Jan Sýkora is a capital-markets and real estate investment expert with three decades of experience across Central and Eastern Europe. He has built this expertise as a partner and co-owner of WOOD & Company, the region's leading investment bank, since the 1990s, where he now chairs the board alongside fellow partners Vladimír Jaroš and Ľubomír Šoltýs, sits on the board of the Prague Stock Exchange, co-sponsored the launch of WOOD SPAC One -- the first SPAC listed there -- and oversees real estate funds worth roughly €1.1 billion across Central Europe. He also applies this experience to venture capital, investing roughly a fifth of his time in startups across Central Europe, the US, and Israel, and is a limited partner of Czech Founders VC.