cases. 6 years in and Remi Koscielny & @premjaworski are just warming up. That's how deep tech is developed. Long time no sign of life but once it nails the tech, sky is the limit. Go Shen!!!

15 years ago today, Reaktor was born. We just wanted a place to work, but we've built the Warsaw startup ecosystem instead. It was July 2011. I just came back from my first trip to San Francisco where I was inspired by startup mansions like the Blackbox Mansion, and I thought - why not build this in Warsaw? We teamed up with @kubafilipowski who has been thinking about something similar for a while, and my college pal @anwalkowska. The three of us were just launching their own startups, @filmaster, HumanWay and Homplex. But we also wanted more from the office than just work. So we invited friends from the small Warsaw startup world to join us... and they did. In the following 10 years we launched 82 legendary #OpenReaktor events, 10 amazing birthday parties, dozens of mentoring and matchmaking sessions. We hosted startup legends like @jerrycolonna or @bragiel as well as the rising starts of polish startups at the time like @elamadej @sbatory or @sadek. In 2016 @dianakoziarska joined as house manager and she took it to the next level launching the pre-accelerator program ReaktorX which helped 200+ founders launch their startups. Without Reaktor there wouldn't be @smokvc as we wouldn't have met this many amazing people who later became our mentors and LPs in the fund. Till this day every week I meet someone who tells me they met their cofounder, investor, employer or friend for life at one of the OpenReaktor events. We closed the house in COVID time when we were busy launching our first fund. But the @Reaktor_X brand is alive and kicking - currently run by @Stirbat_Luca in San Francisco where he's supporting the most ambitious under 25-year-old founders from Central and Eastern Europe.

As an Eastern European founder I gotta admit it's always been super hard making in the Valley. Getting feedback, investor intros and generally any help without the network built was a challenge in 2011 when I first started as a founder as well as in 2021 when my first portfolio companies tried the same path. But it has gotten WAY easier in 2026. We now have at least four initiatives aimed specifically at helping Eastern European founders make it in the San Francisco Bay Area: Teleport SF by @agata_mrocz SF Startup Labs by @AgataKrajewska2 @Reaktor_X by @Stirbat_Luca European Startup Embassy by @VCincurova7829 If you're a CEE founder moving to SF, check them all out. Those are the people genuinely willing to help you make it in California as a startup founder & builder! Are there any other initiatives that I have missed?

Paypercut 🇧🇬 - the Stripe of Central & Eastern Europe - was my biggest miss of 2025. We met Stoil Vasilev in Warsaw on a Friday and committed immediately - that's what I thought - i.e. on Monday. It turned out to be too late. Sucks! Especially given he and his team helped build two Bulgarian fintech unicorns @SumUp and @payhawk. But we stayed in touch. I helped Stoil hire the country manager for Poland, Wojciech Oleksiejuk, introed him to local players and generally kept communicating for the last year and became friends. Now in 2026 I'm happy to announce we made it this time! The company has just announced a 5M EUR raise led by @concentricvc, @passioncapital and @RupaGanatra / Arāya Ventures with @smokvc participating. I couldn't be more excited to back Gareth Walsh, Stoil and Emil Savov, especially knowing the kind of traction they've already built since we committed, namely over 200 ecommerce merchants in 8 different CEE markets including Poland. Go #PayPerCut!