Russia is not friends with venture

Innovative venture: so far our environment is unfriendly"Snob"
During his career, Andrey Sharonov has gained a reputation as an irreplaceable professional both in public service and in private business.

Before the collapse of the USSR, Sharonov managed to work for a year as secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee, and then under the Government of the Russian Federation he headed the units responsible for youth affairs. In the mid-90s, he joined the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and, as deputy Minister, developed the "rules of the game" for business and supervised the Presidential program for training managerial personnel. He was a member of the boards of directors of the companies "Russian Railways", "UES of Russia", "Svyazinvest", "Aeroflot — Russian Airlines". After 16 years of public service, he accepted the offer of Troika Dialog and became the managing director of the company. He loves active sports and was the president of the government football club "Rosich". Member of the club "Snob" since December 2008.

Philosopher and athlete Andrey Shmarov was born in Moscow. Graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University, Candidate of Economic Sciences. In his life, he did a lot of science and journalism, worked at the Kommersant Publishing House together with Vladimir Yakovlev, later distinguished himself by creating the Expert magazine. He was the founder and the main ideologist of one of the first Russian "thought factories" (think tank) — the analytical center "Expert". Recently, he has been the general director of the multimedia project "SNOB". He appreciates the quality of life, plays tennis decently, is a regular at jazz clubs, art galleries and classical music concerts. Well and often understands what and when to drink. Member of the club "Snob" since December 2008.

Andrey Sharonov. At the end of May, the heads of the largest American venture funds and management companies will come to Moscow for the first time. They will be here on May 25-27, and a number of official visits are planned, including a meeting with the President of the Russian Federation.

These experts will spend the day of May 27 at our Troika Dialog. We will organize a number of meetings for them with representatives of various companies engaged in innovative developments. Among others, we will present our stars — iiko, Safe'nsec, Evernote, VidiMax.

Andrey Shmarov. That is, an innovative venture in the Russian Federation is not a grandiose hoax? And do we have prerequisites for it: personnel, previous developments, infrastructure, support of the authorities (orders, for example), laws?Cadres are a problem.

They are much less than required, and they are somewhat worse than the various universities and the Academy of Sciences declare. I have heard comments from representatives of science that we are not quoted in the world simply because they cannot read Russian.

There are some developments left, but I'm afraid they are outdated. For example, it is believed that we have serious developments in biotechnology. However, I spoke with our compatriot, who has been living in Germany for a long time and is engaged in attracting venture investments in biotechnology from all over the world. His point of view: most of our technologies are hopelessly outdated. We think we are sitting on gold bars, but they have long since turned to dust. Today it is impossible to live with the approach of "we keep all developments secret!", because in fact it may turn out that there is no demand for them, the market has not yet been formed.

There is probably no material infrastructure either. Attempts to create infrastructure through RUSNANO (before that, a Russian venture company and regional venture companies and technology parks) are a move in the right direction, but this is not enough.

Why?These measures were aimed at stimulating supply, whereas we have more problems on the demand side.

There is a significant fundamental problem — the competitive environment is deformed in the economy: it does not exist in such parameters as efficiency, quality, cost, but there is intense competition for access to public money and power resources.

As a result, the infrastructure appears, and there is still no one to sell. And this infrastructure very often degenerates into a real estate rental business.

The tax regime?I think that in 2011 and beyond, high-tech companies will experience difficulties associated with a sharp increase in the social tax.

The fact is that in the cost of their products, the lion's share of costs is labor costs. This means that the 36 percent payroll tax will hit them much harder than resource companies.

Therefore, as far as I know, Boris Nuraliev (one of the founders of 1C) has already transferred a significant part of his business to Ukraine, Anatoly Karachinsky (president of IBS Group Holding), one of the creators of a special economic zone of a technical and innovative type in Dubna, is also talking about it.

The tax environment is very unfriendly. It turns out that the state creates special institutions for the development of innovative business with one hand, and worsens working conditions with the other.

Is there a qualified demand for innovation in the country? I mean, first of all, the defense industry.Where was the real competition in the Soviet Union?

Only in the defense industry, because we competed with NATO. I don't consider myself an expert in the defense industry, but since: a) there is a defense order, b) there is a global arms market where we have to compete, the defense industry theoretically generates demand for innovation.

The second big source of demand is exports. And the state should promote the export of innovative products, otherwise we will have the export of personnel.

It turns out that we do not have a system that would pick up R&D and drag it to the series.We have always been good with ideas and prototypes and bad with mass production.

For example, a very long time ago, laboratories learned how to produce synthetic insulin, but they could not establish its production on an industrial scale.

Then maybe we should aim at exporting not products, but patents, licenses and prototypes? There will be much less added value, but at least something more than just lying around.Yes, but only with appropriate intellectual property protection.

For us, a very big problem is the lack of issued rights. Often, developers who have created an intellectual product cannot get the rights to it, because they belong, for example, to the state. At one time, there was talk of dividing the rights, transferring the rights to developers while retaining royalties for the state, but I don't know how it is now.

We have some successful stories, cases — what have we come up with, done and sold?A striking example is Kaspersky Lab.

There are hundreds of companies that have been grown by ventures, we have many management companies of foreign origin doing business in Russia on Russian developments, there are also exits of companies into the public space and their sale to strategists — they happen regularly. Of course, their scale is not comparable with the United States, nor with Europe, nor now with China, but there are such stories.

You referred to Tatarstan as the most advanced region in the organization of innovations. At the expense of what?In our country, the authorities in some cases can compensate for the lack of demand for innovative products.

Officials can encourage large structures to introduce innovations, for example, an oil company — to use technologies that prevent theft at gas stations, increase oil recovery or something else. This is useful for business, but the company is stopped by its monopoly position in the market, which allows it to feel great even without innovation.

The Government of Tatarstan actively supports developments and the demand for innovations. Rustam Minnikhanov, still in the status of prime minister, organized meetings when there were representatives of venture funds on the one hand, and big business on the other. There is a lot of the latter in Tatarstan, so in such a "manual mode" technology transfer was obtained.

Commercialization is another serious problem that we have to solve. We do not have enough professional managers who are able to transform scientific development into a saleable business.

In flight, this problem is solved.Yes?

And how?

The Israelis did it very simply. They came up with, developed, brought, and their American partners took over marketing.You're wrong!

We just can't solve it. The Russian legal environment is not friendly to the forms of venture activity that have developed in the world. Everywhere it is a partnership, the so-called carry-interest, when the remuneration of management companies depends on the increment of the business value. In our country, it is almost impossible to implement.

It means that this vertical of power has been built, the parliament is already in order, everyone has legislative initiatives, so be kind enough to make an adequate regulatory framework.The problem is that all the most productive modern models of venture business have developed in Anglo-Saxon case law.

We have a different legal environment, so it turns out like in a joke: you start collecting a seeder, and you get a Kalashnikov assault rifle. In our legal field, it is difficult to make the necessary forms, for example, the institution of a shareholder agreement does not work, because there are contradictions between precedent and law, contract and law.

It is also solvable: a company is registered in Cyprus under English law.This is one of the possibilities.

However, officials may disagree, since part of the funds are transferred to venture funds from the state budget. And in this regard, additional requirements and restrictions arise.

Has the Russian venture company done anything in four years?

During two competitive campaigns, RVC selected about seven private funds and management companies in which it co-invested about 15.9 billion rubles, and these companies are now forming their portfolio. Troika Dialog manages three regional venture funds worth more than a billion rubles. Half of this money is private, this is the money that we have attracted on the market, and the other half consists of 25% of federal and 25% of regional funds. Now we have selected and invested 10 portfolio companies in which we own a package of at least 25%. We should exit these projects within 3-7 years and show a return significantly exceeding the initial investment.

We have also started to form a pipeline of projects for the Skolkovo-Nanotech Fund with a volume of 2 billion rubles under management.

What is approximately the period when your ventures reach operational zero?The periods are different.

In the Krasnoyarsk Territory, in Dudinka, the company Globtel Holding LLC (cable TV operator) does not use unprecedented innovative developments, it is rather a marketing product. And the famous Russian physicist Igor Kukushkin, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, winner of the Planck and Humboldt Prize, is taking part in the development of another project. The form of implementation is not yet fully understood there, not to mention commercialization, so sales are still far away.

The Evernote company's project (developed a service that allows you to remotely use the services of storing and structuring information via a web browser or mobile application) involves the Japanese company DoCoMo - No. 1 in the world in the field of surround television. They believed in him and, by the way, may be a potential buyer of the company in the future.

Do you have a technology for selecting projects, any experts?Yes, and in fact the most difficult thing is to select ideas.

There are really serious, important inventions and know-how. However, at the same time, there may simply be no market or demand for them now. Therefore, we do not undertake such a project and will not invest in it. Firstly, we have attracted private money and are obliged to show our clients profitability. Secondly, as a management company, we are responsible to all investors for the result. This is not charity.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru20.05.2010