VentureBeat reports that Draper Fisher Jurvetson is heading to Russia:
Besides Russia, the fund, called DFJ-VTB Aurora, will invest in the neighboring Commonwealth of Independent States, including Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine (home of another DFJ fund), and others. The fund plans to invest between $2 million and $16 million per company.
Initially, DFJ is not contributing directly to the fund. But, by helping pick companies, it will have the opportunity to co-invest in them down the line. Half of the money will come from the Russian government and twenty percent from the European Bank of Development and Reconstruction.
Thousands of highly-educated engineers and scientists in the region have the skill, talent and motivation to build big companies, said DFJ’s managing director in Russia, Don Wood, in an interview with VentureBeat — they just haven’t had the resources or role models to do so, he says.
This is great to see VC getting on board with the technology opportunities in Russia. Oleg, are you ready to start putting a business plan together for Flatsourcing?
Chris, great post and yes, we’re all ready for making our offices even more integrated and expanding as there are definitely opportunities to help people benefit from FlatWorld indeed! Why The World is Flat - see Flatsourcing.
I agree Oleg, it really is great to have the two offices so integrated. Let’s keep our eye on this and we might have something fro them. At any rate, its great to see Russia getting the attention from investors it deserves.
And for more integration, the new flatsourcing channel translated 5 days a week (work-days basically) is now available!
It looks like more and more companies these days are realizing that Russia is a HUGE market and even if they will invest in Russian companies who are targeting just the internal maket it is sill very good - look at yandex !
Great point Tatyana. I think you’re right that more and more companies are realizing the opportunity in Russia including the internal market.
Thanks for the comment. Chris