Capital.
Mentorship.
Hands-on help.
Sidespin Ventures is a pre-seed and seed stage firm providing capital, mentorship, and hands-on assistance to entrepreneurs building transformative technology companies.
What we look for
The ideal time for us to get involved is up to and including the Seed round. We look for fundamental technical innovation in a frontier technology (aka, ‘deep tech’) like machine learning and AI, new market creation, and a uniquely qualified team. We are sector agnostic, but exclude certain verticals, such as content, media, advertising, information arbitrage, and a few others.
Advice & Assistance
We do not require advisory shares to offer hands-on help. Call when you need us. We actively help our CEOs with strategy, messaging, recruiting, introductions, and whatever else is needed. Occasionally we offer to get involved as an advisor even if we do not invest, primarily to build a relationship towards a potential financial relationship.
Style
We are highly selective, and only get involved with a handful of new companies each year. This also ensures that we can support our portfolio appropriately. Our investment size varies based on the opportunity. We typically do not lead rounds, and at the stages where we get involved, there may not even be a lead investor. We expect to support our companies via follow-on rounds through their Series A.
Istvan Jonyer, Ph.D., Managing Director
Istvan is an investor, scientist, engineer, and serial entrepreneur with extensive research, development, and management experience in various areas of computer science with leading technology companies. Dr. Jonyer has been a venture capitalist with four funds covering frontier technologies like machine learning, autonomous vehicles, AR/VR, and streaming media delivery.
At Google, he was responsible for launching Google TV (later Chromecast) devices with OEMs and SoC vendors such as Sony, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Vizio, Logitech, Intel, Marvell, and MediaTek.
Earlier, he designed 3G mobile communication systems for Nortel Networks. Istvan was also an assistant professor of computer science at OSU, with an NSF-funded machine learning research program.
Istvan holds a Ph.D. in Machine Learning from the University of Texas at Arlington and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.
Csaba Szabo, Venture Partner
Csaba combines more than 15+ years of sales, general management, and venture building experience across the United States, Europe, and Japan. He is an Advisor to Nomura Strategic Ventures and helped launch the Nomura – SRI Innovation Center.
Prior to joining Nagarro, Csaba rose through the ranks from Manager to Executive Director at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) and managed commercial engagements with global corporations from the United States, Europe, and Japan. He specializes in corporate development, technology commercialization, licensing, and venture building.
He started his career in central Europe, helping to scale an Energy as a Service company from 11 FTE to 600+ and through IPO as Head of Strategy, Sales, and eventually Managing Director for Poland and Romania.
Csaba holds economics and finance degrees from the EU followed by a Masters in Management at Stanford GSB. He is an Advisory Board Member for Silicon Valley Robotics, and several charitable organizations.
Sarah Kraft, Associate (Part Time)
Sarah is a world champion sailor and serial entrepreneur with extensive sales, marketing, finance, and leadership experience in early-stage B2C and B2B software, marketplace, and CPG companies.
She has held several founder and executive level roles, and has a passion for building innovative products with brilliant teams that add both value and meaning to world. When she’s not working on her current startup as the co-founder and CEO of KoilSocial, she’s utilizing her skills to explore deal opportunities with Sidespin Ventures (and sailing).
Sarah holds a Business degree with Honors from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. While there, she was co-founder of Tastry at the HotHouse Incubator, and became a National Champion at a startup pitch competition with Cal Poly’s highly regarded NAMA team.
Advisors
We are fortunate to have an amazing set of people helping us with due diligence and advising our portfolio companies. A few of our advisors:
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- Product Manager of Large Scale Distributed Systems and AI/ML infrastructure (PhD), Google
- Distinguished Computer Scientist, AI/ML (PhD), Xerox PARC
- SVP, LG Electronics
- VP Finance, JPMorgan
- Strategic Accounts, Docusign, ex-IBM
- Product Manager, ex-Meta
- VP of R&D, Biologics Drug Discovery and Development, ex-Stanford
- …and many others.
Why “Sidespin?”
In table tennis, the sidespin loop is a shot that has the ball spinning around its vertical axis, causing the ball to curve as it flies over to the opponent’s side. Istvan Jonyer, Sr., the four-time world champion table tennis player, is credited with inventing this shot and using it so effectively that the rules of the game were changed because of him. He was often able to curve the ball around the net, from extreme forehand positions, causing the ball to roll onto the table, making the shot unreturnable. We adopted the name Sidespin Ventures to honor his legacy and to remind us to be game-changing at whatever we do. Our logo is reminiscent of a paddle moving to hit the ping pong ball.
We adopted the name Sidespin Ventures to honor his legacy and to remind us to be game-changing at whatever we do.
