How to get money from an investor without an iron and a rubber truncheon?
Jeff Beyer and John Fieber are experienced experts from Almaz Capital and Almaz Venture Capital, who receive about 3,500 applications in a year. They choose from them 5 or 10 pieces, and the rest gently lowered into the trash.
Recently they told what exactly the investor is waiting for the application, and where it is most interesting to look now in terms of development.
KDPV: in the topic help to earn such things
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The most interesting segment today is “big data”. The fact is that the amount of data that is generated and used by mankind is growing exponentially. This data must be able to process. Any large company in one way or another is faced with the business of processing large data arrays, because only then they become commercial information.
Jeffrey believes that the world is for mathematicians, because they understand what can be done with the data. John likes working with people from Russia and the CIS countries: the mathematical knowledge of the old education system, he believes, is ideal for modern commercial projects with complex tasks.
The next important topic is virtual networks. More and more solutions are being transferred to virtual machines, so many are now interested in the mechanisms for finely-tuned network architecture. Need the ability to quickly rebuild to improve efficiency. Mobile operators, for example, are currently sitting and waiting for companies to cope with traffic management and network management in virtual mode. We are talking about the effective dynamic management of the network infrastructure with parallel personalization of individual sections of the network to the requests of specific devices, specific smartphones, for example, and specific applications.
Supercomputers that solved similar problems only 10 years ago are outdated. Distributed architecture is becoming more and more important for large companies. And it is not only about calculations as such, but also about science, research and invention. For example, you need to streamline or develop a new tractor model: these are tasks that you can perform distributed.
The definition of services is also changing: they are already hard to attach to platforms. IaaS and other models are already outdated, because it is impossible to predict their own load. For example, the same Netflix describes its television service: technical articles clearly show signs of a new approach to architecture.
The next topic is mobile device management. For example, companies now very often allow their employees to bring their smartphones to work. Bezopasnik is very worried that a disgruntled employee can take photographs of confidential information and send it to competitors. This is a serious problem for the United States, and it bothers almost everyone in the large corporate segment. There are solutions, but they are so reliable and reliable that it is easier not to use a smartphone at all, than to use one of the suggested options suiting the safeguards.
There are a lot of technical issues in the social environment - from the geo-referencing of images by analyzing their plots and ending with serious research in the psychology of games. From the point of view of the cognitive sphere, it is important to make people smarter with the help of devices - that is, to think through new interfaces for presenting information. In the field of energy, green projects are valued, but an attempt to take one will be very, very difficult. Here are footage from the AlmazCapital presentation with a list of the most interesting directions:
Sorry for their english
Not always. It used to be that money was invested in an idea without implementation:
The next question is the assessment of the market and the construction of a real marketing model. Many people just forget about it. By the way, usually businessmen, answering the question what surprised them most in the first 3 years of work in the company, said that it was the need to spend a lot of time meeting with customers.
Then you need to think about the ease of reproduction of technology. Many people want to bring their idea to the end and get a perfect prototype, but you need to come with a beta: investing is not the market that will wait for masterpieces. The main question is whether it is launched or not. If it starts with noise, victims and through the ass, but it works - there will be money.
Amount is the least important parameter for project evaluation. Of course, a business plan must be considered, but there are usually no restrictions on money. The main thing to remember is that you don’t have to work for an investor: a startup is not charity and not collecting alms. You need to make money on end customers. It is necessary to attract just as much money as is needed to achieve success, and on favorable terms, otherwise you will strangle your own business.
A good investor does not tell you that he wants to see revenue in the near future, he is counting on growth. Fast and efficient growth that will make your company expensive is just what a competent investor needs. Small companies are a different model, they don’t really need investments.
John adds at last: you should never hire people who are not satisfied with you. This is not a topic for compromise at all. Only the best. A good team of specialists is like the company's immune system. Personnel decisions must be made before the start of the project.
Recently they told what exactly the investor is waiting for the application, and where it is most interesting to look now in terms of development.
KDPV: in the topic help to earn such things
')
Data Mining unusually taxis
The most interesting segment today is “big data”. The fact is that the amount of data that is generated and used by mankind is growing exponentially. This data must be able to process. Any large company in one way or another is faced with the business of processing large data arrays, because only then they become commercial information.
Jeffrey believes that the world is for mathematicians, because they understand what can be done with the data. John likes working with people from Russia and the CIS countries: the mathematical knowledge of the old education system, he believes, is ideal for modern commercial projects with complex tasks.
Virtualization
The next important topic is virtual networks. More and more solutions are being transferred to virtual machines, so many are now interested in the mechanisms for finely-tuned network architecture. Need the ability to quickly rebuild to improve efficiency. Mobile operators, for example, are currently sitting and waiting for companies to cope with traffic management and network management in virtual mode. We are talking about the effective dynamic management of the network infrastructure with parallel personalization of individual sections of the network to the requests of specific devices, specific smartphones, for example, and specific applications.
If you search the Internet for words like: “open stack”, “openflow” you can spend a couple of weeks of your life to figure out what is happening now in this area. These will be 2 very well spent weeks. These virtual networks support what we call scale computing. You, of course, heard about the service Netflix, which provides, just in a streaming mode, viewing video by US subscribers by subscription. You can imagine what needs they have in the channel. Netflix is ​​now fading more than a quarter of American channels. They simultaneously download streaming video tens of millions of connections. At the same time there are no SQL databases, they all work on non-SQL. Those. Simple DB or databases like Mongo, Hazlecast and others are used. It turns out that in recent years alternative architectures have been invented that allow us to bypass the natural limitations of structured databases. Such solutions allow us to maintain parallel tens of millions of connections, tens of millions of users.
Supercomputers that solved similar problems only 10 years ago are outdated. Distributed architecture is becoming more and more important for large companies. And it is not only about calculations as such, but also about science, research and invention. For example, you need to streamline or develop a new tractor model: these are tasks that you can perform distributed.
The definition of services is also changing: they are already hard to attach to platforms. IaaS and other models are already outdated, because it is impossible to predict their own load. For example, the same Netflix describes its television service: technical articles clearly show signs of a new approach to architecture.
Paranoia
The next topic is mobile device management. For example, companies now very often allow their employees to bring their smartphones to work. Bezopasnik is very worried that a disgruntled employee can take photographs of confidential information and send it to competitors. This is a serious problem for the United States, and it bothers almost everyone in the large corporate segment. There are solutions, but they are so reliable and reliable that it is easier not to use a smartphone at all, than to use one of the suggested options suiting the safeguards.
And the vinaigrette order
There are a lot of technical issues in the social environment - from the geo-referencing of images by analyzing their plots and ending with serious research in the psychology of games. From the point of view of the cognitive sphere, it is important to make people smarter with the help of devices - that is, to think through new interfaces for presenting information. In the field of energy, green projects are valued, but an attempt to take one will be very, very difficult. Here are footage from the AlmazCapital presentation with a list of the most interesting directions:
Sorry for their english
Is it true that you need to come with a working thing?
Not always. It used to be that money was invested in an idea without implementation:
Normal guys came, well, enthusiastically talked about their idea, and said that we have no answer to these 54 questions, but we will find them later. There is such an eternal problem in the venture business that you either rely on people or on the markets. You need to understand that the market will not create a great company. Only good people can create a great company. By the way, another tip. Do not try to powder the brains of your investors. Honestly, where you need help, support, tell me if there are any topics in which you do not feel confident. The common trap of young entrepreneurs is that if they recognize some of their weaknesses, they will never get money. It's more important for us to see that you have enthusiasm and that you understand the problems you are facing. We will treat this person with much more confidence, more sympathy. It is very important to know what you do not know. If you answer honestly, "I do not know the answer, but I will talk to smart people and answer your question." We immediately begin to treat such people with confidence, but if you start to play up and tell us a tale about a white bull, we will not, of course, give you any money.
The idea is already there. What else do you need to prepare?
The next question is the assessment of the market and the construction of a real marketing model. Many people just forget about it. By the way, usually businessmen, answering the question what surprised them most in the first 3 years of work in the company, said that it was the need to spend a lot of time meeting with customers.
Then you need to think about the ease of reproduction of technology. Many people want to bring their idea to the end and get a perfect prototype, but you need to come with a beta: investing is not the market that will wait for masterpieces. The main question is whether it is launched or not. If it starts with noise, victims and through the ass, but it works - there will be money.
Aha, finally, money!
Amount is the least important parameter for project evaluation. Of course, a business plan must be considered, but there are usually no restrictions on money. The main thing to remember is that you don’t have to work for an investor: a startup is not charity and not collecting alms. You need to make money on end customers. It is necessary to attract just as much money as is needed to achieve success, and on favorable terms, otherwise you will strangle your own business.
A good investor does not tell you that he wants to see revenue in the near future, he is counting on growth. Fast and efficient growth that will make your company expensive is just what a competent investor needs. Small companies are a different model, they don’t really need investments.
What's up with the team?
John adds at last: you should never hire people who are not satisfied with you. This is not a topic for compromise at all. Only the best. A good team of specialists is like the company's immune system. Personnel decisions must be made before the start of the project.
Links
- Lecture and discussion after it in two languages . The discussion is very interesting: our experts believe that the main problem of Russian startups is the closeness of the market, competitors and even investors, which does not allow them to learn from mistakes and extract useful experience for further development.
- Pro Fund Almaz Capital Partners on Wikipedia
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/142358/
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