After immigrating here as a child, this early-stage VC roots for the underdog

Shtarkman and his parents immigrated to the US from Ukraine in 1998. He remembers helping his family with everything from signing leases to buying a car, because he was the first among them to pick up the English language. 

It didn’t stop with his family. He remembers helping with translation for other local entrepreneurs who’d also immigrated to the US. 

“I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time,” Shtarkman said. “But it wasn’t until many many years later that that really shaped the formative foundation for me to say, ‘I want to be in this business finance world, and helping folks execute against an idea.’”

Now based in Foggy Bottom in DC, Shtarkman, 33, is a vice president at Revolution Ventures, an investment firm focused on tech businesses. We asked the Johns Hopkins grad a few questions about his career and how he got to where he is now. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

How did you get into venture capital?

My passion for venture was born long before I knew what the word venture capital meant. When I was seven years old, we settled in Cleveland, Ohio. In the Midwest, this was a period of time where there was actually a pretty big influx of immigrant entrepreneurs coming into the country. This was all post-collapse of the Soviet Union. 

I was the first person in my family to pick up and speak the English language. Just by virtue of command of the English language, I had some instances growing up alongside those immigrant entrepreneurs — people who were trying to restart their little computer repair shop or a little online business — to use my translation services, so to speak. So I was helping them write business emails and translate.

During my last semester [in grad school], I was working at a growth equity fund in Baltimore called Camden Partners. And it all came full circle for me, and once again validated the fact that I kind of wanted to be in the early stage venture world. 

I Googled, “What is venture capital? What are the best venture capital firms?” Of course, Revolution popped up.One of the things that really stood out to me was this thesis called “Rise of the Rest.” It was the firm’s philosophy — basically finding and identifying the underdog founders and companies all across the US, helping those folks scale their business. 

Feeling like I came from a bit of an underdog background myself, that really resonated with me, and I made it a mission to get to know as many people as I could at the firm and learn everything about them. 

But you didn’t start working there right away?

There were really no job opportunities in venture [at the time]. I felt like I needed to get that core fundamental skill set. How do you analyze, how do you build companies? So I became an investment banker. For about four or five years, I was a banker. Most of that was with a firm called Raymond James. 

But the way the world works is you have to either decide you’re always going to be a banker or transition out of the banking world early in your career and start developing the other skill sets … and I had kind of missed that train. So it was very hard for me to leave because I was more senior in my career. And I had sort of gone down that path as a banker much further than most people usually do. 

But in the background, I continued relationships with folks, got to know some people at Revolution. Ultimately at a conference I met with one of the Revolution folks who was actually on the growth team, who said, wait a minute, there might actually be something on the team. And through that sort of fortuitous series of events. I landed at Revolution Ventures. 

What does the day-to-day of your current job look like? 

I would say there’s sort of three hats that I wear. 

One is the investor sourcer. Prop tech or real estate tech is a category I spend most of my time on — basically, interfacing with large institutional real estate organizations, and the real estate world at large. That also includes construction tech. That’s a world that I feel very passionate about. I talk to a lot of people, collect a lot of data, and try to channel that data to figuring out where the trends of where the world is going. 

Part two is board member and operating partner. Because we manage the portfolio pretty actively, there’s no shortage of everything from small checking calls with founders to five, six-hour board meetings. 

And then the third bucket, think of it a little bit as like a fund COO. So everything from the systems and processes and portfolio company reporting and portfolio company valuations at the end of the year to fundraising and putting together our annual meeting — which is always a big event. Basically at the end of the year, we synthesize all of our results, all the updates coming out of the portfolio into one massive presentation and then we have all our investors fly into DC for a day of programming. 

That’s a lot of number crunching and accounting and update work, but it’s an important part of being an investor. It’s a lot of time that needs to go into doing that. 

What advice would you give to people wanting to follow a similar career path? 

I think partially informed by maybe my immigrant mentality, but I always believed that tactical, nuts and bolts skills are all you need. 

And I think I found very quickly, networking means everything. And it’s not just firing off emails. It’s more a curation effort that takes time and patience to do because building that network and weaving that chain, you get an appreciation, not only for the people in those organizations, but the organizations themselves.

I learned that a lot later in my career — that the technical skills matter, that network matters. My advice would be:Have a solid assessment of where you are in that journey in terms of having hard skills versus having soft skills and a network. And make sure you give equal weight to each because they’re both really important.

What are your interests or hobbies outside of work? 

I was a competitive martial artist. I did different types of martial arts growing up, but really when I started Hopkins, I did Taekwondo, fell in love with it. Ultimately won on the competition team there. Ultimately progressed to a third degree black belt. 

During some of my undergrad years, I was training five days a week and going to  competitions, and sparring and fighting. So that’s been a big part of my life, originally in terms of helping build my character. 

I don’t train five days a week anymore. I don’t do sparring competitions anymore. But it’s defined my character and that loyalty and that discipline in many regards, applied to my career. I’ve now switched to boxing. 

What’s next for you? What are your goals? 

It’s a really powerful question. I love what I do. I perceive myself to be an investor. And I think, ideally, continuing to be an investor at this early-stage side of the business because I feel like that’s just well aligned with my skill set, and where I see a lot of the value creation taking place. 

My aspiration is honestly to unlock a path for myself where I can do more, invest in more companies, help more founders. Sometimes the thing that keeps me going is actually not super success stories, but making an impact on things that otherwise would not usually make the headlines.

I’ll be happy if I can look back and say there’s 100 companies that I’ve helped and been on that journey with — some good, some bad. 

There’s a lot to reflect on, a lot of learnings, a lot of great people that I’ve met along the way. And like I said, help these things achieve whatever outcome was destined for those companies and founders.

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This article has been updated to correct the name of the Baltimore firm; it is Camden Partners