The Venture Codex

Participated · Seed · Nov 2020

F3 offers an anonymous Q&A social app where users reply to questions with photo and short-video ‘Stories’-style responses, plus swipe-to-friend gamification and in-app editing tools. The product includes a public feed, direct messaging, discovery features and personalized profile URLs to solicit questions. The company monetizes via a paid ‘Plus’ subscription (pricing tiers cited in the article) and emphasizes viral growth through anonymous Q&A as a hook. F3 reports 25M registered users (85% under 25), with a user base that is 65% female and geographically ~60% Europe / 20% LatAm / 20% rest of world; the team says ~80% of users have been on the app for more than three months. Safety and moderation are highlighted as priorities: automated text-analysis (250k+ patterns), AI image-recognition and a 24/7 moderation operation (8 in-house safety experts plus 30+ outsourced contractors). The app has drawn user complaints about safety, privacy and value of the free tier despite the company’s moderation measures, and F3 plans a push on the US market.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2018

Capture Technologies was founded by two Prisma co-founders, Aleksey Moiseyenkov and Aram Hardy, to build a new social app called Capture. The app will emphasize the smartphone camera, real-time interactions and AI-driven features, with speed positioned as a core differentiator. The team plans a beta in September or October and a full launch in Q4. The startup has a ten-person team and is operating across the US and Europe, with an office in Moscow and a planned office in Los Angeles. Financially, Capture has just completed a $1M seed round to fund product development and go-to-market activities; no operating metrics for Capture were disclosed in the article.

Led · Equity · Feb 2014

Magisto provides a cloud-based mobile technology service that automatically selects moments from ordinary videos and photos and weaves them together with customized styles and music to create personal movies. The service is accessible across iOS, Android and the Web. The company has surpassed 20 million registered users and is acquiring two million users per month. Magisto recently released CamCrew, a technology for mobile devices on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset that automates more of the video-making process. It has offices in New York and California and is led by CEO Oren Boiman. The company integrated its offering into Odnoklassniki as part of its growth push. Magisto uses artificial intelligence and a simple user experience to automatically select compelling moments and weave them into professional-quality personal movies. The service is available across iOS, Android and the web and is described as the highest-rated video creation app in Google Play and the iOS App Store. Magisto recently launched a redesigned app with new creation and consumption functionality and unveiled technology at DEMO 2013 that converts photo collections into dynamic personal movies using smart photo editing and emotion-sense video editing. The company reports more than 13 million users. The new funding is intended to expand Magisto’s leadership in the emerging category of Video Storytelling and to deepen collaborations with hardware and personal-photography ecosystem partners. Magisto maintains headquarters in Tel Aviv and has offices in New York and California. Magisto offers a cloud-based mobile video editing service that automates editing and adds music to user-shot footage. The company introduced its cloud editing tool in September and launched an iOS app in early January, gaining more than 1 million iPhone users within seven months who produced over 7 million edited videos. Magisto is rolling out an Android app that leverages Android-specific features such as gallery integration and is working with Google to optimize for Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). Users select clips and a soundtrack, upload videos to the cloud, and receive a finished, shareable video via notification. Finished videos can be shared to Facebook and Twitter or sent via email links. Last year the company raised $5.5 million from Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures, with previous investor Magma Venture Partners participating.

Participated · Series A · Dec 2013

Nival develops cross-platform strategy games and has created franchises including Blitzkrieg, Heroes of Might and Magic V, Silent Storm, Etherlords and Allods. The company is working on several unannounced titles, the role-playing PC strategy game Prime World, and the cross-platform tower defense game Prime World: Defenders. Founded in 1996 by Sergey Orlovskiy, Nival employs more than 200 people across four development studios in Hallandale, Florida; Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia; Kiev, Ukraine and Minsk, Belarus. The company raised $6M in a Series A round and said it will use the funds to expand into global markets. In conjunction with the funding, Pavel Bogdanov, general partner at Almaz Capital, joined Nival’s board. Previous investors include Sergey Orlovskiy, 1C and Mail.ru Group. Nival Network is a Moscow-based social games company and part of the Nival Group, formed in September 2008. It operates MMOG and browser-based titles including Dragonica, Shaiya: Light and Darkness, Cabal Online, Level-R, Khan Wars 2.0 and music game RockFree, and runs the ZZima online gaming and social networking portal. The company has game development studios in Moscow and Minsk. Nival Network raised $7 million in the reported financing, giving it a post-money valuation of $32 million. Investors in the round include DST, software vendor 1C (a previous investor) and Nival Group founder and CEO Sergey Orlovskiy. The broader Russian online game market was valued at $238 million in 2009, with MMOGs accounting for roughly $210 million and casual games about $28 million. Nival Network is a Russian online game developer whose portfolio includes MMOGs such as Dragonica, Shaiya: Light and Darkness, Cabal Online, the multiplayer racer Level-R, browser strategy Khan Wars 2.0, and music game RockFree. It also runs the online gaming and social networking portal ZZima and has development studios in Moscow and Minsk. Formed in September 2008 and majority owned by founder and CEO Sergey Orlovskiy, software vendor 1C Group holds a 30% stake in the company. Nival recently closed a $5 million financing round from an undisclosed investor. The company will use the funds to develop Prime World, an online strategy game with social networking features targeted at Russia and former Soviet countries. The article cites the broader Russian online game market at $238 million in 2009, with MMOGs accounting for about $210 million and casual games $28 million.

Participated · Series B · Jun 2013

Cortica’s core product, Image2Text, uses pattern-based analysis to identify the key concepts within digital images while claiming zero false positives. The platform powers precise visual search, contextually relevant in-image advertising, and e-commerce product matching, and is already deployed across hundreds of millions of images through initial commercial partners. Founded by neuroscientists Yehoshua (Josh) Zeevi and Karina Odinaev with engineer-CEO Igal Raichelgauz, the company leverages neuroscience-inspired algorithms to understand visual content at scale. Revenue or user counts were not disclosed, but management emphasizes expanding distribution via leading publishers and device manufacturers. Cortica aims to embed its technology widely, positioning itself as foundational infrastructure for image-based applications. To date, the startup has secured $18 million in venture funding, supporting further product development and partner integrations.