For the first time in the history of the two countries, a team of top U.S. Silicon Valley venture capital funds traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian business leaders and officials to better understand the country’s investment climate and planned high-tech innovation hub, Skolkovo. The visit, jointly organized by AmBAR and RUSNANO, occurred between May 25-27 and also included representatives of the U.S. State Department.
“Venture capital is a business that is based on trusted relationships. Meeting Russian entrepreneurs, business leaders and potential co-investors will start to give U.S. venture investors the comfort and familiarity that should lead to more investment in Russian start-ups,” said Don Wood, managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
During the delegation’s meeting with President Medvedev, Siguler Guff & Company announced that it would be investing $250,000 in digital infrastructure and IT services for the planned innovation hub. TechCrunch noted that this makes Siguler Guff the first foreign investor in Skolkovo and The Financial Times added that this would be the biggest project undertaken in Russia by Siguler Guff. The FT noted Drew Guff’s comments to President Medvedev that Russia’s flat 13 percent income tax was an attraction and The Moscow Times picked up his comments that his U.S. colleagues could “only dream of” having this type of tax. Guff also commented in BusinessWeek that he hoped the Skolkovo project becomes a “true bridge between Russian technology and Russian ideas and global commercialization.”
Brian Jacobs, founder and general partner of Emergence Capital, recently told the Dow Jones VC Dispatch about what he learned from the trip and the state of the Russian economy. In his interview, Jacobs expressed cautious optimism surrounding the Skolkovo innovation hub, which Russian entrepreneurs and officials are viewing as a tech mecca.
"They [Russian entrepreneurs and officials] believe science and math, at which the Russians have always excelled, are natural ways for them to develop technology industries in their country. They want to improve the business conditions, and entrepreneurism is part of that... They recognize that what they need is business expertise and they want to learn from what we have here in the United States. Their main desire was our input... I was very impressed with the determination the Russians have to make this transition in their economy. Of course, I heard all the stories of corruption and organized crime... both clearly exist in their economy, but those are not the only things that exist. There are people of better ideas, better ethics."
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