Hi. I'm Dima Volovik, founding partner at Valena Technology Partners.
We are a small firm of technology operators. Between us we have run engineering and product organizations of 250 people at Amazon, launched a subscription product to a million members at Tripadvisor, scaled a reservations platform 8X to $120M at Comcast, and put computer vision and generative AI into production in businesses where the numbers had to hold.
We started Valena because the work that moves a company is rarely the work that firms sell. Companies do not stall for lack of a recommendation. They stall because no one senior enough owns the outcome inside the weekly cadence, with the authority to change what is being built.
AI initiatives arrive with almost no cost constraint. Engineers reach for the best available tools — frontier models, premium compute, keeping every byte because the model might need it one day. I understand the instinct; I have had it. But without economic discipline those good intentions become margin problems inside of two quarters.
The pattern repeats across data, integrations, and infrastructure. Terabytes kept online for analysis that rarely runs. An orchestration platform for every workflow. Each decision defensible on its own, and together a run rate nobody chose.
The real problem is not the tools. It is that technology often misses the economic rigor every other function takes for granted. Technology leaders can see it, but they are carrying delivery deadlines. Finance sees the invoices and asks for controls. Neither has the bandwidth, and neither has the mandate.
So we take the seat instead of writing about it. We join the leadership team, work to your dates, and stay long enough to be accountable for what we recommended. When the engagement ends, the discipline stays with your team rather than leaving with ours.
We have run these organizations before. That is the whole offer.
— Dima Volovik
Founding Partner, Valena Technology Partners
