Good / bad investor

“IT companies continue to face claims from investment funds that, because of problems with liquidity, require IPOs or return on investment,” Kommersant writes today. Russian software developers Acronis and Parallels also faced a similar problem: the American investment fund Insight insisted on the soonest IPO. In general, it is clear when Western investors who have invested money in you, sooner or later want to return the invested funds.

In the case of Parallels, the closest competitor’s IPO, VMware, played about $ 1 billion. Now they want to get dividends from IPO as soon as possible by any means. But at the same time, the company's shareholders have a slightly different vision of the situation: “The placement of shares is now inappropriate, not only because of the financial crisis. Acronis and Parallels grow by more than 50% per year. These are very good assets, the value of which will increase significantly over time. ”

In order to somehow coordinate the goals and objectives of investors and owners, the latter are forced to buy about 15% of the shares from the former, so that investors cannot influence the company's operations and block the business decisions of the founders of Parallels and Acronis. Therefore, dear startups, be careful when choosing your investors.

In general, a very cool article about investors, or rather, even about “venture rape” in an interview with the very same Belousov to the magazine “Expert” - is very unequal!