12 investing rules from Yuri Milner Bashny.Net

"He was paying a huge amount at relatively lower rate, mainly buying exclusive access to the most enviable companies in the network! How could any outsider to predict and use the opportunities that I missed the best investors in Silicon valley?"





1. He does not invest in entrepreneurs from entourage

When other investors trying to build long-term institutions for decades, Mr. Milner cope by itself, the list of relationships that are often scattered around the world. A large part of his firm DST Global initially were a small team of former bankers from Goldman Sachs, which are mainly located in Asia. Their task is that they check the financial reliability of companies and are engaged in raising funds. In the industry of professional hitters, he led the network organization to the next level, generously distributing the structure in different directions to all corners of the world.

2. Invest into account (not profitability) is today's most valuable asset (the money will come with time)the Omnipotence of social media confirms the story did not bring income Twitter. After the IPO the value of the company amounted to $14.4 billion Milner believes the service is "the most influential movement in the world". Why market value is so large? "Because people tend to influence or attempt to influence others." He worked in Finance for several years, until he came to the 1999 report, Mary Meeker, an Internet analyst Bank holding company Morgan Stanley. In the report she described the technological boom in the US as well as the initial growth of this industry in Europe. For Milner it was a revelation: "How can it be that a company with zero revenue worth $50 billion?".

3. Unlike most investors, he often refuses leadership positions in startups and their founders trust companies in 2009, Mr. Milner has invested his first $ 200 million in Facebook, at that time a large sum to the investor from Silicon valley. One of the reasons that he wanted to cooperate with the social network, was his intention to make investments at the peak of the financial crisis. Usually investing ambitious, but more unprofitable technology startups to IPO is reduced to a specific pattern: a prestigious venture Fund receives certain preferences in investing and gets posts in the office of the company (acquires voting rights in the organization). Milner offers a completely different, quite extravagant approach — investing without preferences and leadership positions. His money, as the money from the IPO (do not give any privileges to ordinary shareholders), but without the cumbersome IPO related obligations. No need to waste time on road shows, administrative costs to market and feel market pressure from short-term earnings.

4. Perhaps he is the most controversial investor in Silicon valley. He at the same time demand is terrifying and causes of nsmessage the message seems clear: Milner had invested almost all promising of social media, from Facebook to Twitter and Spotify. He first opened a new financial philosophy. Many believe the success of Milner justified not only fast, but also undeserved. Probably because people don't understand (Milner and would be happy to explain), how is it that a former investor macaroni factory in Moscow became the movers and shakers in the technology industry in America. He says that the story of his success deserves to be as attractive as any history of Silicon valley. Some people might think the success of Milner not so huge and lightning in the General scale of success... but... still, (here these are some will be irritated to evade the answer), but still... consider it undeserved. All because he's an outsider who shamelessly handing out money to startups like an old friend. He was paying a huge amount at relatively lower rate, mainly buying exclusive access to the most enviable companies in the network! His exclusion was irritated by everyone and everything and forced to get worried. How could any outsider to predict and use the opportunities that I missed the best investors in Silicon valley? Not was it the success of Milner that all the others began to encroach on what the time time was considered a purely American — the future of the Internet and its wealth?

5. The effect of "crazy Russian money"What did Yuri Milner to return Facebook its double-digit billions? Mark Andressen noted that Yuri first came to Silicon valley in 2008 or 2009, and expressed its basic idea: "I move in the business and want to invest." Leading U.S. investors of the proposed transaction with the rating of 5 to 8 billion dollars for Facebook, and Yuri was immediately offered $10 billion. The Andreessen had friends on the side of Facebook and friends who were a betting man, so he called them and warned: "You guys have a lot to lose, Yuri puts 10. You have no chance". To which they replied: "the Crazy Russian. Easy money. What is the world coming to?".

The main advantage of Yuri at the time was that he and his team had a very difficult analysis. Since 2000, they watched the development of consumer business models on the Internet outside the United States. They gathered data on almost 40 countries, including Hungary, Israel, the Czech Republic and China. They were all related, socmedia eCommerce Internet company, which for ten years has turned into a real business, but it fell out of sight of investors. Yuri has always stressed that American companies are very relaxed, they can rely on venture capital. And in Hungary, where hope for the deposits is not necessary, remains nothing how to make money for themselves. Thus, he had a full matrix of business models from around the world, after which he moved to the level of profit of the users and to the regulation of GDP. "He had a secret spreadsheet with the data, which was not from you." Easy money bought him unlimited access to the most important company that puts the Internet in this decade. Then, the network has begun the era of rapid development of Internet companies.

6. "Investing in relationships" as a pledge of trust and security for the founders"Need to be closer to the founders of the company," says Milner. His approach is paradoxical. He does not seek to lead positions in startups because founders know their business, but often meets with them to help build long-term relationships. Until now, few knew that he partly contributed to the success of WhatsApp, becoming one of two investors of the messenger in the world (the second one was Sequoia Capital). He bought part of the shares of the founders for $125 million dollars for a few weeks before Facebook took WhatsApp for $19 billion, Milner will not openly discuss the deal Facebook, but similar to WhatsApp sources report that he made an oral agreement with the founder of a startup by Ian Fox in January 2014. Money DST was used as a cushion in case Facebook will cancel the transaction.

7. "In order to believe you need to be closer"

Investing in a startup Xiaomi from outside looked incredibly risky. Chinese hardware manufacturers was rife, and the whole world profits from smartphone got Samsung and Apple. The idea was to Xiaomi to sell phones only online. However, this business model has already experienced Google with their Nexus phones. It is not popular. Milner put those problems aside and was impressed by the methodical plan of lei Jun (Xiaomi Director) on the "triathlon" that combined hardware, software and Internet services in one package. "If you know how to do one thing well, can do three," said lei during the meeting. He later admitted that he did not expect that DST will invest in them. However, after several months and verification of the financial condition of the company Milner continued to invest and spent $ 500 million in a variety of stages, including special stages to collect the 7% stake from the last estimate more than $3.2 billion.

8. Fintech is the next big eggomania DST and their partners (Tom Stafford, a partner at DST, is responsible for FINTECH and does a lot for this industry) hungry for FINTECH and has already invested in a number of major companies: Stripe, Funding Circle, SavingGlobal, LendUp, Xapo, LendingClub, Klarna, etc.

9. Don't hide and don't be afraid of their mistakes — have your own "wall of fame" for the loss vozmojnostey failure, which he confesses is Uber. DST three times had the chance to invest in a company that is now valued in excess of $40 billion, but Milner always scared that founder Travis Kalanick could not settle the legal issues between the regulators and cities around the world. "I underestimated Travis. It was my big mistake," he says with a shrug. "I slept badly," he says, when it comes to how DST spared investing startup Square.

10. Milner — a prototype of a new generation of "ubiquitous Russian"of Course, he has reached a certain status of "globality". When traveling alone, and often with his wife, daughters and mother-in-law, he rarely stays in one continent for several weeks. Before he had time to visit all the continents except Antarctica. Part of its erratic behavior makes him an exceptional man, if not a black sheep in his new home in Los Altos hills. Silicon valley, despite the fact that the citadel is a lot on techniques to hopelessness closed and quite sealed the place. Culture of immigration in Silicon valley suggests the subordination of the General trends. Despite all the talk about innovation, she resists anyone who does not become part of its traditions. To Milner, it was difficult even to buy his way back – all the money in the valley, even those that have done the best deals, there is always a kind of pedigree. Even money from new York regarded as something suspicious. Milner was one of the six figures in the field of technology who were chosen to present the leaders of the forum nations G8 summit 2011 in Deauville, France. That is the clearest example of how prestigious was his image and acquired authority. In the online workshops on the G8, was attended by a number of prominent speakers from the tech elite: Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt (Google) from USA, Hiroshi Mikitani from Japan (Director of the online store Rakuten), Maurice levy — the head of the Agency Publicis Groupe of France, and Stephanie Richard Director of France Telecom. And Milner. Why Milner? Partly because it's so cleverly endeared himself to people of extraordinary laps and was the only person prosecuted in a fast growing economy. This gives him a unique perspective. He's probably one of those people who work in several markets simultaneously without on-premises infrastructure. This allows him to reside in the free swimming — a liaison, mediator and completely independent of the player.

11. "Behind every successful man stands a great woman" (Zuckerberg)For Milner 2011 was full of trouble. In addition to its multibillion-dollar deals with China, he celebrated the tenth anniversary of his marriage to his wife Julia Milner. They are still not satisfied with the celebration of the marriage, therefore in a big way and got married at home. "I wanted to, we celebrated her 10 years in the same day," says his wife, in fact, referring to the fabulous the wedding date 11/11/11.

12. Be basic and do what really vanecek and many Russian boys in the Soviet Union, Milner, born in 1961, was named in honor of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who in that year became the first man to enter the open space. At the age of 12 years, Mr. Milner became interested in physics, as a friend of the family had often visited and talked about the development of weapons. After graduating from MSU the following five years he worked as a physicist. However, while working on her PhD, he realized what he lacks, in order to succeed in this field. "I was not smart enough," he says. "If you want to do physics thoroughly, you need to be pretty creative intelligence". "Then everyone was scared to invest in anything," he says. He also continued to monitor developments in the field of science. "My other favorite activities was not" — says the investor. "I never was a collector, not into sports, except a couple of times a week, went to the gym." Together with Sergey Brin and mark Zuckerberg, they together launched the annual scientific prize of the Breakthrough Prize (prize for a breakthrough in science), which provided winners from around the world on 3 million dollars. Before that, they launched another one of its annual awards — "the Prize for fundamental physics". In it, the winners received $ 3 million (declared winners actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Kate beckinsale) for research in this area. Among the past winners — scientist Edward Witten and Stephen Hawking. The investor believed that attention to science has weakened due to the fact that "a society obsessed pop celebrity." Milner hopes his actions will help to shift the focus on people who are working to address fundamental questions such as "How did the universe?" or "Why do we exist?". He also invested in organization "Institute of the global brain."

The Milner optimistic forecasts for the future of artificial intelligence, unlike Elon musk, bill gates and Stephen Hawking. He thinks computers will never work completely offline, without people. Instead, we all will eventually become part of a symbiotic brain, something medium between computers and humans. Francis Heylighen, gray-haired math genius now is building the world's first mathematical model of global brain (thanks to 1,5 million Euro from the pocket of Milner over the past five years). Milner agreed to Fund a team of Heiligen, provided that they will be able to create a model to manage a computer prototype of a global brain. Why Milner is so concerned with finding a new Internet inventions, come what may? Heiligen assumes that the invention will help to predict the future and may make a significant contribution to the culture. He recalls one of his Russian colleagues-scientists gravitated to the big theories that could explain a complex system.

For Milner the answer to the question about investing is simple. Just need to meet the right person, who manages to be everywhere all the time. "That's why investing is a complicated matter," he says. "Every time things are a little different. If there was a universal formula of investment, all would have used it". Recently, he personally financed the startup for the search of signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. The human quest for discovery of life on other planets is gaining under $100 million in funding from the tycoon from Silicon valley. For Milner, the space exploration is a project to which he is devoted, born from the belief that the best minds of Silicon valley and the latest achievements of science can be applied more broadly — in the decision of one of the main questions mankind: "are we Alone in the Universe?" For his new project, the investors enlisted the support of the geniuses of the world of astronomy. Even Steven Hawking spoke about it positively.published

 

P. S. And remember, just changing your mind — together we change the world! ©

Source: rusbase.com/howto/ot-milnera/