Peter Loukianoff

Board / Investment Advisor

2025 - Current

Partner

2021

PORTAL is a venture capital firm that invests in defensible and scalable Data Driven startups. We favor Cross-Border opportunities in which we can find better value for our investors with higher upside and lower risk. PORTAL takes an Art & Science approach that leverages our decades of investment and operating experience; proprietary AI / ML software for sourcing, evaluating startups, and measuring private company portfolio risk; and a filter for Positive Technology - innovations that advance abundance, sovereignty and well-being. Role: Raised seed and investment capital, recruited the team, developed relationships with over 100 family offices, conceived of our machine learning platform and acquired a dataset consisting of $211B in venture capital transactions and 70,000+ startups.

Board Member

2024

Advisor, Venture Partner, Chairman

2012

Black River Ventures is a trans-Atlantic venture capital fund focused mid-stage startups. Role: helped raise $50M+ in capital, and as venture partner and Chairman of Investment Committee provided guidance on portfolio construction and investment selection. Two of our companies have achieved unicorn-status: Coursera and Marqeta. Other notable deals include Litres.ru (eBook publisher - Eastern Europe), Mirantis (cloud services provider for OpenStack), and PetNet (an IoT and data services company focused on the petcare industry).

Managing Partner (Emeritus)

2017 - 2021

Providing Smart, Simple Venture Investing for accredited investors and family offices. Role: Founded Strawberry Creek Ventures, a diversified venture capital fund for UC Berkeley alumni. Successfully raised three funds, invested in a diversified portfolio of 50+ impressive start-ups alongside top-tier VC firms, and built a community of over 20,000+ Cal alums.

Founding Partner

2017 - 2020

Strawberry Creek Ventures, part of the Alumni Ventures Group family of funds, is a community of UC Berkeley-connected investors, executives, entrepreneurs, and innovation enthusiasts. We are a venture capital fund by alumni for alumni - affiliated with similar funds at Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Yale, Northwestern, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Princeton, Texas, UCLA, Wisconsin, Duke, and USC. Together, we are a powerful global alumni network of over 500,000 highly accomplished and influential individuals - providing our portfolio companies with an invaluable asset and unparalleled world-wide reach.

Senior Advisor

2017 - 2019

Facilitated and advised on corporate venture strategy and innovation projects with global impact.

Co-Founder, Seed Investor

2013 - 2017

Silicon Valley Data Science (SVDS) works with leading companies to turn their data into a strategic asset. SVDS is a digitization solutions firm specializing in business transformation through data science and data engineering. We are a company of experienced software engineers, architects, data scientists, strategists, and designers who specialize in data driven product development and experimentation. We work in holistic teams trained in strategic and agile approaches: whether you’re using your data to predict outcomes, understand your customers or build new go-to-market offerings, we help you align each project with your business objectives so that together we can create meaningful capabilities and capture value early and often. SVDS was acquired by Apple. Role: as a co-founder and seed investor, contributed to developing the initial concept, building key relationships, and recruiting core team members. SVDS was recognized as one of the leading firms in the fast growing and increasingly important field of data science and analytics.

Co-Founder, Managing Partner

2008 - 2016

First-of-its-kind US-Russia / Ukraine / CIS cross-border venture capital firm investing in software, cloud-computing and Internet related businesses. Role: co-founded the firm and, despite the global financial crisis of 2008, successfully raised a $72M venture capital fund with Cisco as anchor investor. Drove four (4) investments that achieved successful exits (1 IPO, 3 M&A’s). Had full day-to-day operational and P&L responsibility for managing the firm (recognized by investors/industry as a top performer in its category). Sold controlling interest in the management company (Aug '12); remain a shareholder.

Partner

2001 - 2008

Alloy Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm with over $1 billion under management that invests in the entrepreneurs creating the next generation of ground-breaking Information Technology, Life Sciences, and Cleantech companies. Role: participated in the investment process of 19 deals totaling $140M in capital commitments. Led and contributed to six (6) early-stage investments (1 IPO, 4 M&A). Co-invented four (4) patented technologies in the field of mobile advertising/messaging (sold to HTC).