Peter Loukianoff
Managing Partner
Past Teams
Alumni Ventures, McKinsey, Silicon Valley Data Science (co-founder, acq. by Apple), Almaz Capital (co-founder), Autonomy (IPO), Black River Ventures
Education
BS Engineering, MBA, University of California, Berkeley
BIO
Peter is the founding partner of PORTAL, serving as its Managing Partner. He has over 25 years of experience as a business innovator, leader, and investor in Silicon Valley, Europe, and Asia.
Previously, Mr. Loukianoff has been part of founding four successful venture capital firms, and raised funds for Alumni Ventures Group (AVG) – ranked by Pitchbook as the #3 most active VC firm in the US deploying over $250M per year in capital and managing a global portfolio of over 400 start-up companies (where he founded the UC Berkeley franchise Strawberry Creek Ventures); Black River Ventures, a US/European cross-border investment fund; Almaz Capital, one of the first technology funds focused on the Russian/CIS market; and Modern Venture Partners, a spin-off from AVG.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Loukianoff was a partner at Alloy Ventures and Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Co., where he worked on innovation strategies for multinational corporations. He has negotiated dozens of investment deals, served on numerous boards, and done business in 40+ countries around the world. He got his start in venture capital as an intern at Kleiner Perkins during business school. Notable start-ups that he and his funds have backed, include Qik (acq. by Skype), Yandex (Nasdaq: YNDX), Relayr (acq. by MunichRe), Marqeta (Nasdaq: MQ), Coursera (Nyse: COUR), LitRes (acq. by Ozon.ru), nScaled (acq. by Acronis), and Xactly (Nasdaq: XTLY). Formerly, Peter was a founding team member and senior operating executive with several start-ups, including Autonomy, a pioneer in unstructured data applications, and Silicon Valley Data Science (acq. by Apple).
As an internationally recognized expert in cross-border innovation, venture capital, and entrepreneurship, Mr. Loukianoff has advised several heads-of-state and world leaders on these subjects. Peter has also been a contributor to Forbes and the EastWest Institute, a guest commentator on television shows such as CNBC’s Street Signs, and has been covered by The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, et al. Mr. Loukianoff is a member of the Forbes Global CEO network and frequent speaker at industry conferences. He earned an MBA and BS in Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and is co-inventor on four mobile messaging patents.
Heartstrings
Make-A-Wish Foundation (grants wishes to children with critical illnesses – our daughter is a Wish Kid alum – they’re incredible!), St. George Pathfinders (teaches kids scouting skills and how to survive in the wilderness without phones and computers), FirstStar.org (helps abused and neglected kids in foster care succeed in school and in life – 88% of FirstStar graduates go onto college compared to 10% generally – that’s amazing impact!)
Fun Facts
I love competitive sports (I was on a football team that was ranked #4 in the country), learning from interesting people, traveling the world and seeing new places with my wife and family. I once had long hair and a beard, and was in a rock band. Coming from an immigrant family whose previous two generations lost everything in communist revolutions – I try to savor life and be thankful for everything.