Rafael Karapetyan
Head of Partnerships
I trust my intuition. Sometimes it’s hard to put certain things into words, but you still feel them - that’s your gut feeling, and it has rarely let me down.
Rafael leads partnerships at the fund, including investor relations, collaborations with a broad network of external partners, and supporting portfolio companies on strategic deals. He is also part of the MediaTech investment team, where he sources startups and helps shape the direction of the investment vertical.
After graduating from King’s College London, Rafael moved to New York City to pursue economics at Columbia University. He then moved to California, where he began working on his own startup in the film industry. There, he and his team built a product from scratch, received grants from accelerators including NYU's Innovation Venture Fund, raised their first pre-seed investment, and secured pilots with Lionsgate and Paramount - two studios where Rafael was responsible for developing and managing the relationships.
Having been on both sides of the same coin, Rafael understands what it feels like to work on something you are passionate about. Yet Rafael believes that what matters most is not the idea, but the people behind it and how well they execute the things they want to achieve.
Rafael’s background is in sales. Before joining the fund, he lived right on Wall Street in NYC and his office was at One World Trade, where he worked at a B2B SaaS company, Templafy. There, he yet again learned that no matter how much passionate you are about the product, to succeed, you have has to be able to sell it