Don�t want to have too many days between blogs � it backs up the ideas. Today�s is the big one; is it possible to build a business investing in Russian tech? It is after all what I do for a living and gets me out of bed with more or less a spring in my step every day.
The facts (or as many as you can get in the Irish bar at Moscow Airport waiting for a delayed flight); there are today no successful examples of Russian built technologies that have become $1bn companies. There are a number of (mostly) ex-Russian-entrepreneurs who have built great companies � Sergei Brin (Google,) the guys at Parametric Technologies, Paragraph (Stepan Pachikov,) despite the fact that Transcriber drives me insane daily. Then a number of more or less successful companies of which the latest is Optiva, founded by Pavel Lazarev. Should the fact that it took him 10 years to get to Series D be really frightening?
The facts continued; the number of Russian tech companies that cause the hairs on the back of your neck to really stand up is, well, one every blue moon. Not a great hit rate. Maybe the tech is great, but investable tech cannot exist in isolation from its market. It would be fair to say that it�s pretty difficult to build a tech business if you don�t really comprehend the market you are addressing.
One of my favourite bizarre investment opportunities is a holographic storage company in Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk � go east from Moscow and keep going. Two strange Professors doing some of the coolest research but with little if any contact to Moscow, let alone to the rest of the world. How are we going to get them to build products? Other, that is, from paying them a living wage and taking the IP and running to the Valley.
So maybe we could do 3 deals a year � can we make long term money on that? It is clear that there is some very cool technology however, getting it to be accepted is unbelievably difficult � to describe the tech world as parochial would be as correct as describing the UK as a class ridden society.
With only a few investors actively targeting Russian tech the opportunities for spreading the word are few and far between.
Are we doing the wrong thing?
12 March 2003
Don�t want to have too many days between blogs � it backs up the ideas. Today�s is the big one; is it possible to build a business investing in Russian tech? It is after all what I do for a living and gets me out of bed with more or less a spring in my step every day.
The facts (or as many as you can get in the Irish bar at Moscow Airport waiting for a delayed flight); there are today no successful examples of Russian built technologies that have become $1bn companies. There are a number of (mostly) ex-Russian-entrepreneurs who have built great companies � Sergei Brin (Google,) the guys at Parametric Technologies, Paragraph (Stepan Pachikov,) despite the fact that Transcriber drives me insane daily. Then a number of more or less successful companies of which the latest is Optiva, founded by Pavel Lazarev. Should the fact that it took him 10 years to get to Series D be really frightening?
The facts continued; the number of Russian tech companies that cause the hairs on the back of your neck to really stand up is, well, one every blue moon. Not a great hit rate. Maybe the tech is great, but investable tech cannot exist in isolation from its market. It would be fair to say that it�s pretty difficult to build a tech business if you don�t really comprehend the market you are addressing.
One of my favourite bizarre investment opportunities is a holographic storage company in Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk � go east from Moscow and keep going. Two strange Professors doing some of the coolest research but with little if any contact to Moscow, let alone to the rest of the world. How are we going to get them to build products? Other, that is, from paying them a living wage and taking the IP and running to the Valley.
So maybe we could do 3 deals a year � can we make long term money on that? It is clear that there is some very cool technology however, getting it to be accepted is unbelievably difficult � to describe the tech world as parochial would be as correct as describing the UK as a class ridden society.
With only a few investors actively targeting Russian tech the opportunities for spreading the word are few and far between.
Are we doing the wrong thing?
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