This is a revised version of an interview with the founder of Activat VC, venture investor Marat Tolibayev, about the criteria he uses when evaluating projects and what every startup founder must understand to increase their chances of attracting investment.
The two original parts of the interview can be read in the old version of the magazine — part one and part two. But now it is better and simpler:
Venture Capital vs. Traditional Business: Why Investors Are Willing to Take Risks
In traditional business, there are clear and reliable metrics. For example, a restaurant, hotel, or medical center is a real sector of the economy that can be "touched" and its efficiency verified by comparing it with other locations or competitors. However, the return on such investments rarely exceeds 30% per annum.
In startups, there are no guarantees. We are talking about a product being created for the first time: there is no proven viability, no traction, no repeatable processes. This is exactly why venture capital is considered a high-risk segment. But it has a major advantage — scalability. An IT product can be created once and then distributed to tens and hundreds of markets with virtually no increase in costs. This creates a "multiplier" or "x" effect — a situation where an invested 100 thousand dollars can pay off 10x and turn into a million or more.
Which Projects Are Attractive to Investors Today
Investors evaluate the potential of industries through the prism of three factors: the level of innovation, the growth rate of the segment, and the scale of the potential market. These criteria determine how well an industry can generate startups capable of growing rapidly and attracting capital.
Today, vast unfilled niches remain in the local market, primarily in the digitalization of services. The potential is especially noticeable in marketplace models for the services market — from lawyers, stylists, and designers to dozens of B2B processes that continue to operate manually out of inertia. With proper demand validation and high-quality operational processes, such markets can grow quickly and organically.
If a startup targets not only the local market but also global expansion, the approach must be different. International niches are already occupied by major players, and simply copying someone else's model rarely works. To compete globally, a project needs originality — new product logic, non-standard mechanics, and unique monetization methods. This is what allows entering mature markets rather than getting lost among international giants.
With traditional industries, such as agriculture, things are complicated. Here, innovations are implemented slowly not due to a lack of demand, but because of the high cost of a mistake. Yet, it is precisely these industries, despite the market's caution, that possess significant potential: the introduction of digital platforms, accounting systems, automation, and predictive analytics can open up new development directions for the entire industry.
Together, this forms a clear picture: the most promising markets are those that combine high capacity, low automation, and the opportunity for a technological revolution. That is exactly where investors will look — and that is where startups have a chance to grow rapidly.
How Investors Evaluate a Startup
When a traditional entrepreneur comes with a ready-made business that has already proven its viability, the investor can rely on history. But in the case of startups, the resource is not the past, but the model of the future.
Most professional investors look at a project from five angles: marketing, product, finance, legal model, and team. Moreover, marketing is increasingly becoming the key factor.
1. Marketing and Market Understanding
For a professional investor, marketing is not just advertising, but the sum of all the company's interactions with the market:
- researching trends and understanding the direction of industry development;
- analyzing the target audience and customer "pain points";
- understanding the competitive environment;
- forming a clear value proposition;
- the ability to convey the idea to the market.
If a founder can see unmet market needs, asks the right questions, and analyzes human behavior, the startup has a chance of success. If the team just writes code without understanding who needs it and why, an investor will not enter such a project.
2. Product
Experts verify the relevance of the idea, the quality of execution, and the viability of the product.
It is important not only to know how to write code, but also to understand: is there a real need, how does the product differ from competitors, and is it capable of becoming scalable.
Often, a team starts building a product to meet investor expectations rather than the real needs of users. Such an orientation distorts the product strategy and makes the project unviable in the long run. Investment is merely a tool to accelerate growth, not the ultimate goal. The starting point is always the same: creating value for the customer and the team's genuine involvement in developing the solution. This quickly becomes obvious to an investor and often influences their decision more strongly than beautiful presentations or ambitious forecasts.
3. Finance
Even a brilliant idea makes no sense if the business model is inherently unprofitable. Investors are interested in:
- CAC — customer acquisition cost,
- LTV — how much money a user will bring in over their entire time using the product,
- Unit Economics — the product's ability to generate marginal profit in the future.
It is important to understand: profitability at the start is impossible. A significant portion of expenses — marketing, development, infrastructure — heavily outpaces revenue. This is a normal stage in the formation of a technology project: fixed costs are "frozen", while revenue begins to grow faster upon scaling.
An investor is not frightened by losses, but checks how justified the growth forecasts are. If a founder promises "a thousandfold growth in a month" without backing it up with demand factors, market dynamics, or a marketing strategy, such a project will not pass expert evaluation.
4. Legal Architecture
Many startups declare global ambitions but fail to work out the basic legal requirements for entering other markets: ownership structure, registration of legal entities, licenses, personal data processing requirements, taxation regimes, and compliance.
For an investor, this is a signal of potential risks. A well-structured legal architecture demonstrates the team's maturity, reduces the likelihood of regulatory problems, and makes scaling predictable.
5. Team
Many teams are formed based on personal circles: university classmates, friends, or colleagues with the same professional profile. As a result, a startup might have strong developers but lack key roles — marketing, sales, product management, finance, or operations. Investors primarily evaluate how well the team covers all necessary functions and how roles are distributed — both professionally and psychologically.
In venture practice, there is an unspoken rule: invest primarily in people. An investor analyzes intelligence, mental flexibility, leadership qualities, the ability to learn, take responsibility, and drive a product to results. Entrepreneurial instinct is of particular importance — the ability to see real problems, quickly test hypotheses, and turn ideas into working solutions.
The State of the Startup Market in Kazakhstan: Challenges and Growth Points
The average startup survival rate worldwide is 5-10%. This is a normal statistic for the venture market — it clearly demonstrates the level of risk faced by both founders and investors.
In Kazakhstan, some of the problems are related not to ideas or technologies, but to the business environment. Entrepreneurs have to spend a lot of time registering companies, obtaining licenses, and resolving legal issues. These processes are unpredictable, and startups are forced to slow down their development to navigate regulations.
At the same time, the current maturity level of the ecosystem limits the possibilities of returns for investors. In developed markets, startups go through a phased path: early investors sell shares to next-stage funds, which then prepare the company for a sale or IPO. In Kazakhstan, there are currently fewer such mechanisms, which reduces the attractiveness of investments, especially in highly scalable projects with the potential for significant growth.
Nevertheless, the market's potential is obvious. Kazakhstan has strong human capital: engineers, product specialists, designers, and entrepreneurs who already work in global companies and understand industry standards. Meanwhile, there remain niches in the local market that are still not automated and are waiting for strong technological solutions.
Every new project makes the ecosystem slightly more mature. Combined with a growing community and a large number of untapped segments, this forms the foundation for the region's development as a space where startups can not only emerge but also grow to an international level.
