Product & Engineering
Stas Baranov

Stas Baranov is fascinated by software and people. He has almost three decades of experience building engineering systems, managing organizations of up to 100 people, and investing. With all that, he prefers staying close to the ground level with a hands-on approach to company building.

Highlights

Google

During his more than ten years at Google, Stas led teams to engineer Youtube servers that scaled to over 1 billion users. While there, he also created low-code development platforms that were ultimately adopted by large enterprise organizations. 

Gaming

Outside of Google, Stas founded a game development studio, and had another long-running career building out high-performance video game engines that sold all over the world.

For Stas, the work he enjoys most is when he gets to be hands-on with founders, whether that’s offering his technical advice or consulting on a project as an expert in early-stage development.

Superpowers

Turning ideas into realities

Founders know that they can come to Stas with their ambitious ideas. Then as a builder, he excels at assessing if it’s possible to make their vision a reality, help build the prototype and take a product from zero to one.

Being a blockchain expert

Stas has become our resident blockchain expert, working closely with our portfolio companies Aqua, Dispersed Labs, Dynaboard, and Garage in their formation stages.