Vladimir Knyazhitskiy

Vladimir Knyazhitskiy is a technology entrepreneur, board director and investor. For more than 25 years he has founded and led companies across IT services, professional education and electronics — from building several of the largest training centers in the region to heading Alpha Bat Pro, an international company developing battery-management and energy-conservation technology, as CEO and co-owner.

As Chairman of the Board of the Fast Lane Russia group of companies (an authorized training partner of AWS, Cisco, Google Cloud, Microsoft and other vendors), he led teams that won a number of international awards, cut global operational costs by more than 30%, and grew the services business by 40% year over year.

As Head of R&D at the LANCK holding, he took hardware products from concept to manufacturing at factories in Taiwan and was granted two US patents.

As Executive Director of a systems integrator, he led the systems-integration business — an authorized partner of Cisco, Juniper, DELL, Acer and other vendors.

As CIO of an international e-payments company, he led several M&A transactions, drove the company's technology strategy and ran management financial accounting.

For more than 15 years Vladimir has been active in venture investing as an expert, mentor and investor: he has reviewed over 10,000 startups, invested in dozens, and helped many raise capital and enter international markets — including through the Union of Business Angels and the Finnish Business Angels Network (FiBAN).

Ventures where he was involved as a co-founder or board member include:

• Safe School — a child-safety service used by 500+ schools and over 300,000 families.
• One of the country's largest kick-scooter sharing platforms.
• An AI exam-proctoring platform.
• A major web development and digital marketing company.
• An ASIC implementing the SHA-256 algorithm for mining.
• A remote body-temperature screening system integrated with access control systems.
• An intelligent building power-management controller.
• Battery management systems (BMS).
• Custom electronics — from smart power systems to full-cycle platform development.

…and many other projects.

Today he serves on boards and advises founders, investors and mid-size businesses on technology strategy, information security and international growth. Vladimir holds an MBA with honors from MBS and a Master's degree with honors in computer systems and networks from ITMO University.