🚀 100 Angels in 48 Hours. One of the Largest CEE Angel Networks is Born. On Saturday morning, I woke up with a simple thought: “So many CEE founders ask me for intros to angels — and even though I know many, I rarely manage to connect them fast enough.” (it's true, I

130 active CEE angels joined the SMOK Angel Network 🐉😇 during the first week and I've already shared the first deals with the angels. The network is just a WhatsApp group for now. How does this work? 1. I share the deals. 2 Angels ask for intros. 3. I make the intros. 4.

great catching up with Borys Musielak @ Budapest Mati Staniszewski Paul Bragiel Michael Sienko at an amazing event by SMOK Ventures in Warsaw 🇵🇱

Congrats to our portfolio companies @Authologic and Shen AI for being names Poland's top 10 startups of 2025 by Forbes! Full list: forbes.pl/najlepsze-pols… #smokportfolio

Are you fundraising? You can pitch in front of 34+ active angel investors interested in the CEE region. Send me your deck and a 1-minute pitch video to [email protected] today to pitch in Friday! #SMOKangels #fundraising #startups #ceevalley

Proteine Resources just got €9.5M in new funding! Only two companies from Poland and 40 in Europe were able to pass the rigid EIC process. Congrats to our portfolio company for this remarkable achievement! #foodtech #petfood #smokporfolio Source: eic.ec.europa.eu/news/health-sp…

I'm bringing back the "Why We invested" series with an overdue article on JUO, a fast-growing devtools / fintech / ecommerce play we backed last Summer. We first met Leszek Zawadzki, Alina Prelicz and Paweł Tatarczuk back in 2021 (!) when they were still deep in product

CEO of Plan Be Eco in an interview for My Company Polska! Aga Maciejowska, as one of the 15 'serial Founders' who shared their stories, talks about startup everyday life, the power of relationships, and the role of a female Founder. 🔗 mycompanypolska.pl/artykul/mam-no…

Our portfolio company Proteine Resources secures €9.5M EUR in funding for its autonomous factories of beef replacement protein. We don't always do deep tech but when we do it's quite epic! Congrats Bart Roszkowski & Konrad Włodarczyk! therecursive.com/proteine-resou…

We hosted another CEE Summer Social event in London together with Dawn Capital and Speedinvest and it was a blast! Expect more events connecting CEE with the London startup ecosystem by Sonia Piorek! #ceevalley #ceediaspora

I met Zhuo Jiang as part of our 101 Fellowship at SMOK Ventures and immediately knew he's a hustler. Now he's kicking off his "Break Into VC Podcast" and I haven't hesitated a second when he invited me over. This is how I broke into VC: youtube.com/watch?reload=9… And you?

If you're not yet tired of podcasts with our founding partner Borys Musielak @ Budapest here is one more by Giordano Tovo of #VCtalk. In this one Borys covers his journey from engineer to entrepreneur and eventually VC. Watch here: youtube.com/watch?v=-w5HS7… #ceevalley

🇵🇱 Top 10 Startup Exits with Polish Female Founders (ranked by estimated exit value) 1. Azimo – Marta Krupińska 💸 Acquired by Papaya Global in 2022 📈 Exit valuation: $150–200M 💰 Raised: ~$90M 🧭 Fintech / remittances 2. Callstack – Anna Lankauf 💸 Majority stake sold to

I don't need more analysts. GPT Deep Research is good enough for most tasks. If you're trying to break into VC, there are only two skills I'm looking after: (1) bring capital (as in LP connections), (2) bring unique dealflow. So unless you're at Harvard hanging out with rich

In today's Puls Biznesu you can read about our new initiative "Smok Angels", a network of entrepreneurs actively supporting early stage startup founders across Central and Eastern Europe. If you're actively writing angel checks in CEE, ping Borys Musielak @ Warsaw! pb.pl/aniolowie-w-gn…

we've accidentally built something that makes the life of angel investors 100x easier. their inbox is flooded with pitches. no time to review them all. most angels aren't full-time. No Cap 👽 pre-screens new deals in minutes: 1. cc her on pitch emails → she follows up, learns

I’m back in SF for a bit! Right after the burn I’m staying in the city till Sept 12th, to talk how can we build bridges between US and European ecosystems #CEEvalley

Nothing cooler in VC than seeing previously struggling startups show charts like those in recent updates! 🦄 🔥💪🏻 #smokportfolio

Who are the cool angels that we should follow here? Also: check out the ones we already follow as they are mostly the great angels from our network!

"I’m thrilled! SMOK Angels started as a spontaneous initiative and quickly gained traction—showing how well it meets the needs of both angels & founders seeking funding." Read more in Borys Musielak @ Budapest’s interview 👉 mamstartup.pl/oczekiwania-mi… #ceevalley