Screenshot of the release of the Russian Norms project
Eduard Shenderovich, who co-founded SUP, which bought LiveJournal, in the early 2010s invested in Delivery Hero, a startup worth $7 billion. And Shenderovich’s Knotable project was valued at $500 million. The entrepreneur in an interview with the Russian Norms project spoke about his projects in the United States and cooperation with Russian investors and oligarchs.
After leaving SUP, Shenderovich created the venture capital fund Kite Ventures in 2008. Then he met the entrepreneur Lukasz Gadowski, who then created the company Team Europe (should have been cloning other companies). At this point, food delivery companies were operating in the market. Therefore, Gadovsky launched a separate business in Germany called Lieferheld and created Delivery Hero.
In order to raise money for the project, Shenderovich came to the Russian investor Leonid Boguslavsky, whom Jovan Maryanovich introduced him to. Then Boguslavsky sold part of his search engine package and could expand his activities. “And we began to look at different companies and invest,” Shenderovich said.
Edward Shenderovich
entrepreneur
“We invested in two different companies at the time - the German company Lieferheld and Delivery Hero as an international company. We invested in both companies, so they merged to make a bigger company. And after that we started to really buy into other markets.”
Delivery Hero currently operates in 47 markets. And after the listing of the company on the stock exchange in 2017, the cost of the project is estimated at $7 billion. “It is now the largest Internet company in Europe. If you do not take Yandex into account, Shenderovich said. Delivery Hero was also invested in by Gavriil Yushvaev, whose name appeared in the media after a conflict with a shooting between his bodyguards and security officers of reputable businessman Dmitry Pavlov on November 17th.
Shenderovich said that Yushvaev invested in the service for ordering a taxi Lyft, a developer software Domo, as well as in medical companies. The co-founder of SUP said that he learned from Yushvaev to make decisions faster. Shenderovich said that he worked closely enough with the Invest AG group, which has the money of Evraz founders Alexander Frolov and Alexander Abramov. According to him, he manages to explain the receipt of funds even if Russian investors are called oligarchs or power entrepreneurs.
Edward Shenderovich
entrepreneur
“If there are questions, then you can explain, provide some papers. It seems to me that this story of the persecution of Russians in America is extremely exaggerated.”
In 2013, Shenderovich, together with a friend, created the company Knotel, which the entrepreneur calls Airbnb for office real estate. As part of the project, a marketplace was created that connects property owners and businesses that require premises. The site allows you to rent premises for a year, one and a half or two years. According to Shenderovich, for a company with a staff of 20-50 people, renting real estate through Knotel is 25-30% cheaper than renting their own office. Now investors estimate the project at $500 million, and in the future, according to the entrepreneur's plans, the cost of the project will increase to $5 billion.
Eduard Shenderovich's parents left the USSR for the United States in 1990, but six years later Shenderovich returned to Russia. And in 2006, he was one of the founders of SUP, which bought LiveJournal. In the 2010s, he invested in Delivery Hero, a $7 billion internet startup. And Knotable, an office rental service, is valued by investors at $500 million. Now Shenderovich plans to create a $5 billion company.
In June, it became known that the Teremok pancake network had its own establishments in New York, which had been operating in the city since 2016. According to the entrepreneur, he had problems with regulators in the USA and he said that they do not want to see him in the USA. According to Goncharov, the brand should not enter the American market if the business is at least slightly connected with Russia.
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Eduard Shenderovich, founder of venture capital company Kite Ventures, wrote a note on the KNote blog about why management meetings suck and how to live without them.
Eduard Shenderovich (Kite Ventures)Eduard Shenderovich, founder of the venture capital company Kite Ventures, wrote a note in KNote about why management meetings suck and how to live without them.
In the five years we've been building Kite Ventures, there have been a few things we've failed at.
For example, we started out with the intention of building a major venture capital player, but we never built a fund. We created investment company rather than a more traditional structure that has managing partners and contributors. We have over a dozen investment partners who join specific Kite deals and pay no management fees invested capital. We only have a profit sharing agreement. Because we don't have these management boards, we don't have an expensive office, we don't have private jets (we fly economy), and we don't have a lot of assistants and consultants. I'm not complaining or bragging, I'm just stating the facts. We have invested more than $250 million in highly successful European companies (including Delivery Hero, Auctionata, Tradeshift, Fyber and Made.com) and New York companies (Plated and Merchantry), built a good reputation for ourselves, amassed a solid investor base and we are growing quite well with the help and support of our investment partners and entrepreneurs whom we have financed (some of whom have already become our investors). We expect the next five years to be more productive and productive than the previous ones.
And although this is a successful outcome, we have not achieved the goals that we originally set.
No meetings
Another failure was our inability to build a culture of weekly meetings. I tried doing it in different ways. When we started sending out calendar appointment invitations, it worked for a week or two. But the meeting did not bring results, and all participants quickly began to come up with reasons not to go next time. After all, what do we do at these meetings? Are we reporting? Are we listening to reports? Kite has a small team, so all communications happen in real time. People are motivated and strive to achieve as much as possible. We eventually realized that we didn't need weekly meetings, and it's unlikely we'll have them in the future.
But it's only recently that I've realized that failing to build the "right" fund and dropping weekly meetings are just two sides of the same coin. I regretted for a long time that we did not have either one or the other structural solution, but it turned out that without them it is simply more efficient.
A more efficient company
We really trust both the investors and the entrepreneurs we work with: both of them help us make better decisions, and ultimately create a more transparent and successful investment company.
By not having weekly meetings and letting our small team focus on the key tasks they are currently tackling, we are also building a more efficient and productive organization. This is well expressed in my favorite quote from Peter Drucker:
In the knowledge economy, everyone is a volunteer, and we are trained to manage conscripts.
That's what management meetings are about: managing recruits. You come to the meeting because you have to. You came there to rule, or to be ruled. But that's exactly what we don't want to do.
There is no advantage to treating employees like conscripts. Drucker also said, “Management is doing things right; leadership is about doing the right thing.” For us, the right things are not management and reporting, but work and results.
good communications
Since we do not have limited partners in our company, we accordingly do not hold traditional meetings with LPs and communicate with our investment partners in a more open manner and more often in real time. We see everyone around us - entrepreneurs, employees and investors - as part of the same team. We all strive to build great companies and ensure that promising people develop at work.
Of course, it's not great to fail, but sometimes failure in the details leads to success in some big things.
Edward Shenderovich. About fights and battles. - M.: Samokat, 2013.
Annotation:
Real children's poetry from Eduard Shenderovich: bright, funny and memorable poems for boys (and girls too) of all ages.
Tribunes rejoice
both right and left.
And then the king
and his queen
are calling to oneself
dressed in armor
mustachioed knight
in a rumpled helmet.
And in chorus with the princess
they tell him:
"Listen, knight,
You are a brave soldier!
Courage and strength
example of examples!
From now on and forever
You will be sir!!!"
And he is his “Bang-Bang”, and that one is his “Bang-Bang”. And these two with swords in the air “Vzhik-perevzhik”. And these first “Cah-shah!”, And after “Sneeze!” And if you ask what happened to me, I will answer - a wonderful book of poems by Eduard Shenderovich "About battles and battles."
In a small book (thick binding and wonderful illustrations), several bullies met: knights, pirates, musketeers, gladiators, samurai and cowboys. Not without cutting, fencing, shooting. Blood spilled. But nobody died.
The Samokat children's literature publishing house is that unique case when I can take any of their books without hesitation, knowing for sure that it will be good, even magnificent. The collection of poems about buzzers and militarists was no exception. Super-poems come with super-illustrations, and one wants to continue them with another dimension - to play out a scene and thereby bring them to life. While I amuse myself by reading them to my son with intonation, trying to speak for such different characters and voice blades: growl for a pirate, scream for a parrot, rustle a samurai sword or granmercier for musketeers (you also have to fawn and lisp for their ladies of the heart). These poems are so wonderful - figurative, bright, dynamic. Alive, dancing, and not so simple as they might seem at first admiring glance. Oh well, read on for yourself:
“Little Roman boy shouts “I want to go there too!”
An adult Roman mother tells him: “Nonsense!
Gladiators die to entertain the people!
And you will be a legionnaire! And no one will kill you!
And the boy says: “Of course! Rome will be eternal forever!
Mom, I swear by Venus! I will become a legionnaire!”
“And it doesn’t work out like that, and it doesn’t go that way,
They even try the opposite -
first, “chah-shah!” - and in pursuit of “sneeze!!”
Throwing swords and fighting without them!
They kick with their feet! Hitting with fists!
They grab each other by the neck with their hands!
And they pull! And they choke!
But the eternally formidable samurai do not die!
The night has come and the stars are lit,
The soldiers went to their families long ago,
And two samurai, like two ants,
In deadly embrace, they all stand the same.
One praying mantis, and the other a dragonfly - the insect has hatched its eyes.
And from the sky the moon caresses them with light - the top of the mountain is visible in this light,
Bats fly by in flocks and night birds fly like shadows.
And if you are in the east,
Near Fuji, or near Tokyo,
In a field where there is never a soul,
In the light of the moon and in the silence of midnight,
There by the stream, whose bend is like a snake -
The two samurai are still standing.
Fight each other and don't die
Eternal Samurai Warriors!”
And Jack says:
"Bill, you didn't kill me!"
And Bill replies:
“Jack, I’m still human!
After all, if you chase after everyone,
then with whom should I shoot later?!”
So, let's be such people and eternally living samurai warriors. And pirates. And parrots. And knights. And, of course, princesses. And you can even break it from time to time. Well, to wrinkle the helmet. And then who next time visor to break?
My three-year-old son has 4 swords, 4 pistols, 2 submachine guns and 3 bows in toys (although only two arrows). With all this goodness, he, at times, does not part even in bed. Do you understand that this book is simply necessary in our arsenal?
"News"
Non-commodity ambitions: why the son of the president of Evraz preferred venture investments to metals
Is it worth investing in Internet projects
Eduard Shenderovich, managing director of the Kite Ventures venture fund, believes that now is the time to invest in the Internet, and the CEO of the Russian Venture Company, Igor Agamirzyan, believes that investments in Russia have already skewed towards IT and the Internet. Igor Agamirzyan, CEO of the Russian Venture Company: — There are not enough projects in Russia that have been formed to a stage that is understandable for venture investors. When they can calculate the risks and prospects of these projects and develop for themselves a reasonable and economically viable model for investment, development and exit from companies
link: http://newsaltay.ru/index.php? dn=article&to=art&id=7
Investgazeta learned what it takes to attract investment in IT projects
If you decipher the concept of "company", it becomes clear that there are very clear components behind it: people, products and the market. There are no companies without the right balance of these three elements,” says Eduard Shenderovich, Managing Director of Kite Ventures, a venture fund that has invested in a dozen companies over the two years of its existence, two of which are in Germany, one in England, and the rest in Russia. Most developers think only in terms of the product, leaving out important points such as the market they will operate in, its size and growth rate, the competitive landscape, a complete team with the combined competencies to create a business with a sustainable competitive advantage, a go-to-market strategy, and a marketing strategy. , business model and other important factors, says Pavel Levchuk, director of Vivex Invest, which is an investor in such projects as Mapia.ua, Address.ua, etc.
link: http://investgazeta.net/ kompanii-i-rynki/investgazeta- uznavala-chto-nuzhno-dlja- togo-chtoby-privlech- investicii-v-it-proekty- 160161/
Eduard Shenderovich: "An investor must be an optimist"
Eduard Shenderovich is a man of numerous and diverse talents: a poet, philosopher, philologist, entrepreneur. And to all this - a successful investor, founder and managing director management company Keith Ventures. It is quite possible that it is the combination of different and seemingly contradictory abilities that allows him to invest in the right projects, in right time and the required amounts. At his lecture for students of the specialization "Management in the field of Internet technologies", Eduard Shenderovich told the basics of the difficult art of investing.
link: http://habrahabr.ru/company/rma/blog/50494/
Ukrainian IT entrepreneurs found their investors
According to Eduard Shenderovich, managing director of Kite Ventures venture fund and Forum speaker: “The task of a venture investor is to correctly identify people who can unlock the potential of the market. Such an event in Ukraine is unique, but necessary for fruitful development innovative economy. I hope the tradition will continue and bear fruit soon.” The event for two days was attended by about 1500 IT-specialists, investors, venture funds, top managers of leading companies dealing with Internet technologies, business angels, experts, representatives of Ukrainian and international media.
link; http://newsukraine.com.ua/news/232816-ukrainskie-it-predprinimateli-nashli-svoih-investorov/
The venture capital market lacks “early” money
Eduard Shenderovich, managing director of venture capital fund Kite Ventures, told RBC daily that the activity of investors at the seed stages is low not only in Russia, but also in other countries where there is no “buyer market” for such companies, for example, in France or Italy. “Funding companies that not only do not understand how they will earn money, but also do not know what exactly their product will be, is an extremely risky business,” the investor believes. - In more developed markets (say, in the US and Germany), the money is received not so much by the seed companies themselves as by their founders - most often if they already have success stories. They are trusted by their colleagues, friends, just people from the industry. In Russia, there are still few serial entrepreneurs who could count on such trust.”
link: http://eford.msk.ru/venchurnomu-ryinku-ne-hvataet-rannih-deneg/
Eduard Shenderovich, Kite Ventures: “Entrepreneurs are revolutionaries by definition”
Eduard Shenderovich: I don't think it's particularly difficult, this activity has very understandable components, but simply knowing them is not enough. As with the revolution, its theory is described: there must be a top that cannot, a bottom that does not want, and a corresponding economic situation, however, understanding this does not bring us closer to the revolution. High technologies are interesting to me for their never-ending dynamics. This is a world that is constantly changing and therefore requires permanent study, quick reactions to what is happening, and continuous improvement of oneself. At the same time, there is no doubt that the Internet is part of the overall business structure, and companies that develop Internet services do not operate in a vacuum, but in a common market.
link: http://inventure.com. ua/news/world/eduard- shenderovich-kite-ventures- abpredprinimateli-2013-po- opredeleniyu-revolyucionerybb
The Global Venture Market: A Revolutionary Rise
This trend is directly related to globalization. “More market and lower risks is the general line of development of any industry,” explains Eduard Shenderovich, Managing Director of Kite Ventures. As international experience shows, the larger the venture company, the more it focuses on less risky investments in companies in the later stages, the products of which have already been tested by the market. And according to Deloitte, from 8% (venture assets less than $50 million) to 2% (assets more than $1 billion) of venture top managers are ready to invest in companies at early stages.
link: http://www.sibai.ru/archive/index-149.htm
Forum "investment in Russia" - the revival of the old brand
Eduard Shenderovich, Managing Director of Kite Ventures, shared with the conference participants his professional experience in investing in high-tech projects and the Internet, and also gave some valuable recommendations to aspiring entrepreneurs who want to raise funds.
link: