Andrey Kolodyuk is a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalinvestor. He started his entrepreneurial career in New York in 1992 and eventually has founded and built over 10 companies in IT, telecom, internet and media with $1 Billion total revenues. In 2008 he exited from previous companies and started a new one Divan.TV – one of the pioneers of TV streaming OTT service for ethnic groups available in 200 countries worldwide. In 2012 the new fund was launched, leading venture capital fund focused on global companies that leverage R&D in Ukraine and CEE. The fund targets the following IT categories: software, e-commerce, cloud services, mobile technology, IoT and others.AVentures Capital portfolio companies mostly focus on the U.S. market and raised follow on round from international funds. VC fund coinvests with ABRT, Almaz Capital, Vegas fund, Y Combinator and other permanent investors. In August 2014 Andrey has initiated a foundation of UVCA and in November, 2014 was selected as Chairman of it. In November 2015 he became Board Member in Ciklum, a technology firm with 3,250 employees. Andrey was elected as Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2008.
Education
Andrey Kolodyuk graduated from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and studied law at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. In 2005, he defended his PhD thesis: "Information Society: Modern Condition and Perspectives of Development in Ukraine" with the specialty "Political Culture and Ideology”
Entrepreneurship
He started his entrepreneurial career in New York City when he was 23. He said to Strategy magazine: 'I was no exception of the American rules: if you want to become a director of the restaurant, start as dish washer. For the first time my work required only physical strength and endurance work. Later, I went to company engaged in the wholesale trade of office equipment’ . In 1994 he founded his first startup – Universal Trading Enterprise. In 1995 he came back to Ukraine and founded his first IT-investment firm, which financed its first project Unitrade which became the most famous retail change. In 2001, Kolodyuk reorganized Ukrinvestcom into a venture capital firm, AVentures. During the last 20 years, he has founded and developed more than ten companies. Among his most notable projects are Unitrade, City.com, Ukrainian Software Consortium, PH Softpress, Universal Telecom and DK Zvyazok. Andrey is the main founder and investor of DIVAN.TV, the first over-the-top content Smart TV provider for all Russian-speaking community worldwide. He is also an adviser at Contacter. His last project DIVAN.TV – is a pioneer of OTT market in CIS countries and only Russian-speaking community worldwide. It is available in 200 counties, according to Viaway web-site.
Investor
In March 2012 AVentures Capital has launched a new venture capital fund, to support successful technology entrepreneurs in Ukraine and Russia. Within a year AVentures Capital has acquired a 25% equity stake in Augmented Pixels, one of the world's leading augmented reality technology developers, according to the information at the siliconangle web-site. The deal closed on February 15, 2013. Lately, in April 2013, AVentures Capital announced the 2nd deal. The fund has acquired a minority equity stake in nuPSYS, the world's leading visual network software developer, wrote KyivPost newspaper. AVentures Capital and nuPSYS, Inc, didn't disclose the financial details of the Series A deal to the public. AVentures was the lead investor in the round, where as nuPSYS is in talks with international investors to increase the size of the round up to $5–6 million. Aventurres representatives sits at the boards at Jooble and Depositphotos companies. He was first the face, and then the host of the Ukrainian house in Davos, which is annually organized by and Pinchuk Foundation.
Contoversies
In 2005-2006 Kolodyuk sold his stake of Ukrainian outsourcing company USC to American fund DFJ Nexus, backed by Tim Draper. Later Tim Draper revealed the fraudulence of this deal in his blog: "this is one of only three times in my thirty years as an investor where I believe I was cheated". In 2009 he and his brother accused each other of extortion and theft of a stake in family business City.com - chain of household appliances stores. Andrey claimed he had to get the control over the business in order to pay off creditors. The conflict caused a complete closure of City.com. In 2016, Fox won a lawsuit against the Kolodyuk's video-streaming company Divan.TV in the case of paying $57,000 for content. After losing the litigation Kolodyuk transferred assets from his Divan.TV LLC to his Mikarnial Ltd and then he left Divan.TV LLC. In the entity with obligations to Fox he was replaced by a woman who in fact sold her passport data, which was used by dozens of legal entities, including fictional companies and political donors. In March 2019 Consul of Luxembourg Nikolay Novykov and daughter of ex-Acting Prime Minister of Armenia Ruben Chiftalaryan sued for Andrey Kolodyuk. According to lawsuit plaintiffs are trying to recover from Andrey Kolodyuk $1.9 million of debt he borrow for AVentures investments and another $1.9 million of interest on this debt. At the end of 2019 media reported that the entrepreneur's real estate was seized on account of UAH 730,000 debt to the Finance and Credit Bank. This amount also confirmed in the register of enforcement proceedings.
