Glavdivan # 4 Pavel Cherkashin on business angels

Here is the fourth edition of the “Main Sofa”. Now in hd. :)
This time we had Pavel Cherkashin, director of consumer products and online services from Microsoft.

• Investors are strategic - market players who buy products and services in order to build them into their businesses; financial and venture investors - invest in a business so that it grows even more, and then to sell it to strategic investors or put it on an IPO; the next are business angels, they give the project some money so that it can reach the stage interesting for venture investors.
• Business angels are "from the market" and "not from the market." The presence or absence of expertise leads to a different approach to investment.
• Business angel investments are the most unstructured. A person invests his own money, therefore there is always an emotional component or a special interest in a certain area.
• A not-so-good idea can be drawn out, or turned into a good business, if it is handled by a good specialist.
• One of the core values ​​of a business angel is the work of a full-time psychoanalyst with an entrepreneur. A business angel conducts an entrepreneur through the “valley of death”, when there is very little money and any mistake can lead to failure, and you need to do a fairly large amount of things. If at this time there is someone nearby who is able to support by advice, independent opinion and money, this is worth a lot.
• An investor with accumulated $ 50 thousand dollars in the Russian market has nowhere to go. They run and actively try to find an opportunity to apply them.
• The “angelic” scheme is quite risky, because by investing money, you at some point say goodbye to them, but if you approach it systematically and invest in several projects, at least 1 of 10 will work - and it will pay for all the others.
• Business angel cannot usually exercise financial and technological control over a project, therefore the issue of trust is one of the main ones.
• If a business angel is ready to take responsibility for the business, he will not do so in less than a controlling stake.
• A start-up, “not an entrepreneur,” pays a substantial share of his business for the fact that someone will help him compensate for his lack of entrepreneurial talent, lack of competence in some areas and for the financial conditions that will allow him to quit his main job and only do his the project.