Investment beyond capital: Xanada Investments' vision for operational trust
Vladimir Malakchi, CEO and Managing Partner of Xanada Investments, was featured in SiGMA Magazine issue 34, distributed at SiGMA Euro-Med earlier this month. The feature explores how rigorous operational support and founder alignment can create sustainable business models in an industry where valuation inflation often overshadows structural clarity.
Malakhi leads Xanada Investments, a Cyprus-based ideological fund targeting Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A opportunities in iGaming. With over a decade of experience in marketing, business development, and M&A operations, most notably during his tenure at Evoplay, where he led 25 times revenue growth and market expansion from 10 to 90 percent coverage, Malakchi brings an operator’s lens to early-stage investment.
“We are not an innovation fund in the classical sense,” Malakchi explains. “Roughly 80 per cent of our portfolio is built on proven models, businesses where we fully understand how things are working and can actually offer strategic help”. His approach favours structural rigour over novelty, reflecting a belief that capital alone often leads to waste. “To optimise the way startups use capital, you need to have already made the mistakes they’re about to make. Otherwise, how can you save them from burning through their budget?”
Managing risk in iGaming investment
In an environment marked by inflated pitches and unrealistic valuations, Xanada’s methodology relies on data and experience. “We are always testing things, but based on a foundation of knowledge we already have,” says Malakchi. “Of course, we are open to ideas that might rocket over time, and we’ve made some bold calls. But the risk is always calculated; it’s never speculative”.
What differentiates Xanada from traditional venture capital is embedded operational knowledge. “We’ve already seen these roads before,” he continues. “We can benchmark against hundreds of operators, billions in GGR, and use that data to guide our partners through the fog”. This empathetic realism builds trust not through projected returns, but through demonstrated capacity to refine execution in real time.
“People over projects is not a slogan; it’s a filter”
What defines operational health at Xanada?
Unlike funds focused on capital deployment or exits, Xanada prioritises operational durability. “We’re not offering cookie-cutter mentorship,” Malakchi notes. “When a project joins us, we commit fully to solving its real problems, even if those problems aren’t obvious yet”.
Embedded support defines the culture. “We don’t just give advice. If we notice an issue, say, retention dropping after the first month, we bring in someone from our own network with proven success in that area. They join the project, analyse data, and work shoulder to shoulder with founders to fix it”.
This alignment transforms Xanada from investor to strategic partner. “We are not interested in projects that don’t listen or adapt. We prioritise founders who want to grow, who understand that capital without guidance is often a liability”. “People over projects is not a slogan; it’s a filter,” says Malakchi. “We look for humans we can trust before we look at products we can bet on”.
Precision and acquisition
When discussing AI and real-time analytics, Malakchi shifts the focus from customer acquisition to retention economics. “Too many operators are obsessed with acquisition,” he says. “But the future lies in retention, and retention starts with precision”. For Xanada, precision emerges through deep personalisation. “It’s like a supermarket, where you walk in wanting Choco Pie and immediately see a shelf full of exactly what you want. That’s what the player should experience when they log in”.
The business logic is clear. “Good personalisation doesn’t just delight the user; it lowers marketing costs, increases LTV, and optimises revenue. AI is among the most powerful tools for accomplishing this at scale”. Still, Malakchi warns against blind faith in automation. “Tools are just tools. The real maturity comes when a team knows how to use data to deliver delight. Otherwise, it’s just noise wrapped in code”.
“Aut Vincere aut Mori
Either conquer or die. Preferably conquer with success, but never by quit halfway.“
The values that matter
For Malakchi, ethical design is inseparable from retention. “You can’t build for retention if your entire model is built on extraction. Players today are smarter. They can feel the difference between being respected and being monetised”.
“The industry doesn’t need more games. It needs more ideas with soul”. Malakchi describes Xanada’s internal culture as rooted in discipline, shaped by his Ukrainian upbringing and grounded in responsibility. “In our culture, a man doesn’t quit halfway. If you start something, you finish it. Not because it’s glamorous, but because it’s your responsibility”.
Before concluding, Malakchi offers a guiding phrase: aut Vincere aut Mori. “Either conquer or die. Preferably conquer with success, but never by quitting halfway”. Xanada Investments demonstrates that sustainable growth in iGaming begins not with capital allocation, but with operational trust, founder alignment, and a refusal to confuse ambition with chaos.
SiGMA Central Europe takes place from 3 to 6 November in Rome, gathering over 30,000 delegates, 1,200 sponsors and exhibitors, and 550 expert speakers across four conference stages. The summit offers operators, investors, and founders a platform to discuss regulatory evolution, market expansion, and investment trends shaping the European iGaming landscape.
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