The Veyra Capital venture partner explains why the next durable technology businesses will be built around workflows, operating context and trust — not software alone.
For more than a decade, technology investing has been shaped by a clear ideal: scalable software, recurring revenue and a product that can grow without a matching increase in cost. That model remains powerful. But Konstantin Katsev, Venture Partner at Veyra Capital, believes it is no longer enough to explain where the most durable opportunities are emerging.
Katsev’s work spans technology, digital ventures, consumer businesses and private investment. At Veyra Capital, he looks at companies across technology and digital infrastructure, consumer markets, education, real estate and selected impact initiatives. The common thread is not a narrow sector label, but whether a company can become more useful, more resilient and more valuable over time.
In this conversation, Katsev discusses why technology becomes defensible when it improves a real operating system, why AI makes operational context more important rather than less, and what founder-led capital can see that a conventional category lens may miss.
Q: Technology investing has long favoured pure software. Why do you think investors need to look beyond it now?
Konstantin Katsev: Pure software remains one of the most powerful business models ever created. The ability to build a product once, distribute it widely and improve it continuously through data is extraordinary. But software is increasingly becoming a layer inside a much larger system.
Some of the most interesting companies today sit where technology meets a real operating environment. They may combine a product with a service layer, a marketplace with operational expertise, a digital interface with physical delivery, or AI with the workflow and judgement needed to turn an output into a useful decision.
That does not make those businesses less technological. It makes their technology more consequential. The question is not only whether the product is elegant or scalable in isolation. It is whether the wider system around it can become more useful, more reliable and more valuable over time.
Q: What do you mean by an “operating system” in a business context?
Konstantin Katsev: I do not mean an operating system in the computing sense. I mean the combination of workflows, information, relationships, permissions, decisions and human judgement that makes a business function.
In logistics, a dashboard is useful when it helps a team respond to a disrupted shipment. In procurement, a product is valuable when it helps move from supplier discovery to a sound decision with speed and accountability. In property, mobility or local services, the digital interface matters because it can make a real customer outcome more dependable.
The strongest technology businesses understand the full sequence. They know where work begins, which information has to be reliable, where exceptions happen and where a person still needs to exercise judgement. Their product is not separated from execution. It becomes part of the route to execution.
Q: How does this change the way an investor evaluates a company?
Konstantin Katsev: It broadens the underwriting. Product quality and unit economics remain important, of course. But they are not the entire picture.
You also have to understand implementation, customer trust, distribution, operational judgement and the founder’s ability to improve a complicated system rather than optimise a narrow feature. A great demo can solve a visible problem. A durable company usually solves a problem that a customer cannot easily remove from their daily work.
For us, four questions are especially helpful. Does the technology improve a meaningful workflow? What needs to be true outside the product for the customer outcome to happen? Does the business build trust as it scales? And can the founder make the system learn through data, repeated processes, customer behaviour and practical experience?
Those questions are useful because they work across categories. The business may be in software, consumer services, education, property or operational infrastructure. The underlying test is whether every layer makes the others stronger.
Q: Why is this particularly relevant to founder-led capital?
Konstantin Katsev: Institutional investment disciplines are valuable: clear metrics, repeatable categories and comparable benchmarks all bring useful rigour. But when a company is creating value across several layers at once, it needs to be assessed across several layers as well.
Founder-led capital can take a more integrated view. It can ask how product, operations, positioning, team and distribution reinforce one another. It can look beyond the next financing event and consider what a business needs to become in its next stage of growth. It can also draw on practical entrepreneurial experience when helping a founder decide which capabilities to build, which partnerships to prioritise or where to apply discipline.
This is not an argument for less rigour. It is an argument for applying rigour to the full business, rather than to one category label.
Q: Many investors see operational complexity as a warning sign. When can it become an advantage?
Konstantin Katsev: Complexity becomes a problem when a company builds a service that is too bespoke, too dependent on individual effort or too difficult to repeat. But complexity and poor design are not the same thing.
Technology can standardise the right parts of a complicated process while preserving human judgement where it matters. It can organise information, automate repetition, create accountability and make the customer experience feel simpler than the system required to deliver it.
That can create a real advantage. A business that accumulates operating context, trusted relationships and practical know-how alongside its technology may be more difficult to replace than a product with a clean interface but little connection to the customer’s actual workflow.
Q: Where does AI fit into this picture?
Konstantin Katsev: AI makes the distinction even clearer. Access to capable models is becoming broadly available. That means the durable advantage is less likely to come from simply placing a model behind an interface.
The opportunity is to connect intelligence to a defined workflow: to the information a company has, the actions it is permitted to take, the rules around accountability and the human review needed when the system encounters an exception.
An AI assistant may produce a useful answer. An operational AI system can help move a task forward: identify suppliers, structure a request, evaluate information, qualify a prospect or coordinate an action inside a real business process. The test is whether the technology improves a measurable outcome and becomes more useful through the context it accumulates.
Q: Does that mean the best AI businesses will look less like conventional software companies?
Konstantin Katsev: Some will still be conventional software companies, and some will be excellent ones. But many will look more like deeply integrated operating businesses.
They may combine software with services, transactions, partnerships or physical delivery. They may use AI to make a fragmented workflow more coherent rather than to automate every human decision. What will connect them is the ability to turn intelligence into reliable action.
That is why a narrow category lens can be limiting. An investor should ask not only what the technology does, but how it changes the economics, quality and resilience of the wider operating system.
Q: What should founders build around if they want to create that kind of defensibility?
Konstantin Katsev: Start with a workflow that genuinely matters to the customer. The strongest opportunities tend to have a recurring process, fragmented information or significant manual coordination, a measurable outcome and a clear route into the customer’s existing work.
Then build around context. What does the company learn each time the process is completed? How do integrations, feedback, exceptions and customer relationships improve the next result? And how is responsibility divided between the technology and the people using it?
Founders should not try to add AI simply because it is available. They should identify where intelligence can change the quality or economics of execution. If the result is meaningful, observable and repeatable, technology has a much better chance of becoming essential rather than optional.
Q: What is the central idea you want founders and investors to take away?
Konstantin Katsev: Looking beyond software is not a rejection of software. It is a recognition that the most enduring companies often use technology to improve a much larger system.
Capital becomes more valuable when it can see that system in full: the product, the operating reality, the customer trust, the team and the potential for each part to reinforce the others over time. The durable opportunity is not just a better interface. It is a better system — and a founder who can make that system compound.
Veyra Capital’s longer perspective on founder-led capital beyond software sets out the framework in more detail.
About Konstantin Katsev
Konstantin Katsev is a Venture Partner at Veyra Capital, a founder-led private investment office backing businesses across technology, digital services, consumer markets, education, real estate and selected impact initiatives. His experience spans software, digital ventures, consumer businesses, media, wellness, education and private investment.
Disclosure: This interview is provided for general informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment, legal or financial advice, and does not make any claim regarding the performance of any company or investment.
