Partners

John Zdanowski

John Zdanowski is serial entrepreneur with experience growing companies from early stage startups to over $100 million in revenue.  John has led or arranged 16 acquisitions, one IPO, dozens of venture capital, private equity and debt transactions for companies he either founded or joined as CFO.  In addition to Foresight Ventures, John is the co-founder and CFO of PixelFish, the leader in online video marketing for local businesses; and serves on the boards of RentJuice and Movoto in the online real estate industry.

John was the CFO of Second Life as it grew from $10m to $80m and generated tens of millions of dollars of free cash flow from the sale of virtual land and virtual currency. Prior to Second Life, John was the CFO of HouseValues as it grew from $20m to $100m in revenue. John led the $94m IPO of HouseValues in 2004. Prior to HouseValues, Zdanowski co-founded Affinity Internet, Inc. raising more than $60 million from investors include JP Morgan and Columbia Capital to build a highly profitable Web hosting company serving more than 200,000 small- and medium-sized businesses. Affinity was sold to Hostway in 2007.

Zdanowski holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Syracuse University, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University.

Val Jerdes

Val has over 15 years experience in finance and entrepreneurship in the US and Russia. He worked at Apple Computer on the Newton product, the Advanced Tech Group at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space, and subsequently co-founded three successful start-ups in Silicon Valley. He has worked and advised in Silicon Valley’s venture capital industry, and sits on the board of numerous companies, including ThinkWave. In Russia he has worked in Private Equity as well as for the government innovation program. Val received a B.A. at Pomona (California), M.A. at Stanford University and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Andrey Kazakov

Andrey founded and made the initial investments into Cloudmach, a 3D graphics software. Previously, he was a Sales executive for Image Analysis systems and software outsourcing to the US market. Andrey started his career as a software engineer developing operating systems and enterprise software at EMC. In 2008 Andrey received a MS in Economics from St.Petersburg State Polytechnical University.

Vladislav Sviblov

PhD in Economics. Between 2002-2006 Vladislav rose from Operational Manager to Senior Vice President at Rosbulding, a leading Russian holding company. In 2007 he founded GK GOLD, a metallurgy company specializing in nickel and gold. He is an active investor in real estate and venture capital. In 2006 Vladislav received a PhD in Economics from Moscow Institute of Economics and Statistics

Eugene Levin

Graduated from Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnical University, MS. He worked as an Analyst and Project Manager within information security on development tools and security assessment. He was also preparing IBM, HP and Alcatel-Lucent products for assessment procedure. He took part in patent development within information security measures. Since 2011 Eugeniy has started working as a Senior Associate in Foresight Ventures.