Expeditions Fund | Venture Capital Fund

CONTACT

Private investment firm
focused on early stage VC in CEE

WARSAW • LONDON • ZURICH

Private investment
firm focused on
early stage VC
in the CEE

WARSAW • LONDON
PARIS • ZURICH

OUR FOCUS

Deep tech early stage technology investments.

Long-term returns coupled with a positive social and cultural impact.

Strong commitment to professional excellence,
moral integrity, personal trust and confidentiality.

OUR FOCUS

Deep tech early stage technology investments.

Long-term returns coupled with a positive social and cultural impact.

Strong commitment to professional excellence,
moral integrity, personal trust and confidentiality.

HOW WE ARE DIFFERENT

We are a sophisticated private investment firm offering founders operational support and privileged access to top global investors.

Our portfolio is exclusively for reputable and like-minded families and HNWIs.

Expeditions Fund is a long-term and patient venture capital fund investing in early-stage technology companies globally led by mission-driven founders.

The fund has initially started as venture capital operations of Firlej Kastory family office. In 2021, Firlej Kastory expanded beyond immediate family management and the venture capital firm, Expeditions Fund, was created.

Expeditions Fund today is an independent venture fund backed by multi-billion dollar investors, family offices, founders and CEOs of successful companies.

In each company we are looking at the four core elements:

Mission-driven Founders

We help people who dare to build something meaningful that goes beyond pure financial profit

Uniqueness

A company should have a compelling competitive advantage based on their technology and the plan of how to build a strong long-term moat

Enterprise-oriented

We prefer to invest in B2B SaaS companies

Targeting Big Market

Total Addressable Market over $1bn with a steady growth rate and favourable trends

VALUE CREATION STRATEGY

We are a specialised group focused on particular stage and sectors where we have ability to add a significant value.

We extend our wider investment base to help founders overcome specific challenges, exchange knowledge, and learn from former technology founders.

OUR SPECIFIC INVESTMENT CRITERIA

Stage:
Pre-seed to Series A

Geography:
Europe/US with a focus on CEE and Polish-diaspora

Focus:
AI-first companies, cyber security, privacy, tech-bio, dual-use, defense-tech and quantum computing

Initial Ticket:
€250k – €1m

We are hands-on operators who intend
to support the founders in key dimensions:

We are hands-on operators who intend to support the founders in key dimensions:

Partnerships & HR

Attracting customers,
industry partners,
and key employees.

Investment

Structuring financial rounds,
M&As, exit strategies
and connecting with VCs.

Opportunities
for POCs

With our investors’
portfolio companies.

SELECTED PORTFOLIO

We back founders who want to solve important problems with the use of science and technology:

SELECTED PORTFOLIO

We back founders who want to solve important problems with the use of science and technology:

Visit website

TEAM

Expeditions Team raised from our ecosystem – a global network of families, entrepreneurs, and private companies. We are proud to work closely with our community and through cultivated relationships we widen our circle of competence. Together we learn about problems, explore possible solutions and collaborate closely to expand these solutions globally.

TEAM

Mikołaj Firlej
Co-founder, General Partner

Mikolaj has spent several years in venture capital and family office in London and Warsaw. He was also advising Netguru, a leading software development agency in the long-term strategy and acquisitions as well as he helped to establish a new academic Centre at the University of Oxford focused on exploring policy and regulatory challenges of frontier technologies. He is a Lecturer at the Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence, and holds degrees from the University of Oxford and Warsaw in Law, Philosophy, and Public Policy. In his personal life, Mikolaj is supporting gifted schoolchildren, particularly from Beskid Mountains.

Stanisław Kastory
Co-founder, General Partner

Stanisław’s goal is to steer private wealth towards more impact driven approach. In his past he worked for the biggest Polish law firm – Domanski Zakrzewski Palinka (DZP) specializing in M&A advisory. Stanislaw established and led DZP Future to advise startups during a capital raising, restructuring, corporate disputes, and international expansion. Stanislaw holds an MA diploma in Law and Administration from Warsaw University. He dedicates his free time to his two biggest passions – alpine and freestyle skiing.

Steve Ciesinski
Senior Advisor

Steve is a seasoned operator, investor, board member, and advisor to tech- and science-based companies in a broad range of industries. Steve was most recently president of Silicon Valley-based SRI International, one of the world’s leading independent R&D organizations.

Akshay Kiran
Venture Advisor

Akshay runs the private markets program for a Singapore SFO, focusing on VC/PE. He previously headed up merchant banking at EICM Family Office in Singapore where he led investments in technology venture capital across US, Europe and SE Asia. He joined Milltrust/EICM in 2016 from Pensive Ibis, an investment and advisory firm focusing on Asian energy, infrastructure and industrials deals. He holds a BSc(Hons) in Mathematics, and is concluding an Exec MBA at the University of Oxford, Said Business School.

Jan Krzewinski
Venture Advisor

Executive and investor in the healthcare and life science sector. Previously COO at Polpharma Biologics and board member of Lux Med Group, Diagnostyka and Alpha Medical while at Mid Europa a CEE-focused PE fund.

Jakub Lipiński
Venture Advisor

Jakub is a software engineer turned serial entrepreneur, investor and mentor. He is a Co-founder and CEO at Polidea (acquired by Snowflake Inc.) and Apphance (acquired by Applause Inc.).

Paweł Kastory
Affiliate

Paweł is an entrepreneur and philanthropist, owner of marketing companies, CEO of DDB Poland. Pawel is a Founder and President of the National Museum Friends Association.

Maciej Radziwiłł
Affiliate

Maciej is a private investor and philanthropist, owner of a portfolio of energy companies. In the past he was Chairman of the Advisory Board at PKP Energetyka and Chairman of Trakcja Tiltra.

Khai Tan
Affiliate

Khai is a private Investor in technology companies with longstanding career in private equity. Former Chairman of Bridgepoint in Central and Eastern Europe. Chairman of the board of CTL Logistics and Board Member of Dr Gerard.

Marcin Zukowski
Investor

Marcin co-founded Snowflake and has been a key member of its engineering organization since. He is a leading expert in database processing, focusing on high performance and modern hardware architectures. Prior to Snowflake, Marcin was the CEO of Vectorwise, an innovative Dutch database company based on his PhD research, acquired by Actian in 2012.

Piotr Romanowski
Venture Advisor

Piotr is an early stage investor focused on biotech/synbio and fintech. He chairs Boards of two listed biotechs (Ryvu Therapeutics S.A., Selvita S.A.) and an account-to-account payments provider (Kevin EU UAB) and serves as advisor to a few European deep tech VC funds.

Nicholas Nelson
Venture Advisor

Nicholas is an experienced leader in aerospace, defense, and security, serving as a Venture Partner at Expeditions Fund. He is the founder of Offset Ventures, the first defense and dual-use tech-focused venture investor in Europe, which invests in early-stage startups on a deal-by-deal basis.

Additionally, he is appointed to the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology and serves as the Senior Fellow for Emerging Technology and Policy at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a leading transatlantic think tank. His analysis is regularly featured in aerospace and defense publications, and he is an elected Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

CONTACT

We are looking to partner with exceptional founders and be an active part of their successful expeditions.

Warsaw office:

Plac Małachowskiego 2
Warsaw, 00-066, Poland
email: info@expeditionsfund.com

London office:

116 Pall Mall, St. James’s
London SW1Y 5ED, United Kingdom