s16vc Research
Investment Thesis
s16vc is a "Founders for Founders" fund, founded in 2021 by Oleg Bibergan (ex-Goldman Sachs Special Situations, about 13 years) and Aleks Shamis (four-time founder, Borzo). The core belief is that the best deals go to a founder's best friends before they reach the open market. The fund built a global founder community first (a hacker house in 2008, then poker nights, retreats, a Burning Man camp, and a founder hotel in Lisbon) and raised money second. The site says it is founded and backed by 190+ founders and operators, with LPs from Miro, Zoom, UiPath, Hugging Face, Datadog, Intercom, Zalando, Wolt, Supercell, Chargebee, PandaDoc and Bolt. Fund II's anchor investor is reportedly Sequoia.
Stage Focus
Pre-seed to Series A, mostly seed and pre-seed. The fund also runs a Future Founders pre-seed program (with ellipsis Ventures) for repeat founders, sometimes before the company exists. Per a 2026 interview, each fund backs around 40 companies at about 10 deals per year, with roughly 60% graduating to a next round at year two. Reported follow-on investors include Accel, Bessemer, NEA, Insight and Index. Raison reports 87-90% of the 2023-2024 cohorts raised an institutional round.
Check Size
About $500K to $1M per company (Oleg Bibergan interview, April 2026). Nudge's July 2026 $1.1M pre-seed was led by s16vc.
Lead Tendency
Both. It led Nudge's pre-seed and is described as writing "first cheques" (Stacks, Theker). It shared the first cheque with Index on Wordsmith.
Recent Activity and Fund Status
Reported AUM is about $160M across two closed funds. Fund III is raising: a $100M target, more than half committed as of May 2026, with a $6M GP commitment (Raison). A separate April 2026 interview cites a $70M current fund. The figures differ, so confidence is moderate. Tracked 2026 activity includes a $23M Series A for Stacks (February 2026) and the Nudge pre-seed (July 2026). Fund status is actively deploying.
Portfolio Highlights
Synthesia (AI video, reported $4B valuation), Oyster HR (reported $1.1B), Perplexity (via the Sidekick exit), Finom (fintech), Cynomi (cyber), Wordsmith (AI legal), Stacks (AI FP&A), Theker Robotics (Barcelona), Dwelly (UK lettings), Krisp, Lokalise, VEED, Whereby, Nutrisense, Qase, Softr, Xentral and Superlist. The website lists about 80 companies.
Team
Oleg Bibergan (Co-founder and Managing Partner), Aleks Shamis (Co-founder and Managing Partner), Anatoly Marin, Egor Rudi, Mike Peregudov (Whizz CEO) and Leo Batalov (DLA Piper partner) are co-founders. Andrey Khusid (Miro) is a General Partner. Multiple GPs sit in SF, NYC, London, Tel Aviv and Dubai. The team is about 7 people plus automation: a proprietary CRM and AI agents handle routine work.
Decision Process
Investment Committee of founders who have scaled companies, with a qualified-majority vote. Founder filters: clarity (napkin-level business model), speed, and unique market insight. Deal flow is 100% warm: 200+ referrals a year, fewer than 15 investments.
Founder Preferences
Founders already known through the network, who are fast, can explain the business simply, and have a distinctive insight. The fund is a generalist and underwrites the founder rather than the sector, with a lean toward software and AI. It is also incubating AI roll-ups (operator-led M&A in accounting, legal ops and logistics).
Geographic Focus
Europe and the US. It is remote with hubs in Europe (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Lisbon, London), Silicon Valley and NYC. The entity is S16VC Europe, S.L.U., with an S16VC Los Altos, CA office.