Our Team

Alexandra Johnson is a Managing Director of DFJ VTB Aurora. She is a Silicon Valley-based partner and focuses on early stage companies in communications, media, and technology industries headquartered both inside and outside of Russia and CIS.

Prior to joining DFJ VTB Aurora, Alexandra was a founder and managing director of Landbridge Capital LLC, an investment firm targeting US-based companies commercializing Russian technology. For the past decade, she has provided executive management, investment, and corporate strategy services to multi-national companies. Prior to forming Landbridge Capital, Ms. Johnson was CEO of Libritas, Inc. (acquired by Next Web), a venture-backed provider of IT products and managed telecom services for small, medium, and Fortune 500 corporations. Alexandra is also the President of the Global Technology Symposium held annually at Stanford University. The Symposium is the West Coast's premier investor conference on global emerging technologies.

Education: Alexandra received an M.A. with honors from the Far Eastern State University, Vladivostok and a Ph.D. from University of St. Petersburg. She also holds an M.B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Oleg Kaganovich is a Managing Director of DFJ VTB Aurora based in the Silicon Valley office. He focuses on early stage companies in clean technology and renewable energy, manufacturing innovation, materials science, communications, media, IT, internet and consumer products.

Mr. Kaganovich was formerly a Principal and is currently a Venture Partner of DFJ Frontier, a leading West Coast venture capital firm. His investments included Zadspace, United Sample, Planitax, and AudioMicro. He is also currently a Board Director or Observer of the Sacramento Regional Technology Alliance (SARTA), Tioga Energy, and Intematix, a material science company. Oleg’s prior investment experience includes working as a Senior Associate within Sun Microsystems’ venture group, where he made over $150M of investments and acquisitions in Entercept Security Technologies (sold to Network Associates), ProactiveNet (sold to BMC Software), and Agea (sold to Avalon Digital Marketing Systems). Previously, Mr. Kaganovich was the first associate at Black Emerald Capital, a Wall Street merchant bank and M&A boutique focused on alternative energy in emerging markets. He has operational experience as CEO of SARTA, and as Founder/CEO of a computer integration company. In a previous life, Oleg was also a professional jazz saxophonist.

Mr. Kaganovich received his MBA from Columbia Business School, has performed graduate work at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and has a BS cum laude in International Business from Aquinas College.

Sergei Dubinin is a Managing Director of DFJ VTB Aurora based in the Moscow office. Mr. Dubinin has been a Member of the Board of VTB Capital since 2008. He was formerly Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation from 1995-98, has in-depth expertise in executive positions both in government institutions and large Russian corporations, such as Gazprom and RAO UES, where he worked during the most active periods of Russian market development and domestic economy reformation.

Sergei received an undergraduate degree with honors from Lomonosov Moscow State University, with a focus on Economics. He also holds a Doctor of Economics degree.

Interface between DFJ VTB Aurora and the DFJ Network

As one of the largest members of the DFJ Network, DFJ VTB Aurora uses its relationship with the DFJ team in California to extract maximum value from the portfolio of funds that make up the network. One of the DFJ Managing Directors, Tim Draper, will sit on the investment committee.

Timothy C. Draper is the Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. His original suggestion to use "viral marketing" in web-based e-mail to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail and YahooMail, and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique by hundreds of businesses. On behalf of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim serves on the boards of Glam, Kyte.tv, Meebo, ShareThis, SocialText, Wigix and DFJ Plug 'N Play companies. Previous successes include: Skype (EBAY), Overture.com (YHOO), Baidu (BIDU), Parametric Technology (PMTC), Hotmail (MSFT), PLX Technologies (PLXT), Preview Travel (TVLY), Digidesign (AVID), and others.

Tim launched the DFJ Global Network, an international network of early-stage venture capital funds with offices in over 30 cities around the globe. He founded or co-founded DFJ ePlanet (global), Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham (NYC), Zone Ventures (LA), Epic Ventures (Salt Lake City), Draper Atlantic (Reston), Draper Triangle (Pittsburg), Timberline Ventures (Portland), Polaris Fund (Anchorage), DFJ Frontier (Sacramento and Santa Barbara), DFJ Vina Capital (Vietnam), and DFJ DragonFund (Shanghai).

As an advocate for entrepreneurs and free markets, Tim is regularly featured as a keynote speaker in entrepreneurial conferences throughout the world, has been recognized as a leader in his field through numerous awards and honors, and has frequent TV, radio, and headline appearances. He was #52 on the list of the 100 most influential Harvard Alumni, and #7 on the Forbes Midas List. He was named Always-On #1 top venture capital deal maker for 2008. He was awarded the Commonwealth Club’s Distinguished Citizen Award for achievements in green and sustainable energy. His blog is featured at www.theriskmaster.com.

Tim is the course creator and Chairman of BizWorld, a 501c3 organization built around simulated teaching of entrepreneurship and business to children. He also serves on the Harvard Business School Board of Dean’s Advisors.

Previously, Tim served on the California State Board of Education. In November of 2000, Tim launched a statewide cyber-initiative on school choice for the California General Election. He was a member of Singapore's International Economic Council and Ukraine's Orange Circle. He was on the Board of U.C. Berkeley's Haas School of Business. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Alex Gurevich is a Consultant at DFJ-VTB Aurora based out of the Silicon Valley office, and an MBA candidate at Stanford Business School.

Prior to DFJ VTB Aurora, Alex was the first employee and Director of Business Development at ooma, a DFJ portfolio company in the VoIP (voice over IP) space, where he led his company's initial product roll out, customer acquisition and channel distribution strategy. Alex was also co-founder of Say-Hey-Hey.com, one of the web's first free video dating sites, where he was in charge of all product development, fundraising, and business development efforts and took the company from initial concept to revenue generation. He and his work have been featured in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, ABC News and Forbes. Alex also serves as a key advisor to several Silicon Valley early stage start-ups, as well as the Global Technology Symposium - the premier investor conference on emerging markets.

Education: Alex holds a B.S. in Management Science and Engineering, and a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University, where he was also a Mayfield Fellow. He holds an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University as well. While at Stanford, Alex studied in Moscow and interned at the Russian Federation's Working Center for Economic Reform. He also led major technology centered research projects at General Motors and IBM for Stanford's Center for Work, Technology, and Organization.