Scale-Up Venture Capital Research
Investment Thesis
Scale-Up Venture Capital, which operates as the Scale-Up Unicorn Fund, invests in US technology unicorns: companies that have already proven their value, are resilient to downturns, and keep growing fast while creating or transforming large markets. The homepage headline is "We Invest In Unicorns that are transforming markets, lives, and the world." The firm describes its Fund II mandate as US tech unicorns valued between $2B and $5B, and it describes secondary investment opportunities as part of that approach (from search-index text of the fund page; the fund page itself sits behind a bot-check and could not be read directly). Third-party profiles (Waveup) say the firm sees the $2B to $5B band as underserved: too large for most growth funds and not yet in the sights of the largest late-stage vehicles.
Stage Focus
Late and growth stage. The firm started in 2015 with a mid-stage technology focus and moved to a dedicated unicorn strategy as its earlier companies matured. It does not target pre-seed or seed rounds. Positions are typically minority stakes, and some are bought on the secondary market.
Check Size
Waveup reports typical positions of $10M to $50M, with a historical maximum of about $50M. This is a third-party figure and was not confirmed on the firm's own site.
Lead Tendency
Not stated. The firm describes itself as working closely with portfolio companies, investors and other funds, and secondary and minority positions suggest it often follows. Recorded as unknown.
Recent Activity
The firm has raised Scale-Up Unicorn Fund I and Fund II. Form D listings show Fund I at about $26M (2021) and a Fund II filing in 2025; the fund size is not confirmed. Fund I is shown on PitchBook with about 40 investments and a most recent deal in Pacaso in July 2023. The firm's LinkedIn page is active, posting portfolio news such as Socure's $156M raise at a $5.2B valuation, Dataminr's $318M Air Force contract, Formlabs weighing an IPO, and Podium passing $150M in AI agent ARR. Fund status is recorded as actively deploying on the basis of Fund II and the 2025 filing, with low confidence.
Portfolio Highlights
The site's Portfolio News section and partner bios name: OpenWeb, PsiQuantum, Pacaso, Course Hero, 6sense, Socure, Genies, Sysdig, DataRobot, Zipline, Harness, Upgrade, Formlabs, Verbit, People.ai, Scopely, Dataminr, Outschool, SpaceX, Coursera, Cybereason, eToro, SiSense, Trax Technologies and Silk.us. The partners say they have invested in nearly 100 technology companies across Scale-Up and West Coast Equity Partners (WCEP), several of which became unicorns or decacorns. Some names (Robinhood, Klarna) are described as WCEP investments and are not listed here as Scale-Up positions. The firm's dedicated portfolio page (scale-up.vc/leaders) is protected by a bot-check, so the full portfolio could not be read; this list is drawn from the news pages and bios.
Team
- Alex Lazovsky: co-founder and Managing Partner of Scale-Up and of WCEP. Led investments in SpaceX, Trax, OpenWeb, Verbit, Upgrade, Outschool, PsiQuantum, Cybereason, eToro and SiSense. B.Sc. Computer Science, Tel Aviv University; MBA, Kellogg.
- Sergey Yushin: co-founder and Managing Partner. Former CFO at a large hydroelectric power producer and at a global diamond mining group; private equity and venture background.
- Anton Baranchuk: co-founder and Managing Partner. Led WCEP investments in DataRobot, Coursera, Robinhood, Klarna and People.ai. Founder and CEO of AnyChart.
- Ilyah: Founding Partner. Led investments in Sedona Systems (acquired by Cisco), RaftTech, First Digital Assets Group and ColorChip. Surname not given on the site, so he is not created as a team member.
- Lilia Shirman: go-to-market strategist, former CMO at MariaDB, former Managing Director at Golden Seeds; author of 42 Rules for Growing Enterprise Revenue.
- Rick Marini: co-founder and Managing Partner of Catapult Capital, COO of Grindr, founder of Protocol Ventures.
- Nimrod Gindi: SVP M&A and Head of Investments at Mellanox Capital; led the Nvidia acquisition of Mellanox.
- Steve Yaskin: Venture Partner; founder and CEO of Health Gorilla.
- Ben Kamis: academic and adviser to start-ups; PhD from Goethe University Frankfurt.
Decision Process
Partnership. Several managing partners share an investment team with WCEP. No committee structure or timeline is published.
Founder Preferences
Company leaders with proven scale, strong customer value and resilience to downturns. The site's values are value-driven, collaborative and transparent. The 2020 Unicorn Report and the essay "Our Philosophy: Creative Deviance" set out how the firm distinguishes real value from hype.
Geographic Focus
US technology companies, with several Israeli-founded companies in the portfolio (OpenWeb, Verbit, Cybereason, SiSense). Offices are listed in Palo Alto (site) and San Francisco (LinkedIn).
Gaps
The fund page and portfolio page were blocked by a bot-check and the browser fallback was unavailable. Fund size, per-company stage and dates, and any investment after 2023 are not verified from primary sources.