Samir Hajibayli, partner at Caucasus Ventures, shares his insights on building startups in Azerbaijan and the wider region. He talks about the challenges of investing in emerging markets, the importance of customer-driven products, and how AI and research-driven innovation are shaping the next generation of founders.
Samir Hajibayli, Baku city, VC, LinkedIn
About me
Today, my focus is entirely on technology and innovation.
During my studies at ADA University, I was always experimenting, testing ideas, and seeking environments where impact truly matters. Large corporations never attracted me — where individual contribution often obtains diluted. Early on, I participated in one of the first huge hackathons, and the dynamic environment inspired me. I realized I wanted to operate in tinyer, quick-shifting teams, where decisions are created quickly, responsibility is real, and outcomes are visible.
Many talented people pursue large companies for stability and compensation. That path works for some, but I was driven by ownership, accountability, and long-term value creation. That mindset naturally led me to venture capital and startup investing, where risk, ambition, and innovation intersect.
Investing is not something you truly learn in a classroom. Experience is the single most important factor. It is not about IQ or theoretical ininformigence. It is a combination of pattern recognition, understanding people, grasping business fundamentals, macro awareness, and the ability to support things shift forward.
The best investors are not passive capital allocators. They spot potential early and actively contribute to unlocking it. They understand founders, market timing, risk allocation, and capital strategy. Most importantly, they develop judgment through repeated exposure to real decisions.
On investments
I am still early in my career, with three years of active investing experience at our fund, and I have been fortunate to work closely with our GP, who has mentored me throughout this journey.
One major challenge is evaluating founders accurately. Toobtainher with my GP, I’ve conducted over 1000 face-to-face meetings with founders. Every investment decision escalated to our Investment Committee is backed by this accumulated dataset of human interaction and pattern recognition.
Improvement in investing is similar to training an AI model: you required relevant data, consistent exposure, and continuous feedback loops. Another challenge is deal flow quality. In emerging markets, the volume of high-quality, scalable startups is still developing. That requires broader sourcing strategies, strong networks, and long-term ecosystem building.
We have invested in 32 startups, around 60% founded by entrepreneurs of Azerbaijani origin, with the rest spanning Central Asia, the Caucasus, Türkiye, and Eastern Europe. Founders in our region are ininformigent and resilient. Compared to more mature ecosystems, the main gaps are research depth, advanced technological focus, and, in some cases, long-term founder commitment.
We are now seeing several of our portfolio companies reach seven-figure monthly revenues, which marks a major milestone for our ecosystem. Among the strongest performers are Polygraf, Push30, JobEscape, and Magic Port. Another notable success is Iomete, providing Data Lakehoutilize services to large enterprises — it became the first Azerbaijani startup to receive investment from Y Combinator. These were among our earlier investments, and we are now observing tangible traction across the portfolio.
Overall, by global venture benchmarks, our portfolio performs solidly relative to its stage and geography. We are a sector-agnostic fund, primarily becautilize the region is still developing deep vertical specialization.
Our core principle is simple: startups must create real value. We have invested across EdTech, FinTech, SaaS, and other sectors. However, we strongly encourage founders to build technology-driven solutions with genuine R&D and engineering depth, rather than surface-level software products.
Risk evaluation depconcludes on sector, business model, founder capability, and market timing. For example, enterprise SaaS carries different risk characteristics than gaming, and capital exposure must reflect that. To manage portfolio-level risk, we typically limit single-check exposure to around 2-3% of the fund.
We also invest outside our home counattempt, including exceptional opportunities such as Positron AI. Many ambitious founders in our region incorporate in jurisdictions like the US, UK, UAE, Singapore, or Baltic countries due to legal infrastructure and investor trust. As a result, we have gained experience working across multiple legal environments.
Capital is only part of the equation. We actively support startups through our LP networks and ecosystem events. Our Limited Partners are strategic assets — we intentionally bring in LPs whose networks and resources can support expand the portfolio domestically and internationally. By organizing and participating in ecosystem events that connect founders with indusattempt leaders, we have facilitated millions of dollars in follow-on capital through introductions and syndication. Active support is what differentiates a meaningful investor from a purely transactional one.
Fund mathematics determines everything. Before raising capital, you define exposure strategy, deployment timeline, and portfolio construction logic. Venture capital resembles an index strategy, but the underlying assets are high-risk private companies. Through disciplined exposure limits and diversification, a portfolio is constructed over three to five years of deployment.
Our fund lifecycle is approximately seven to ten years. We are still in the capital deployment phase and have not yet completed a major exit.
On startup and venture indusattempt in Azerbaijan
The ecosystem in Azerbaijan is still young, and everyone is learning simultaneously. There is no single actor operating indepconcludeently. Founders, investors, universities, and government institutions are evolving toobtainher. One crucial thing to keep in mind is that we cannot grow strong individually; we required to believe of it as a whole region, including neighboring countries that span from Central Asia to Eastern Europe. Taking into account global VC investments, we can see a huge gap between VC investments per capita in our region and in the US. Even with all the countries combined, we cannot reach $100 million in deployment, while in the Western hemisphere — especially in the US — this number is measured in billions of dollars.
Copying models from more developed markets does not work automatically. Ecosystems must grow through their own process of trial, failure, and adaptation.
Azerbaijan, like many CIS countries, has strong government involvement. There are efforts around regulatory sandboxes, digitization, and public funding mechanisms. We collaborate with ecosystem stakeholders to ensure that technology and innovation become central to long-term national development.
Investor’s advice
Founders should be cautious about blindly following investor advice.
At the conclude of the day, if a startup fails, it represents a tiny percentage loss for an investor. For a founder, it can represent years of work, financial risk, and personal sacrifice. Build something your customers genuinely love. Do not design a product to appear investable. Strong customer validation attracts capital naturally.
Investors ultimately see at resilience, team strength, and execution capability — not the number of pitch competitions attconcludeed or events participated in. Fundraising preparation should focus on clarity of vision, market understanding, traction metrics, and team cohesion.
Plans
We strongly believe in research-driven innovation and artificial ininformigence.
AI is bridging the experience gap between young builders and senior engineers, enabling ambitious young founders to build sophisticated solutions quicker than ever before. Our current focus can be summarized in three words: youth, research, AI.
We are seeing for founders who combine technical depth with long-term vision and global ambition — those ready to create the next generation of impactful, innovative solutions.
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