Karel Zheng

General Partner at KAYA VC

I invest into early stage founders from Central and Eastern Europe. I love to partner with high-intensity and irrationally motivated folks who want to compete with the best product, the best execution, and win.

You can find me in Prague, Warsaw, San Francisco, or London, but happy to fly in to meet incredible talent anywhere in the world.

Amateur endurance athlete - half iron mans, ultra trails, marathons. Proud dad to my little Lion, and happy Husband.

I invested / work with

AI Game PuppeteerArtificial.Agency
Next gen DataDogBetter Stack
Real World with 3D GSBlurry
AI CloudE2B
Automate EverythingEigenPal
Hyper-real AI-generated humansGenPeach AI
AI Coworkergetviktor.com
AI Primary Care rollupJutro Medical
Renovated Apartments at ScaleNOVA ET VETERA
Design x Code <3Pencil.dev
Identity layer for AI agentsRiptides
AI CMOStormy.AI
Self-hosted inferenceSuperlinked
Context EngineTopK
AI TPATrue Claim
The Haz-Ops HumanoidMinerva Humanoids

KAYA VC

KAYA VC is the leading early-stage fund in Central & Eastern Europe. Headquartered in Prague with presence in London, Warsaw, Budapest, and San Francisco.

We invest pre-seed to Series A into artificial intelligence, developer tools, infrastructure software, vertical software, healthcare technology, and B2B SaaS. Our portfolio includes unicorns like Rohlik, Docplanner, and Booksy, alongside breakout companies such as Better Stack, E2B, getviktor.com, and Humans&.

$500M+
AUM
60+
Companies
5
Funds
$250K–4M
Check size

Team of 6 experienced investors, who know each other for more than a decade - Martin Rajcan, Tomas Obrtac, Tomas Pacinda, Vaclav Ryslink, Vojtech Tomsu, and Karel Zheng.

Two partners on every deal. You always have someone to call, and we always have someone to challenge our own thinking. We respect founders' time - if it's not a fit, we'll tell you quickly. If it is, we don't need six committee meetings to wire the money.

Fundraising is not a binary outcome for us. In some of our best deals, we invested after we passed 3 times - and we were more than happy to pay up later.

KAYA portfolio highlights

Fund I2011
SlevomatExit to Secret Escapes
Fund II2014
DameJidloExit to Delivery Hero TwistoExit to Zip.co DocplannerFirst PL unicorn
Fund III2016
RohlikFirst CZ unicorn Booksy$100M+ beauty platform FootshopSPAC IPO
Fund IV2021
BetterStackNext Gen DataDog E2BAI Cloud GetViktorAI Coworker Jutro MedicalAI Primary Care Rollup
Fund V2025
GenPeach AIHyper-real AI-generated humans Pencil.devDesign x Code <3 PrimVeterinaryOpenEvidence for Vets Humans&Human-centric frontier AI lab

Rohlik, Docplanner, and Booksy are unicorns. More coming soon. See all 60+ companies.

Events

We host around 30 events a year across our core hubs. We love to partner on events - hit me up if you have a cool idea for a collab! Follow us on Luma →