Slashdot Mirror
Demo Europe Hits Russia — and Start-ups Have To Beg
judgecorp writes "The Demo VC funding event has hit Europe (Moscow, specifically), and it is very clear that start-ups in Europe have to compete hard for any venture capital. In its 20 year history in Silicon Valley, Demo is famous for highlighting subsequent success stories such as Netscape, Skype and Salesforce.com. Demo Europe began with a venture capitalist waxing lyrical on how the shortage of funds means he gets plenty of choice where to put his money. Promising tech start-ups have a series of hoops to jump through including brief pitches. The most promising candidates so far include a Russian social VoIP network and a shared whiteboard."
Promising tech start-ups have a series of hoops to jump through including brief pitches.
Define "promising".
Yet another wanna be "social networking" site? Or app? Or TV streaming app?
Or yet another "big data" or "cloud" service?
I don't see what the problem is.
And my economist cousin keeps telling me "Get out of the stock market!".
just saying.
Instead they come off looking like parasites. Why should we have to play games just to get to the point we're even considered for funding?
agreed, russia is def. not part of what is considered europe by the general audience (and esp. politically), same as turkey eventhough it has minor parts in europe geographically.
Tech venture capitalists typically want to cash out fast by having their investments sell to {Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc} and those companies typically don't want to go outside the Valley because integrating a remote team is hard. Also, the VC's don't want to go outside the Valley because checking up on their investments if they're the other side of the world is hard. Result: if you can't be reached by driving down the US-101 for an hour then it suddenly gets much harder to get huge piles of venture capital and if you don't have that, there is a serious risk you will end up being out-spent or out-integrated by a company that does.
I came here hoping to see slashdotters opining on how startups are entitled to VC money, and how VCs are greedy fat cats.
Please dont disappoint me, folks.
When did the word "tech" become synonymous with a internet dot.com business? Must've been the late 90's.
Time to move on and realize technology encompasses more than just "doing ____, but on the internet!"
Internet has been a good thing but the downside has been that it absorbed too much money that could've gone int real tech like fusion and space rockets.
Promising tech start-ups have a series of hoops to jump through including brief pitches.
A "brief pitch" - Damn that's tough.
I find it interesting that Skype was mentioned next to Netscape and Salesforce.com. Skype is a European company, which was founded in Estonia by a Dane, a Swede and several Estonians. Did it really receive funding at any of these events - let alone Demo Europe?
Skype was founded in 2003 by Janus Friis from Denmark and Niklas Zennström from Sweden. The Skype software was developed by the Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, who together with Friis and Zennström were also behind the peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa..