Pawel Caruk

Paweł Caruk is a Central European private equity investor with roughly 15 years of experience across pan-European buyout funds. In October 2025 he was appointed Co-Managing Partner at Griffin Capital Partners, one of Poland's leading investment and asset managers, where he is responsible for sourcing, executing, and overseeing private equity transactions outside the real estate sector. The hire was part of Griffin's stated push to scale its private equity practice beyond its real-estate roots; Co-Owner and Managing Partner Maciej Dyjas noted that "while real estate remains at the core of our identity, our investment activity has long extended beyond it."

Before Griffin, Caruk spent several years as a Principal at Mid Europa Partners (MidEuropa) — an independent CEE-focused private equity firm with roughly €5.3bn of assets under management — where he led investment activity in Poland and the wider CEE region and executed a number of the firm's marquee Polish deals. Earlier in his career he worked at IK Partners (IK Investment Partners), another pan-European private equity fund. Public records place his MidEuropa Principal tenure at approximately 2018–2024.

Caruk also served as Vice President of PSIK, the Polish Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, reflecting a senior standing in the local PE community. On the education side, he holds two master's degrees from the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) and is ACCA-qualified, giving him a strong finance and accounting foundation alongside his deal experience.

*Note on classification:* Despite the stub labeling him an "Angel Investor" writing "Seed Round" checks, all verifiable sources show Caruk is an institutional private equity professional focused on control-stake buyouts, not early-stage angel investing.

• Institutional private equity buyouts and growth capital, typically taking controlling stakes on their own or alongside financial/strategic partners
• Check size (MidEuropa era): ~€50m–€300m of equity into businesses with €100m–€1.5bn enterprise value — a mid-to-large-cap mandate, not seed
• Sectors: consumer, healthcare, technology/software and services; at Griffin the mandate broadens to include renewable energy and infrastructure
• Geography: strong preference for Poland and CEE "champions" with regional or global scale potential
• In his own words on the Displate deal, Caruk said MidEuropa was "delighted to be joining forces with this Polish champion in a passion-based marketplace" — signaling an appetite for category-leading, brand-driven Polish businesses with international reach