Team

Jakub Havrlant is the founder and CEO of Rockaway Capital. He started his career in the Czech Republic by founding the Bezrealitky.cz start-up, which he eventually sold in 2010 to Naspers at the age of 26. After the sale, Jakub joined and eventually served as the CEO of the Allegro e-commerce group (back then part of Naspers) for the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Baltic states. By the age of thirty, Jakub had carried out a successful exit from his role of CEO and established a portfolio of investments in global start-ups. In 2013, Jakub launched Rockaway Capital to consolidate his private investments into a holding entity with a vision to bring a broader meaning to the term “internet business” by simply building strong digital companies and disrupting traditional business models.

Dušan joined Rockaway Capital as an Investment Partner in 2014. He co-leads Rockaway ventures and investments into Gjirafa, Storyous, Productboard, Bezrealitky, Socifi, or Manifesto Market. Dušan has strong experience and convictions in the areas of e-commerce, online grocery, and digitalisation of logistics. Prior to joining Rockaway, Dušan spent more than eight years advising start-ups in the telecom industry. He also managed key strategic transformation initiatives enabling better operational efficiency. He spent more than six years as Senior Vice President at AVG Technologies where he helped to take AVG public on the NYSE in February 2012 (AVG was acquired by Avast for $1.3 billion in 2016). He also managed key strategic transformation initiatives enabling better operational efficiency.

Before becoming Investment Partner at Rockaway Ventures, Petr spent 11 years at Google, where he led the launch and adoption of products like Google Pay and Google Assistant, gaining millions of users across more than ten CEE countries. Under his leadership, Google Pay demonstrated that Central and Eastern Europe could become a leader in the tech sector, surpassing even the Western world. Petr also played a key role in building Google’s B2B advertising business, growing it tenfold, helping numerous digital companies from the CEE region scale and expand to international markets. Before Google, Petr gained extensive experience at McKinsey as an Engagement Manager, working in countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Western Europe, Albania, the Middle East, and South Africa. His aim is to build innovative, confident, and competitive companies that can succeed on a global scale.

As the COO of the Rockaway Ventures Fund, Karin makes sure the fund runs efficiently, meaning that she’s in charge of all areas of its operation – communicating with investors and third parties, capital calls, cash flow, and portfolio management. Prior to joining Rockaway, she spent more than 7 years at PwC, where she was a member of an audit expert group focusing on complex accounting and reporting cases, where thanks to being responsible for performing audits of the financial statements of local and international groups and companies, she gained much useful experience. Karin holds ACCA certification. The graduated from the Faculty of Business and Economics at Mendel University in Brno and the Université Catholique de Lyon.

Anna has been a member of the Rockaway Ventures team since January 2022 and, as an Investment Associate, seeks out and analyzes new relevant opportunities and startups that have the potential to change the market, and explores their potential. In addition, Anna manages the entire investment process, from the initial contact with the founder through the investment itself to the subsequent assistance with their growth or fundraising of the next rounds. Anna is no stranger to seizing the opportunity, and she has already shown this at the university: her excellent results have enabled her to take part in competitions from McKinsey or EY, which have helped her get into several foreign summer schools and internships. Anna’s drive opened the door to a world full of opportunities – she worked full-time at EY during her last years at the university, then a job offer came from the Swiss startup Viso.ai. She later joined WOOD & Company in Prague and finally anchored the Rockaway team.

Max is part of the Rockaway Ventures team. As an investment analyst, he examines and evaluates investment opportunities, monitors the start-up market, creates financial models and assists with maintaining the current portfolio. He previously spent a year and a half in the Rockaway Academy programme, where he worked for Košík.cz in addition to start-ups.

Prior to joining Rockaway, he worked for three years in the sales and controlling departments at the pharmaceutical company Sandoz. Max also served as president of the student consulting organisation Club 307, where he collaborated with companies such as the Boston Consulting Group, AT Kearney and Arthur D Little.

Kateřina is an investor, ESG and Tech expert, art collector, and 2.0 philanthropist with more than twenty-five years of experience in business, technology, product growth, and marketing focused on a scale with a positive impact on society. She joined Google in 2007, where she held senior regional and global positions in the UK, USA, and Switzerland. For example, she was in charge of the localization of Google Search, the launch of the Chrome browser in Europe, the mobile services for Android phones for all developing countries worldwide (Asia, LATAM, SSA), and the topic of digital transformation, artificial intelligence and sustainability for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In 2021, Kateřina joined the newly established Rockaway Ventures Fund (RVF), a fund and as a partner is in charge of investments and ESG in the case of Rockaway and startups digitizing Central and Eastern Europe.

Ronny is a seasoned Chief Executive with international track record in the Retail and Technology space. He has led huge workforces, managed multi $bn P&Ls, and rapidly expanded novel retail concepts internationally. Additionally, he helps start-ups thrive by providing advice, and access to his vast network of retail executives and investments.

Arman joined the Rockaway Ventures team as an analyst in the summer of 2022. He is completing his Master’s studies in Finance and Appraisal at the University of Economics, during which he took advantage of the opportunity to participate in an exchange programme at the prestigious Bocconi University in Milan. He collected other valuable experience during a several-month work term at Ernst&Young in the Valuations team as well as an intern at Redwood Capital, where he mainly worked on the Dotykačka and Mindpax projects. In his spare time he likes to do sports, he has a passion for photography, and above all plays guitar in a band called Hochi&East.

Petr has been part of the Rockaway story since the very beginning, when he was enticed by Jakub Havrlant’s vision, for which he left AVG Technologies, where he’d been for seven years. He specializes in technologies, product development, IT and project/programme management, both directly for Rockaway and for its portfolio companies and projects. His most recent mission involved three years with the Košík.cz on-line supermarket, where he was in charge of R&D and IT, including product development. At the beginning of 2021 he rejoined the Rockaway team. In the past Petr worked for Sunnysoft, a Czech company developing products and software for the precursors of today’s smartphones, and then for AVG, which he took to the New York Stock Exchange and participated in the acquisition of US and Israeli companies.

Jakub joined the Rockaway team in 2019, and since then has worked on portfolio valuation, modelling, and financial due diligence, and M&A valuation support. Before that, he served for more than seven years in Risk Advisory at KPMG, managing the advisory team focused on corporate finance, valuations, business combinations, and acquisition accounting. For three years, he advised clients in the area of IPOs and bond offerings. His experience includes 50 valuation engagements, more than 15 business combinations and several capital market transactions, for example advising EPIF on various bond offerings (combined volume in billions of euros) and providing valuation advice to the PPF Group with respect to its Telenor acquisition. He holds ACCA and ASA certification.

Jakub has been working as a Chief M&A Counsel at Rockaway Capital for more than four years. He has thirteen years of experience as a M&A Lawyer at BBH – a leading Czech law firm – and five years of experience at White& Case. Jakub worked on number of international and domestic transactions, for example a JV between PPF and Generali, valued in excess of €5.2 billion. He also represented Mid Europa Partners in its auction sale of České radiokomunikace (a Czech telecommunication company) or represented the founders of AVAST Software in the sale of a minority stake to Summit Partners. Jakub has an LLB from Macquire University, Sydney (First Class Honours) and has been admitted to practise law in England & Wales and in New South Wales, Australia.

Viktor Fischer has been a Managing Partner of the Rockaway Blockchain Fund for more than two years. For more than five years, he has been an Investment Partner at Rockaway Capital and a Partner in Rockaway Ventures prior to starting the Blockchain Fund. He is or was responsible for investments such as Productboard, Brand Embassy, Techloop, Presentigo, SambaAI, or Pex. He spent more than five years at McKinsey&Company as a Junior Partner specializing in corporate finance, M&A, and private equity. For fifteen years he was involved in projects in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and telecommunications sectors. Viktor has an MBA from INSEAD and an MSc from HEC Paris.

Robert Chmelař has been one our Investment Partners since 2016. He leads Rockaway’s private equity investment team and oversees investment processes and strategy. He is responsible for the Euromedia Group and the Heureka Group. For more than nine years he worked as an Investment Director at MidEuropa Partners, the biggest private equity firm in the CEE region, where was responsible for originating, executing, and monitoring investments. He also represented Mid Europa on boards of selected portfolio companies and was involved in ten transactions on the Czech market whose value exceeded € 3 billion.