Brian Feinstein has quietly rejoined Bessemer Venture Partners to lead investment activities in Brazil and Russia. He previously had spent more than two years with the Larchmont, N.Y.-based firm, before leaving in September 2010 to focus on tech, media and energy investments at The Blackstone Group (BX).
“I realized that my passion really lay in venture capital, not in private equity,” Feinstein explains.
Feinstein was born in Moscow before emigrating to the U.S. as a young child, and says that the experience helped contribute to his interest in international markets. He currently maintains apartments in both Sao Paulo and Moscow, and now is spending more time outside of the U.S. than within it.
BVP is not a stranger to the Brazilian or Russian markets, having done such deals as Latin American classifieds company OLX (acquired by Naspers) or Russian e-commerce company KupiVIP. But those transactions were one-offs, rather than part of a strategic initiative. Feinstein says that he hopes to someday have BVP offices in both markets, but says that BVP “will crawl before we can walk, like we did with India.”
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