Thomas Nastas

Founder of Innovative Ventures Inc (IVI), Michigan, 1986, the 1st venture investor in the State of Michigan targeting the valley of the death with investments including Neogen (NEOG: NASDAQ), AISI Inc. (acquired by ESI, ESIO: NASDAQ, USA), Personal Bibliographic Systems (acquired by Thompson Financial, NYSE: TRI & NASDAQ: TRIN, USA).

An entrepreneur himself, I left Michigan in 1992 with lots of energy yet only a few coins in my pocket to create international & emerging market funds, capitalization >$300 million, investing public, institutional & corporate money that financed entrepreneurs across countries and continents for double bottom line results; ROI & development.

I'm a member in the Int’l Science & Commercialization Board, the $85 million Kazakhstan Technology & Commercialization Project of the World Bank & the Gov’t of Kazakhstan overseeing its grant program & leading the creation of the country’s 1st technology commercialization office; member, Board of Directors of Suntyco, the Cyprus joint venture of Tata Group (Mumbai) & the EBRD (London) & its Moscow operations Sunty; the Independent Directors Association, Moscow; outsourcing SME BPOcom, Moscow & others.

I've mentored at the ‘Unreasonable Institute,’ Boulder, CO, a Y Combinator/Tech Stars clone for triple-bottom social entrepreneurs that attend from 25 counties, five continents.
I advise institutions in solutions to ‘Scale Up Innovation, Venture Capital, Commercialization & Entrepreneurship’ including the World Bank; Kazakhstan’s National Innovation Fund & the Ministry of Education & Science; the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnology & Russia Venture Company and the Govt’s of Slovakia & Croatia.

My writing about ‘Scaling Up’ appeared in Development Outreach (the World Bank Institute); the Russian, Latin American & Hungarian editions, Harvard Business Review; the Asian, Canadian, European and US Venture Capital Journals.

Contact me at Tom@IVIpe.com