Money for nothing

A few years back I participated in a study on early stage investing in Russia - motivated by the fact that there is a lot of money staged by both the Russian government and Russian investors. What's become even more intriguing since then is the flow of Russian money to Silicon Valley investments - DST-Facebook investments getting the most attention recently. These high value deals are definitely bold and working - for now.

The latest news is the super cheap angel funding that Yuri Milner is engineering. Whether this is sustainable long term is hard to say, but this will surely shake things up around here for the foreseeable future. One thing is certain: the already hot startup environment just got a lot hotter.

Russian Tech Center

More on the efforts to draw outside capital and pull back talent in the developing technical center outside Moscow, covered by the NY Times. I'm thinking that President Medvedev is a bit over-optimistic about the influence of word of mouth here...

A recap meeting on the American VC trip spotlighted in the Times article will be held this week in Palo Alto. Details linked.

SVOD: Tech Sector in Russia

This year's Silicon Valley Open Doors conference has been scheduled, the dates are November 20-21. This is the premiere opportunity to learn about the technology sector and venture capital opportunities in and around Russia and understand more about what is happening with Russian companies. Hope to see you there.

Cisco launches Russia/CIS fund

Brent Marcus left a note that Cisco recently announced a Russia focused venture fund. I will be in Moscow in a few weeks and will try to get some first hand information to blog about.

Silicon Valley Open Doors

The SVOD 08 conference is now set for November 13-14. This conference looks at Russian venture opportunities, focused on early stage companies and technology. It's the premiere event in the US of its kind: if you have an interest in early stage companies eastern Europe or Russia, plan for this event.

Israeli Startups Part Two

A follow on panel May 1 in Palo Alto discussing successful tech companies birthed in Israel.

Israeli Startup Panel (This Week!)

There's a panel in the Palo Alto area this week looking at Israeli startups with ties to silicon valley, organized by a local group CoolTech, this week. Israel (Tel Aviv in particular) is one of the few places that has been successful in transplanting the "American" venture capital model. Clearly, enlightened government policies had a formative influence on venture capital development in Israel, as did a business culture tolerant of risk and failure; it is also an incredibly exuberant business environment. In fact, when talking with Israeli VCs, I'm struck by how similar their outlook is to American VCs. And yet, there is undoubtedly more to the story. Israel's domestic market is small and the target for intellectual property is invariably external markets. The differences may in fact be more important than the similarities, since they open up new channels for discovering innovative business models. For that reason, Israel is an essential case study for economies around the globe that aspire to a dynamic technology marketplace.

New Pan-African Venture Fund

Hasso Plattner just launched a new pan-African venture fund. Most of the venture investment I am aware of in Africa has been heavily concentrated in South Africa, though I have been hearing a lot about private equity in Nigeria from some of my African friends. Kenya was also looking like a beacon in east Africa until the recent lamentable political destabilization.

RVC, round 2

As a followup to my post on venture capital in Russia, the RVC maintains a new site, which indicates that they will soon be running a second competitive round of management company selection.

Conveniently enough, there is an RSS feed you can grab to track developments. Stay tuned.

Venture Capital and China

When I was in China last year, we had a chance to talk with several private equity funds. A recent post by David Hornik gives his thoughts on PE in China.

This may be of interest to you WEMBA 33 Westers... good choice, by the way.