Ruminations on Russia

WHAT DOES EARLY IN A RUSSIAN CONTEXT MEAN?

I have been here before but the 30 minutes lying in a bath after exercise are full of clarity. Most of the technology investments that we see in Russia can be generalized as being strong technologically but weak commercially and in management. In many cases the technologically already has a commercial release, of sorts, and the Company is generating some limited revenue. Its worth differentiating between technology deals where there is some inherent technology, and software deals that are supposed to solve some issue that enterprises did not know that they had. As these are, for the most part, uninteresting we�ll ignore them from hereon.

So where does that place Russian tech deals in the early stage pantheon? I find it strange reading the wires of 2nd round investments in the $10mn+ range that are for; further product development and building sales and marketing teams. The latter part is fully-understood, there is little reason to make investments in Russian tech companies that have not already built virtually commercially available products.

But does early refer to the stage of technology, or more reasonably the stage of the company. Weighting in that pseudo-scientific way well known to venture capitalists everywhere; technology development, corporate development and management ability and experience. That would tend to mean that most Russian tech companies are very early stage � whatever their stage of technology or revenue development. The joy is that with revenues its possible to build management teams around technologies.