Meet Evgenii Avdeev, Partner at Contrivance Ventures

Evgenii is one of the three co-founders of Contrivance Ventures, an early-stage angel investment network focusing on Central and Eastern Europe. Contrivance Ventures was founded in 2019 and has completed 6 angel investments to date across different sectors and countries within the region. Prior to Contrivance, Evgenii was a co-founder and CEO at Show Your Space, a London-based VR startup. In parallel to Contrivance he is engaged in research activities at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland where he leads biometric and VR research infrastructure.

How was the idea for Contrivance Ventures born?

After successfully launching our own venture, Show Your Space, together with Bjoern, another partner at Contrivance, we gradually came to the understanding that our core competency is strategic oversight, and we would prefer to explore multiple ideas at the same time instead of focusing on one. Investing in other promising startups and supporting them was the perfect match to our aspirations.

We decided to focus on the CEE region as it is a place with great talent, we have strong regional knowledge and desire to make a difference, which is possible at early stage investing.

What is your industry focus at Contrivance Ventures?

Contrivance Ventures is an industry-agnostic investor. However, we have a strong preference for investing in sectors where we have some prior experience and can offer support and mentorship to our portfolio companies. My expertise lies in VR and PropTech due to the nature of startups that I have launched previously. As a health nut myself, I am also profoundly interested in HealthTech and FoodTech.

What do you think is the most interesting sector/trend in the region and why?

Proliferation of strong accelerator programs and professional support for startups in a broad variety of sectors. I think the scene becomes more and more vibrant and promising.

What technology/company you would like to see that does not exist yet?

Broadly speaking, I would like to see technological advancements in physical and mental wellbeing, which accelerate the development of these sectors. As an example, solutions that focus on prevention instead of treatment, better and cheaper diagnostics, affordability and accessibility of healthcare and so on.

What makes a good angel investor?

From investors’ perspective, the ability to set own cognitive biases aside while evaluating investment opportunities.

From a startup’s perspective, the capacity to bring both knowledge and connections to the table in addition to capital.

Best/worst thing to see in a pitch deck?

Best: plain language goes a long way. I like seeing decks that use down-to-earth lingua for explaining even the most complex ideas.

Worst: desire to impress without much substance behind the idea.

Favorite metric when analyzing a company?

Good quality growth and understandable revenue drivers. There must be a market pull, a startup shouldn’t be achieving rapid growth just by selling 1 dollar for 99 cents.

Interesting book you read lately?

Biography of Václav Havel by Michael Zantovsky. Eastern Europe as a region interests me beyond startups.

Favorite podcast/series to recommend?

Both are not my cup of tea. Instead, I have a short list of selected movies or audiobooks that I watched / listened to multiple times over the years such as “Thinking about Capitalism” by Jerry Muller.