(by Reinout De Bleser)

Meet Alexander Turkot, Founder and Managing Partner at Maxfield Capital Management. An engineer by heart, he is not your typical fund partner. He has a long career in IT, engineering and project management. Working for large corporations most of the 90s, most notably for IBM for which he has spent most of his time in the United States with projects across the globe: in Japan, South Africa and Switzerland just to name a few. 

Following these occupations he decided to spend some time nurturing his own ideas and had a couple of start-ups himself. He then served as the CEO and Management Partner of the Eastern European branch of MySpace after which he was approached for a big project for the Russian government being the creation of the start-up and IT cluster Skolkovo. Now being the General partner and a Founder Maxfield Capital he oversees operations of worldwide for the Venture fund.  

Can you tell us something more about the history of Maxfield Capital? 

Alexander Turkot: The idea existed for about 3 years now. I developed the idea for the fund during my time in the Skolkovo project. I understood creating a sustainable venture fund on Russian soil only would not be sustainable. Creating Maxfield Capital was the logical step. By using the experience we had in overseas markets we expanded our efforts internationally rather quickly to the fund we are today. 

Where is Maxfield Capital present? 

Alexander Turkot: We have 3 special points of presence. Eastern Europe, Israel and the United States. 
Our back office is located in Moscow. We believe regional early stage investment is an integral part of the Easter European start-up lifecycle. We noticed that venture capital from a variety of strong Western European start-up scenes don’t usually work with first timers. We can be an intermediary in this step. By investing we allow start-ups a starting point towards the next level of valuation and allowing them access to larger corporations. 
Israel is also a very natural point of presence to us. I have singlehandedly witnessed it’s ecosystem closely and they know very well how to wrap up and sell start-ups as a commodity in the global economic system. 
We’re present in the United States because if you’re not in the US you’re not really present on the global map, if you really wish to exist as a true global fund you are there.

Who are the other partners within Maxfield Capital? 

Alexander Turkot: Oleg Koujikov, a Worton graduate, he is our investment banker and natural negotiator that spends half of his time in California and takes care of the overseas companies. 
Alexander Lazarev, a graduate of the London Business School, he is in charge of our back office and the operations in the U.S. and Europe.

What is the focus of investment for Maxfield Capital? 

Alexander Turkot: Maxfield has assisted companies in the sectors of E-health, digital lending, data protection, mobility, e-education, marketplaces and cloud computing.  We haven’t had the opportunity of working with start-ups that develop messengers but we would like to do that. We have experience in these fields and can give a lot of effective value back to the ventures. 
We do not like restrict ourselves to these strong focuses, without looking for opportunities. We do however have to show restraint and spend time in our expertise fields especially fields that require mostly offline expertise, rather than technological expertise are not as interesting to us. E.g.  e-commerce, travel industry and media are  outside of our scope.
During our 2 and a half year existence we are now in the stage where we don’t have much time to invest in seed and wait for them to mature. It’s a natural process for most early stage funds, this means we’ve refocused to higher checks and on companies that are a bit farther in the development. 

How does the future of the startup scene look from your perspective? What is the next industry to be revolutionised? 

Alexander Turkot: Well the fact is that there is no industry which will not be revolutionised, Fintech completely changed the industry of banking, we believe the next change will happen in insurance.  This because they have a lot of money but I would say they are a few years behind the classical banking industry. 
Other concept development I look forward is retail as it is already changing, and Augmented Reality and the internet of things look to promising too. 

You can meet Alexander Turkot with dozens more influential investors at the LOGIN Startup Fair on 5-6 of May in Vilnius!