Stanford Graduate School of Business

After growing up in Russia and building her venture capital career across Singapore and the United States, Olga Maslikhova had already spent nearly a decade investing across global technology ecosystems.

But it wasn’t until she attended Stanford Graduate School of Business that she set her sights on Latin America. At Stanford GSB, she focused her professional path on Brazil — without knowing either Spanish or Portuguese. To build trust and develop relationships within that emerging market, she created a podcast called The J Curve, named after the startup growth curve and one of the leading English-language podcasts covering entrepreneurship and venture capital in Latin America.

“Coming to Stanford and getting validated by the university and having such a supportive community gave me an emotional and psychological safety net, and the self-confidence to combine my background and passions and take more risks,” she says. “At the GSB, you hear that you can do anything, and that you can do it in your own unique way.”

After releasing more than 100 episodes of The J Curve, which has now surpassed three million views on YouTube, Maslikhova is about to take another big step: She is launching a venture fund focused on Brazilian startups with global ambitions this summer.

I was born in Moscow in the mid-1980s. My mom hustled to invest in my brother’s and my future. She left her stable job to become an entrepreneur in the golden rush of the ’90s, providing for the family as a single mother. She saved enough money to send me to Canada for school in the summer, where I had the experience of seeing a completely different way of living. She taught me how to take risks and make a change when my circumstances no longer fit me.

After studying organizational management in college, I started working in private equity for Troika Dialog, the largest independent financial institution in Russia. After the financial crisis hit in 2008, I was promoted to venture capital to handle investor relationships and portfolio management. One of the companies I managed was Evernote. Our fund was the first institutional investor, and we later sold our stake for a massive return. Having this scale within two to three years made me believe, okay, this is what I want to do.

I also wanted to live outside of Russia because I didn’t see it as a country willing to change. I used the success of selling Evernote to launch my first VC fund, Phystech Ventures. It was heavily focused on enterprise software outside of the U.S. because my business partner and I were first-time fund managers and didn’t want to compete with established Silicon Valley VCs. We focused primarily on Southeast Asia, with some exposure to the U.S. in the early years. I moved to Singapore, where I spent about four years investing across the region. It was a great environment professionally, but not necessarily one where I saw myself building a long-term future.

So I applied for an O-1 visa to the U.S., which was granted based on my investment activity and track record as a venture capitalist. I moved to the United States in 2017.