Global Mobile Internet Conference guesses: Who will be the lucky one in DST China

He used a law to persuade Facebook founder Zuckerberg, who was never seen to accept his investment, to be the capital driver of a popular internet company such as Zynga and Groupon, who was told by the industry to "change the way Silicon Valley invests". He is Ceo--yuri Milner of the Russian internet company digital Sky Technologies (DST). The low-key, secretive Russian will come to Beijing in April 27-28th to attend the 2011 Global Mobile Internet Conference, hosted by the Great Wall, to share his belief in social networking and non-mainstream investment.

Before deciding to invest in Facebook, Milner had a "Zuckerberg's Law" (Zuckerberg): Every 12-18 months, people shared information on the internet twice. In the future, people will cross a generic search engine such as Google, relying on friends on social networks to get information and make decisions. As long as users choose to build their own social networking site, it will be responsible for filtering everything. This has made Facebook discover that Milner understands social networks and their influence more than they think, and that the idea is so close to Zuckerberg. 4 months later, DST announced an investment of 200 million dollars to Facebook for a 1.96% stake.

Previous Milner and DST were obscure. The move has made them seem to drop out of the sky overnight, winning the most coveted deals and making friends with Silicon Valley's brightest supernova entrepreneur. More importantly, the Silicon Valley investment circle that has been surging enough has been completely disrupted by the North's visitors, and some even assert that Milner has changed the way Silicon Valley invests.

Milner is indeed not a traditional typical VCs. At the beginning of this year, the Russian venture capitalist once again invested millions of dollars in new industries in Silicon Valley. This time he was betting on a start-up company. According to TechCrunch, Milner a 150,000-dollar investment in each project of the Silicon Valley famous IT business incubator Y Combinator. Later last year, Chris Steiner of Fortune introduced the company in a magazine. The investment also comes with a generous clause: each loan is paid in the form of a negotiable instrument, with no ceiling and no discount. Such subsidiary rules are enough to shrink most VCs.

But this is a common situation for Milner, who also invests in Facebook,groupon and Zynga with generous terms (if not required to occupy the board), which he himself rated highly.

Milner This method of investment as "late investment" (Late-stage investment). In May 2010, he said at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference that 10 years ago their investment style and traditional VC no two, but in recent years began to switch to late investment, which means an average of more than 1 billion U.S. dollars in valuations and more than 100 million dollars in investment. And unlike the traditional late-stage investment, which comes on the eve of the IPO and then quickly withdraws, DST is willing to pull the payback cycle very long. In Milner's view, the companies they invest in can lead a 5, 10, or even 15-year trend. So why rush out?

This kind of anti-traditional wisdom investment way involves the capital and the risk are very big, but the return is much higher than the ordinary VC. For now, DST's investment in Facebook totals more than $800 million trillion, taking up nearly 10% of its shares, second only to Accel, the outside investor. The $200 million trillion in DST in 2009 put Facebook at $10 billion trillion. Two years later, Facebook's latest estimate is 60 billion dollars. The most crude calculation is that the value of DST's investment has doubled by 6 times times to $6 billion in two years.

"DST is more of a capital-level operation, with a group of people with the strongest investment banking backgrounds in Europe and the United States. They move quickly, offer very high, the eye is very accurate, fancy one to seize one, also do not consider too many so-called ' strategy ', such as not board seat. And it's not easy to get out. "Tencent founder Ma has summed up DST like this.

And Milner himself explains the unique appeal of DST: "First of all, unlike other investors, I am also an entrepreneur." Like the Chinese horse and Ma, I also created my own company. So I am closer to the entrepreneur relationship, strategy, dream, vision and so on are our common topic. Second, unlike many funds that invest in various industries, we invest in consumer-oriented internet companies, and are very focused, which gives us a complete vision (vision). Third, DST is very global. So when we sit down with entrepreneurs, we can talk about global trends, experiences as entrepreneurs and special areas of our expertise, and there's always a lot to talk about. ”

Like all other good investors, Mr Milner argues that investment must be people-focused. When he first started investing in Russia 10 years ago, he underestimated the importance of that factor. For example, he once invested in a company that was fast growing and looked very interesting. But contrary to many successful entrepreneurs dropping out of college, the young management team suddenly wants to go to business school. Eventually the company was sold and DST made some money, "but it's not a great company." As a result, Zynga's Tamas, recalling a meeting with Mr Milner and the company, commented: "They are most concerned not about us, more about me and the management team-are we really determined to do it?" "Now, Mr Milner thinks the founders of DST's three companies are very mission-seeking to dramatically change the way people do things." There are not many people like that.

An interesting little detail is that Mr Milner, an investor, has never used a business card and has set his Facebook homepage privacy to the strictest-he is said to have more than 50 friends. The official website of DST has only one blue logo and one email address. Mr Milner and DST, who are investing in late-stage investments, seem to want to see their goals "far away" and grin away, reluctant to be bothered by deals.

China naturally has a lot of big targets to see, and unfortunately most of them are already on the market, and DST's usual way of investing is hard to do. To be sure, the number of Mirnarai China is more than imagined, the earliest dating back to 2003. The rapid development of China's Internet over the past 8 years has made it impressive: "The biggest change is that many companies are growing in size and are starting to have global ambitions and thinking." "When asked by global entrepreneurs if they could find a way to invest in China, Mr Milner, who is familiar with the names of China's leading internet companies, replied positively," yes, but declined to say: "I come to China and I see people and companies. The connection must be established first, and it takes time. It's better to have a partner than nothing. When it comes to Mail.ru, he describes it as Russia's "Tencent + Grand + NetEase + Sohu". It is clear that, in addition to seizing the commanding heights of the US internet, Mr Milner, who is extremely diligent, has completed his initial education of China's Internet. Next, there is reason to expect more traffic to be clicked.