Tatiana Kim

Tatiana Kim is the Managing (General) Partner of Simile Venture Partners, a Luxembourg-domiciled early-stage investment fund founded in June 2012 that backs consumer internet and mobile businesses. She comes from a finance background with hands-on experience building new ventures in emerging markets, and she has led multiple M&A and exit transactions with major international players.

Before Simile, Kim was CFO and Investment Director at Direct Group, where she led M&A transactions and structured partnerships with well-known vertical industrial partners. She has also served on the boards of several Russia- and emerging-markets-focused companies, including Fast Lane Ventures (a Moscow-based startup builder), WebPrimeGroup, MigCredit (consumer lending) and Guthy-Renker Russia. Her contact number carries a Moscow (+7 495) area code, while her LinkedIn presence is registered in the UAE, reflecting the fund's cross-border, emerging-markets orientation.

At Simile, Kim runs a fund that invests "in any geography where market opportunity exists to build a sizeable business over a 5-year period," with a stated special interest in emerging markets such as India, Turkey, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The firm positions itself as a hands-on early backer that partners with founders from the earliest stages and supports them as they scale.

• Invests at seed and early stage in consumer internet, mobile, digital media, marketplace, fintech and productivity-software companies.
• Geography-agnostic but emerging-markets-weighted — willing to invest anywhere a large business can be built over ~5 years, with a bias toward India, Southeast Asia, Turkey, Latin America and the Middle East.
• Values user-centered design and a clear global vision. On the Thingthing/Fleksy deal, Kim said the team had a "focus on user-centered design, has a clear vision of development strategy and ambition for global coverage."
• Believes messaging and mobile interaction are core to modern products: "Mobile has become the primary channel of communication and messaging is an essential part of our user experience. Thingthing is tackling a problem of efficiency in users' interaction in a novel and intelligent way."
• Often co-invests alongside other early-stage funds (aggregator data lists co-investors such as Seedcamp and other seed backers).