Yoav
Samet

The Dealmaker Who Switched Sides

Spend 13 years inside Cisco's corporate development machine and you learn something most VCs never do: what a billion-dollar acquirer actually wants. Yoav Samet spent those years on the buying side - closing 20+ acquisitions worth over $7 billion, managing a $1 billion portfolio across Europe, Israel, Canada, and emerging markets - before making the jump to venture capital, first at StageOne Ventures, and now as General Partner at Almaz Capital.

Almaz Capital is not a typical Silicon Valley fund. Founded with Cisco as an anchor investor, it focuses on disruptive deep tech and B2B software in markets that most Sand Hill Road partnerships treat as footnotes: Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the broader CEE/CIS region. Almaz has backed over 50 companies, generated two IPOs, one unicorn, and 18+ acquisitions. It's a track record built on the conviction that geography is a bias, not a strategy.

Samet's current investment thesis centers on AI and machine learning, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, IoT, edge computing, and enterprise SaaS - the connective tissue of modern enterprise technology. But the real edge isn't the sectors. It's who he knows, and where he looks.

Where Others Don't Look

Almaz Capital's geographic focus is deliberate and differentiated. While most U.S. venture firms cluster around familiar ecosystems, Samet and his partners back founders in CEE and CIS countries - regions that produce world-class engineers but have historically lacked access to serious growth capital and Silicon Valley networks. That gap is the opportunity.

Thirteen Years Inside the Machine

When Samet joined Cisco as VP of Corporate Development, the company was one of the most acquisitive in Silicon Valley. He helped run deals across roughly one-third of Cisco's global business - Europe, Israel, Canada, Emerging Markets. The scope was enormous. Approximately 20 companies acquired. More than $7 billion in transaction value. A direct investment portfolio of 40+ companies. LP positions with 20+ venture funds worldwide.

The sectors weren't random - mobile wireless, semiconductors, software-enabled services. These were infrastructure bets, made at a time when Cisco was wiring the internet together in real time. What Samet absorbed during those years wasn't just deal mechanics. It was the corporate decision-making that determines which startups get bought, which get competed into the ground, and which simply run out of time before anyone notices them.

That vantage point is rare. Most VCs have never operated inside a serial acquirer at scale. Samet has. When he evaluates a portfolio company's exit potential today, he's drawing on a mental model built from the other side of the table.

From Officer to Engineer to Dealmaker

The Portfolio That Proves the Thesis

Almaz Capital's exits tell the story better than any pitch deck. A mix of IPOs, strategic acquisitions by global tech leaders, and companies acquired by major enterprise players - all sourced from markets most Western VCs never visited.

The Deep Tech Conviction

Samet's investment framework at Almaz Capital runs along two axes: sectors and geography. On sectors, the firm targets what it calls "disruptive deep tech" - companies building proprietary technology that solves hard enterprise problems, not wrapper apps or feature additions to existing platforms. That means AI/ML with genuine defensibility, cybersecurity with novel threat detection, cloud infrastructure that enables meaningful cost or capability improvements, and enterprise SaaS built on lasting workflow ownership.

On geography, Almaz operates where the talent density is highest and the capital competition is lowest. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states produce exceptional engineers - historically trained in mathematics, physics, and computer science at some of the world's most rigorous universities - but have lacked access to the deal flow, introductions, and growth capital that Silicon Valley distributes reflexively to founders in its backyard.

What a Bridge Actually Does

The word "bridge" gets overused in investor bios. Samet's version is structural. He grew up in Israel, trained in its military technology apparatus, studied at Hebrew University, spent time at Israeli VC firms Pitango and StageOne, and remains deeply networked in Israeli and Eastern European tech ecosystems. He also ran global M&A for one of Silicon Valley's most consequential technology companies for 13 years. That dual fluency - operational, cultural, and network-based - is what makes Almaz Capital's model work.

Most cross-border funds are headquartered in one place and parachute into another. Almaz was built the other way: founded with deep roots in CEE/CIS markets, anchored by a Cisco relationship that gave it immediate credibility with Silicon Valley's corporate development community, and staffed by partners who understand both sides natively.

Samet's role is helping portfolio companies make the journey in the other direction - from strong technical foundations built in Eastern Europe to the U.S. enterprise market, the customers who write large B2B contracts, the partners who extend distribution, and eventually the acquirers who provide exits. Cisco was once that acquirer. Now he's advising founders on how to get there.

The Details That Don't Fit on a Slide Deck

Three degrees from two of the world's most respected CS programs. A military career in one of the most storied technology intelligence units in existence. Over a decade managing deals for a corporation that was, for a stretch, the most important infrastructure company on the internet. A pivot to VC - twice, at two different firms - before landing at the one that fit the thesis most precisely.

Most investors arrive at the table with one identity: operator, or academic, or finance. Samet arrived with all of them, in sequence, before the venture capital chapter even began. That stacking of contexts is unusual and it shows in how he evaluates founders - not just on the market or the team, but on the specific technical decisions that separate defensible infrastructure from clever demos.

He's also an Executive Committee Member of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, Pacific Northwest Division - a thread connecting his Israeli academic roots to his current life in the Bay Area. The network doesn't stop at the portfolio.