rpv Founding Partner Arkady Kulik on Evaluating Companies and Identifying Talented Founders | Ep63
In this Seed to Harvest episode, host Paige Finn Doherty interviews Arkady Kulik, founding partner of the physics‑enabled deep‑tech venture firm RPV. Arkady explains that RPV’s investment thesis starts with the founding team, then moves to a rigorous, peer‑review style technical due diligence that involves external scientists, department chairs, and even Nobel laureates. He describes two technology areas of interest: photonic computing, which could cut energy use of AI workloads by orders of magnitude, and neuroscience, where an aging global population and rising mental‑health challenges create a two‑fold market for non‑invasive, non‑chemical neuromodulation therapies (one company shows 86% efficacy in pre‑clinical anxiety trials). Arkady outlines the traits he looks for in founders—resilience, the ability to identify and mitigate risks rather than merely endure them—and shares patterns observed across his portfolio. He recounts RPV’s first investment in a neuroscience startup that combined a strong scientist‑entrepreneur duo, a 3P (profit‑planet‑people) ethos, and a vision for a home‑use, drug‑free device. The conversation moves to RPV’s broader vision: bridging the gap from scientific theory to robust technology to accessible products, anticipating that today’s deep‑tech (e.g., photonics) will mature, while future breakthroughs will emerge at the intersection of biology and physics. Arkady likens RPV’s operational “melody” to the scientific method—hypothesis, test, iterate—emphasizing calm, data‑driven decision‑making. Paige shares her own fund’s melody of community, content, and remote‑first culture, highlighting the parallel between venture firm rhythms (formal processes) and melodies (unique cultural DNA). The episode ends with reflections on challenges in storytelling and fund building.
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We always start with the team, and that has been the case for all the types of investments, I think, whether it's IT VC or private equity, even team is the core thing. However, that's where similarities end. And the next thing we do at RPV is we do deep technical due diligence. Sometimes it's like 20 pages long document. We employ external scientists. Usually those would be the chairs of their specific departments, or we even talked once to a Nobel Prize winner about that.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Seed to Harvest. I'm here with my friend Arkady, and today we're going to be talking a bit about engineering and venture. So I'm really excited for today's episode. If you're new here, this podcast Seed to Harvest is hosted by me, Paige Finn Doherty. I'm the founding partner behind Genius Ventures, and I interview founders, creators, and investors. And just try and have conversations about the stories, tactics, and frameworks that they've found helpful and the mishaps that happen along the way. So Arkady, do you want to introduce yourself briefly to give the audience some context on who you are?
Sure. Hi, my name is Arkady and I am a founding partner at RPV. We're a physics-enabled deep tech firm. We focus on pre-seed ventures with some really nice science as a foundation of them.
Awesome. And I'm, I guess I'm curious, this is what like one of the questions that I like to ask is, how did you get into venture? How did you find it?
The quest started with science more than venture itself. And I was looking for all the different ways I can contribute to science. I've made my money in IT and I was like, it's all cool and nice and sure, technology. And I always had that urge to get something, get a little closer to some really hard problems. You know, whether it's neuroscience or photonics or energy or materials, I had this urge in me, probably inspired by science fiction, too, too much science fiction read as a kid, and definitely inspired by physics education. I've got master's in physics. To me, the, the scientific breakthrough itself, the theory or, you know, mathematical equations, they have their own aesthetics to them. Sure. At the same time, the Full value of science is only realized when we productize it and when people get some benefits out of it.
Mm-hmm.
Whether it's better energy source, you know, better health or whatever the benefits could be.
Yeah. Which is interesting because you come from a physics background and so it, it sounds like the thing that resonates with you really strongly is actually the application of science versus the pure theoretical.
Yes, I think that, that we should follow the value chain to the end, right? Mm-hmm. The purely theoretical things have their own beauty. Experiments have their own drive. When, you know, you try, you fail, you try, you fail, and finally it works. All of the steps in process have something to be excited about. At the same ti— time, I, I'm trying to look at the whole picture and if Everybody, like if people don't benefit from this scientific breakthrough, then honestly the only people who, who are winning are scientists and their egos that, you know, I've invented something. Okay, cool. Sure. Good for you. Yeah. How do we make it accessible for everybody else?
I love that. Yeah. Like democratization of access to scientific breakthroughs. I'd love to hear more about maybe some of the specific, like hard problems that you are thinking through or have backed that are really exciting to you right now?
I think neuroscience would be number one on my list. Sure, there are things like photonics. We can talk about it later. The reason I mentioned neuroscience is—
What is, sorry, what is photonics? I was never afraid to ask the dumb questions in my engineering classes. I'm sure as heck not now.
Simply put, photonics, Like electronics is when you're all of your computing machine, they work on electrons moving physically within your circuits. Photonics is the same where instead of electrons, you use photons. Mm-hmm. So photons do not have a mass, so they're much easier to manipulate. On average, we expect that the photonic chip would, would use 1,000 times less energy.
Wow.
Not 1,000%, 1,000 times less energy. Than electronics. And it's, it's gonna be a cool breakthrough again, but—
Yeah, that would be massive, especially with like AI and all of the energy constraints that are happening right now. Cool.
From what I've heard, you know, an AI query is around 1,000 times more energy consuming than a traditional search query. Again, I've, I've never seen any hard data. I've heard some rumors about that, so take it with a grain of salt. Okay. And then photonics can actually change it, but the best example that I've heard is When people compare photonics to light bulbs, mm-hmm, how many incandescent light bulbs do you have instead of LED light bulbs in your house or your office?
This is a pop quiz.
And like 10 years ago, 10 years ago, it, it was all incandescent. Yeah. It was no LED lamps whatsoever. Now it's all LED. The same stuff will happen with photonics and electronics. This is one of those silent revolutions that you and I won't even really notice. 'Cause major beneficiaries would be data centers and these big, big compute companies. Neuroscience would be way more noticeable.
Yeah. Tell me more about the neuroscience.
Yeah, there is a twofold problem the way I see it, side on both sides of the spectrum actually. So on one hand, we have a rapidly aging population in the Western world, Europe, US, all of these countries, Japan, China as well. So pretty much the whole world is rapidly aging, and with all the advancements in healthcare, in longevity, it'll only become worse. And all the neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and you know, you name it, there, there is a whole long list. Dementia is a horrible one. These will be more and more prevalent. That's the older population. The younger population, Gen Zs and Gen Alpha especially. From everything we see, from everything we hear, the mental health would be a huge issue. Much, much bigger than it was in the, in the millennials, for example. The, the whole climate change, the whole social unrest that, that the fact that and the access to all the information about it as well.
'Cause I feel like in generations past it was like in academic papers and if you were in that niche or interested in it, you would know about it. But now it's, we have all that access to information at our fingertips. And on our feeds and in TikTok algorithms.
And it's emotionally charged, so people share it even more. So algorithms pick it up on, on that even more. So we have aging population with neurodegenerative diseases. We've got young population with mental health issues. Both of them can benefit a lot from neuroscience. We backed a couple of companies that are focusing on non-invasive, non-chemical ways to treat your brain.
Mm-hmm.
It's called neuromodulation. Uh, we are under very heavy NDAs. I cannot go into more specifics than that. I can say only one thing, that one of them is treating anxiety with 86% efficacy in preclinical trials.
Damn.
Just for comparison.
Yeah.
Placebo is 30%. Best of class pills is like 40, 45. So it's, it's an increase. Wow. And these guys are at 86. And it's a non-toxic thing, so there are no side effects, no toxicity, no, no damage to your whole organism. So these guys are gonna rock it. And another company is focusing on reducing inflammation in cells, especially in brain cells. And this is the way to cure all the neurodegenerative things. So we're trying to handle as much as we can, both mental issues and, you know, aging issues.
Mm-hmm. And, and I guess I'm, I'm curious to understand as a pre-seed, investor specifically in deep tech, how do you think about, I think you have a really interesting diligence model. So how do you, how do you think about evaluating companies when, you know, they're very early in their research phases or company building phases? How do you think about that and picking the ones that you think will have massive impact in the future?
We always start with the team and that has been the case for all the types of investments, I think, whether it's IT, VC, or private equity, even team is the core thing. However, that's where similarities end. And the next thing we do at RPV is we do deep technical due diligence. Sometimes it's like 20 pages long document. We employ external scientists. Usually those would be the chairs of their specific departments. Or we even talked once to a Nobel Prize winner about that. Not that it was a lot of help.
Yeah.
But sometimes, like, seriously, these guys, I was supposed to be like, whoa.
And then you're like, not that they were that much help.
No, it's, it's like they, they have this beautiful understanding that they're a beautiful mind and like they see the picture, the, you know, 10,000-foot view. But we need a picture at a microscopic level. We need to understand specific details.
Yeah.
You need a microscope of an American model. Exactly. We want to know how this specific type of glue in this advanced material will affect the properties of that material. We don't need a lecture on history of materials and blah, blah, blah. So we employ external scientists. We go in depth. We, we do it in several iterations. We have a whole process. I can share it with you if you wanna add it as a graphics later.
Oh yeah.
We have a whole process, how it's done, what kind of questions we ask. I can show you some examples. We verify every equation. You would be surprised how many times we've seen mistakes in, in just applying the right equations to the specific problem. Not gonna share examples from that. We verify, I mean, I don't wanna do that, right? We redo every calculation. Even sometimes even those things have mistakes in them. So we basically run the proper peer review, but instead of a scientific article, we do it for, uh, for the materials that the company provides.
Yeah, that's super interesting. It's like a peer-reviewed Due diligence process, which I think is really cool and very unique for many of the firms that I've talked to. I guess I'd be curious to understand what, you know, as you've continued investing, what patterns have arisen from the companies or founders that you've invested in? Are there any like specific traits that you really key in on or you think make a really talented technical founder?
The only pattern that I am ready to identify right now has less to do with deep tech and more to do with entrepreneurship in general. However smart or emotionally intelligent or good in sales or good in culture that the founders might be, the biggest indicator of their success would be their resilience and their ability to Just keep on going. Not, not doing the same thing, not just being stubborn and doing the same stuff, but be resilient and finding the new path to achieve your goal. In terms of, yeah, I think transfer. Mm-hmm. Go ahead.
I was gonna say, I think about that as like execution velocity. So it's like how quickly can you execute and then how, mm-hmm, like how thoughtfully can you shift your direction when you're doing that?
Mm-hmm.
I guess I'd be curious to understand, one of the things I've been thinking about is like risk tolerance, and I would say I put myself like Pretty high on the scale of like risk tolerant. I'm curious if you've seen any like patterns with that specifically among the entrepreneurs you back.
Not within our entrepreneurs. I think the risk tolerance on its own is not necessarily a good predictor, in my opinion. Mm-hmm. Their ability to identify risks and mitigate them early on. Mm-hmm. So instead of enduring risks, they don't like risk so much. They try to find the ways to minimize that in every single opportunity. Uh, so this usually brings more success than, than, you know, enduring risk. Because if, again, that's my opinion, right?
Yeah.
If you can endure a lot of risk, at some point the, the pro— the amount of parameters in the system grows so much that people stop losing grasp of that, that they really don't understand it anymore. So if they can reduce the risk here on a technical side, here on the team side, and maybe get an ally from a potential big client. So reducing risk is a very important thing. I would say more important than ability to endure it.
Yeah. And just pick like the big, you know, the handful of big ones, but the ability lies in the ability or the ability is to identify which ones you're not going to take and then minimize the risk of those happening. In the future.
Exactly.
Huh.
That's the magic is of course is, is identifying which ones are important. That's where a lot of people do a lot of mistakes.
Yeah, it's hard. I, and then I guess like what was, what made you make your first investment that you ever made? What was that like? Walk me through that.
The very first investment was the one that was extremely important for us for many reasons, right? We were testing our process, we were making sure that our LPs would see it in the right way. So there were multi— it was a multifactor decision. Things that really stood out were the team. This particular team was a perfect match of a strong scientist and a strong entrepreneur who already has created something in the neuroscience field. So one of the founders already had a successful neuroscience company before.
Yeah.
And another one spent around 12 years of his life in this specific area of research. So I think this is the best match and they had a very good dynamic within that team. So that really sold us the problem they were trying to fix and still are successfully fixing now in clinical, now not in preclinical. So this was the, as I said, the mental health issues. I think it's very important to find a way to heal it without toxicity and annual courses and things like that. This was also a big one. Of course, that this problem translates into a market and the culture and philosophy of the company was extremely important to us. The way they saw the world, the way they, they ultimately wanna build a device that anybody can use at home without any doctor supervision.
Mm-hmm.
And their, their focus on the what they call 3P, profit, planet, people. They're focused on all of these things together and not just, you know, making a shit ton of cash. Excuse my French. This, this is very important. The, the approach and culture was also important. I would say those 3 major factors. And of course, scientific due diligence. Yeah, we did that, but this goes with every company and sometimes we pass on, on those who have good science but don't have a strong Factor is not the size of things.
Hmm. That's super cool. When, when you talk about the vision and the long-term view of the company being really important, how do you think about RPV from that perspective?
The whole idea and the whole vision behind RPV was always bridging the gap in this value chain that we've started the discussion with, right? In making sure that The scientific theory is translated into robust technology, translated into an accessible product. So to me, RPV is just a vehicle to make sure that truly breakthrough science finds its way into the real life. The, the way I think about the firm is that while we will be maybe changing technologies like photonics, for example, Probably would be not as interesting in, say, 7 to 10 years from now. It's gonna be mature technology. There would be no way to invest in that in pre-seed stages. There will be other areas that could arise. I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of breakthroughs on the intersection of biology and physics.
Mm-hmm.
Not necessarily synthetic biology, that's already happening, but some, some new fields that we don't know yet. We will always be trying to fix the funding gaps that exist in the industries. So the one that we found right now is this pre-seed stage when they have a strong science, strong technology, but not necessarily productized yet. Productized it yet.
Yeah.
This is my, my vision of the, this is the short term, the, the, the short description of a vision of our firm to maximize the potential of science becoming a real product.
I love that. I get one thing, one thing I was talking about with my executive coach yesterday was As a, as an entrepreneur, as, as you are like running RPV, you kind of have this, you have what I would say is a rhythm and a melody. So like a rhythm might be like annual filings, quarterly financials, investor updates, you know, check-ins with your founders. And then your melody is like everything else on top of that that makes you special as a firm that's really hard to like put to a specific like timeline or cadence. And I think that I, I'd be curious to understand, like, from that framework, what, what do you think, uh, are like aspects of your unique melody as a firm? 'Cause I feel like a lot of firms have like pretty similar rhythms. Like, you know, we all have SEC regulations and things like that. Yeah.
They're dictated by the market and traditional expectations. I think the melody of our referral would be science at the core of everything we do, whether it's the scientific due diligence or an investment process or a scorecard that we use, or even the, the way we look at building our deck for our LPs. It is always, okay, we have a hypothesis that this is gonna work in a specific manner.
Mm-hmm.
Let's test it. Did it work good? If it didn't, how do we change it and what would be the new updated hypothesis? I honestly believe that scientific method is the biggest invention after fire. So we had fire so we can extend the day, but then we had scientific methods so we can completely change the way we perceive the world. The, the humanity lived in the dogmatized world. You know, you have a book, everything is written in this book. Go to a priest, get your answer.
Yeah.
And then scientific method appeared and we started questioning everything, doubting everything, and we finally had a framework. to start questioning it in a robust manner. So our melody would be the scientific method. Our flavor of the melody, I hear it very often from the founders and LPs, is that we, we are not trying to sell anything to anybody. We're not trying to push anything to anybody. We are very calm. And as a matter of fact, you know, let's just get it done.
Yeah.
This is our story. If you wanna be a part of it, Join us. If you don't wanna be a part of it, there are so many other opportunities around. You can go and find it. That, that would be the melody in its favor.
I love that.
Is it?
Yeah, I think you're right.
Does it answer your question?
Yeah, definitely. I think you're, one of the things that struck me when we initially talked was that you are like very calm and thoughtful and like very anchored by the scientific method, which I think is really awesome cuz I feel like that was Something I, I would say I think about it a lot from like the entrepreneurship methodology of like the Lean Startup. And so it's, it's more of like the scientific method applied to business. And that's how I've thought about, you know, whatever it is, whether that's making a new piece of content, putting out a new series, like making, I would say less on the investment side, I think more on like the firm building side. But I think it's been really interesting, like undercurrent or like Principle to think about. Do you have any questions for me?
What is the melody of your firm? That's such a lovely question. Like we've started before we started recording talking about musical instruments and you've mentioned that, that piano is on your to-do list and the way you wanna learn how to do it. So what would be the melody and flavor of your firm, Paige?
Yeah, I mean, I think the melody of our firm You know, the rhythm is operational excellence. I, I think I came into venture and I wanted to make sure that I got at like building a firm from a first principles standpoint. I wasn't going to adhere to rules that I didn't think were like backed by first principles, but I'm like, okay, we're an, you know, we're an audited venture fund and we work with world-class service providers on like legal, tax, fund admin, et cetera. Uh, but on the Melody side, because we're grounded in those first principles, I think the threads that really connect that are like community and content. And, you know, I'm a— I like to joke I'm like an adolescent of the internet. I grew up in the, in the day and age where I was still spending like all my days outside. And then when I was in middle school, I got my first computer and we had dial-up internet and I had to like wait for my parents to finish using the computer before I could call my friends. Like, it was very much in that transition period. And I think that for me, like, Being on the internet was just magic and the ability of like storytelling and connection that I was able to like make friends just from what was going on in my head was weird. 'Cause I feel like I, I always struggled to fit in with my peer group 'cause I was just like, always had my nose in a book. But the internet introduced me to so many people who were like very similarly equipped in that way, I would say. So I think like being a remote-first firm is very much in our DNA. And I love working with founders, you know, when they're telling me a story, I kind of see like the elements of it like a web. And I think like little droplets will like start to condense on the web as I'm like, oh, okay, this trait's really important. Or like, oh, okay, this story really shaped this principle. And then how do I like roll that up and deliver it to them in a way where they can take that story wherever they go and use it? As a fab— as a piece of the fabric of their company. I think that's where I get a lot of my joy. And so finding ways to work with our founders through that, and I've actually done it for a lot of our investors as well. It's one of my favorite things to do. So I think that's very deeply part of our melody. And then I think making, making connections in surprising, in surprising ways. Like I set my office up like a living room. I walked into the venture firm next door and it's like, Desks in a straight line, like padded carpet, like super— the silence is so loud. And you walk into my office and it's like, I have like mid-century modern furniture. I have my mom's art on the wall. I have records. I'm like usually blasting house music if I'm doing emails. And I think like that level of like rawness and comfortability with myself and how I want to run a venture firm or like live my life really resonates with founders. So I'd say that's kind of like the melody of my fund.
I love that melody. That's a very beautiful tune you have, Paige.
Thank you. Anything else? I feel like we have time for maybe one more question. Were there any questions I didn't ask you that I should have?
I wouldn't, I wouldn't be the person to suggest you ask me any questions. It's, it's, it would be wrong if you ask me. What has been your biggest challenge in your fund one?
Oh, that's a good question.
Yeah.
Let's see. So Fund 1, Fund 1 was a $5 million fund. We made 27 investments. And I think one of the biggest challenges was like figuring out our story, which is ironic because, you know, that's like my whole shtick. But I think when we started, I was like, okay, I want to I want to be the change in the venture industry, and like, I want to invest in underrepresented entrepreneurs and immigrants, people of color, and women. And so that was kind of like the thesis that we went out publicly with on our first close. And then as I got further into the fundraising process, it's like, okay, well, I want to create an investment firm based around first principles. And it's like, what are the traits and qualities that I see in people that really resonate with me? And so I I think that that was one of the challenging aspects is like running experiments or thought processes again and again and again to figure out like what was, what was it that really stuck out about the entrepreneurs that we had strong conviction in? And I think it took, you know, it took us probably doing like 17 or 20 investments to get more clear on like, okay, we need like deep customer empathy. And like a strong mission. And really, and I think like with empathy comes great storytelling ability. Like if you talk to your customers and you have deep empathy for their problem, you're going to be able to relay that problem to customers, investors, employees. And for us, that's really important as you think about like scaling a company as a collective fiction. And then beyond that, having high execution velocity. So I think like, you know, you can have a great idea, you can have be a great storyteller, but if you can't execute, it's really challenging to build a company, especially one that's venture scale. And I'll be the first to say, like, I don't think venture is a fit for everyone. It's a treadmill that once you get on, it's very difficult to get off. And it's definitely like a different life than running a lifestyle business. And so I would, yeah, I guess I just like go really deeply into like, Do you wanna build a venture-scale business? Like, are you aware of like what that entails from like a life perspective? So I think those are some of the, that was like one of the biggest challenges was just like, how do we tell the story of what we're doing? 'Cause founders resonate with it, but you know, how do you translate that to the outside world?
Thank you for that, Paige. Yeah, I love having these discussions and I'm looking forward to the next one, even if it's not a recorded session. Most things we can share with each other and learn from each other.
Me too.
Thank you for inviting me today.
Thank you for coming. Special thank you to producer Riley Jennings and podcast editor Tate Doherty for your help on this episode. If you're listening and you'd like to connect to me, follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn, Paige Finn with 3 N's. Thanks again for listening. I really appreciate it. You can look out for new episodes every Monday at 5 PM PST. And if you'd like to learn more about those strategies and tactics of seasoned institutional investors and rising venture stars, check out our YouTube channel at Seed to Harvest. Also my TikTok channel, Seed to Harvest, where I post a lot of behind the scenes. Um, and if you like this episode, please rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts, if that's on Apple or Spotify. Anyways, thank you so much for listening. I hope you have an awesome rest of your day.
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