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How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

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Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#41

Post by bluekeybox »

gsivil wrote: post #38
bluekeybox wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When part of what makes you "smart" is the hands you choose to shake Why is picking correct friends wrong all of a sudden? > buying all the television stations Surely you mean buying television stations from one of the most vile and controlling governments in the history of the world.

If by "friends" you mean people that you can use/be-used to find your way to "financial" success you obviously have a different/distorted take on the term "friendship".

Who do you seek out? Birds of a feather with whom to weep about your own misfortune? The stupid ones whom you can easily brainwash for fun and profit? The ugly ones next to whom you look sexier than by yourself? The weak ones whom you can rule over? The quiet ones over whom your voice is heard? The short ones over whom you can tower over? Perhaps you seek out neither of the above, but I knew a few too many people who did, and incidentally those people were also the first ones to criticize me for being closed and overly choosy with whom I talk to.

As you can probably tell, I have little patience for mediocrity and "beta" strategies.

Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#42

Post by pg »

vizzah wrote: post #30
pg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense is he "successful?" Financially, in the same sense Mark Zuckerberg is.

I though Zuckerberg's success is in the creation, not in the bank balance? Really, 'financial success' and life's success (for achieving something worthwhile for the history of this planet) must be two absolutely different achievements..

That's why I qualified my answer by with "financially."

That is the type of success mapgrep is asking about: his returns as an investor.

Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#43

Post by tptacek »

palish wrote: post #40
tptacek wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a disappointing perspective on what makes friendships "correct", but that might just be because I believe we have an immortal soul. And yes, when the TV stations are bought by companies that are effectively instruments of the state: that's a bad thing. The ruling party shouldn't buy TV stations. Your beef isn't with me, though. Re-read this thread. I'm hardly the most cynical person here. I can sum my take o…

I'm interested in hearing more of your personal beliefs (re: soul).

They aren't interesting but if you'd like to email me, feel free.

Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#44

Post by tptacek »

bluekeybox wrote: post #41
gsivil wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "friends" you mean people that you can use/be-used to find your way to "financial" success you obviously have a different/distorted take on the term "friendship".

Who do you seek out? Birds of a feather with whom to weep about your own misfortune? The stupid ones whom you can easily brainwash for fun and profit? The ugly ones next to whom you look sexier than by yourself? The weak ones whom you can rule over? The quiet ones over whom your voice is heard? The short ones over whom you can tower over? Perhaps you seek out neither of the above, but I knew a few too many people who…

So, might makes right.

Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#45

Post by pg »

0x12 wrote: post #28
jbooth wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge sacks of money to throw around and huge cojones as well to make those bets, most of his investments had everyone saying "That's crazy!" at the time, yet they've paid off for him so far. Time will tell if they're successful or if he's making money off of a bigger fool, I guess, but he looks pretty good right now.

Criminals routinely invest lots of money in losing enterprises. This is called money laundering. They'll take a hit from 30 to 70% or even worse just to be able to get their money back in a way that they can spend it legitimately. They may not even care to win overall, as long as some of the bets pay off that's great. It will give influence and legitimacy. The hard part is always to find places that will take large a…

Money laundering = disguising the path money takes. These transactions are extremely traceable.

It is equally ridiculous to propose the goal is to get money out of Russia. How does investing in startups make that any easier? If the money can get to a startup in the US, ipso facto it can get out of Russia, to any other investment.

I would not be surprised to see such an obviously mistaken comment upvoted on reddit, but it is an alarming sign to see it happening here.

Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#46

Post by YuriNiyazov »

0x12 wrote: post #28
jbooth wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge sacks of money to throw around and huge cojones as well to make those bets, most of his investments had everyone saying "That's crazy!" at the time, yet they've paid off for him so far. Time will tell if they're successful or if he's making money off of a bigger fool, I guess, but he looks pretty good right now.

Criminals routinely invest lots of money in losing enterprises. This is called money laundering. They'll take a hit from 30 to 70% or even worse just to be able to get their money back in a way that they can spend it legitimately. They may not even care to win overall, as long as some of the bets pay off that's great. It will give influence and legitimacy. The hard part is always to find places that will take large a…

When talking about Usmanov, people seem to lean more heavily on the fact that he was convicted, and thus "pointed questions should be asked", rather than the fact that he was rehabilitated because the charges were fabricated.

Since I don't know Alisher, I can only speak generally, but: I was born in Uzbekistan, and know a few things about the region, and the political history there, so here's my two cents:

Fabricated charges during the Soviet regime were as common as, say, marijuana arrests in the US. This has happened in my family as well: my grandfather was a state judge in Uzbekistan, and his rival framed him on bribery charges, for which he was sentenced to 7 years in a labor camp. My grandfather has always maintained that he was innocent.

How come I believe my grandfather? Because, in the court documents, the sum of money which he allegedly accepted as a bribe was ludicrously low: 50 rubles. That's like taking a bribe for $150

During the 1990's, he was also rehabilitated with the same conclusion: fabricated charges.

Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#47

Post by tptacek »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #46
0x12 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminals routinely invest lots of money in losing enterprises. This is called money laundering. They'll take a hit from 30 to 70% or even worse just to be able to get their money back in a way that they can spend it legitimately. They may not even care to win overall, as long as some of the bets pay off that's great. It will give influence and legitimacy. The hard part is always to find places that will take large a…

When talking about Usmanov, people seem to lean more heavily on the fact that he was convicted, and thus "pointed questions should be asked", rather than the fact that he was rehabilitated because the charges were fabricated. Since I don't know Alisher, I can only speak generally, but: I was born in Uzbekistan, and know a few things about the region, and the political history there, so here's my two cents: Fabricated…

But those charges aren't the only reason people ask questions about him.

In fact, the charges are convenient for him, at least with respect to his public image in the West, because he can argue that he was vindicated; PR 101: leverage that vindication to ward off all other claims.

The links to Gazprom and the general public image of CIS extractive industry tycoons presumably contributes as much (if not more) to the cloud over him as the Soviet-era charges.

Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#48

Post by tptacek »

pg wrote: post #45
0x12 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminals routinely invest lots of money in losing enterprises. This is called money laundering. They'll take a hit from 30 to 70% or even worse just to be able to get their money back in a way that they can spend it legitimately. They may not even care to win overall, as long as some of the bets pay off that's great. It will give influence and legitimacy. The hard part is always to find places that will take large a…

Money laundering = disguising the path money takes. These transactions are extremely traceable. It is equally ridiculous to propose the goal is to get money out of Russia. How does investing in startups make that any easier? If the money can get to a startup in the US, ipso facto it can get out of Russia, to any other investment. I would not be surprised to see such an obviously mistaken comment upvoted on reddit, bu…

Moreover, you "launder" the proceeds of a numbers racket or a heroin dealing ring. When you control over 1/10th of the metals industry in one of the world's largest industrialized nations, you don't "launder" the proceeds; you create banks to hold the money.

The "money laundering" charge does a disservice to any legitimate qualms one might have about Oligarchy funds.

Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#49

Post by palish »

temphn wrote: post #25
0x12 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only when you sell the stock. So the money to buy all that stock still had to come from somewhere. Macaroni somehow doesn't cut it.

Right. We can bound this by getting the total market size of the macaroni business in Russia, and comparing to public investment numbers by Milner in other companies. Does the top down (revenue, profits) match the bottom up (sum of investments)? Unless he built the Russian Chef Boyardee, it strains the imagination to believe that macaroni was anything but a front for money laundering, from the Russian Mafia, Usmanov,…

So, let's do the macaroni calculation.

The first step would be to answer, "What is the name of the Macaroni factory Milner bought?" (Answer: "Extra M JSC". Source: http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=196698.0 )

The next step might be to figure out the size of that Extra M deal, in order to gauge its then-profitability. (Even though that has no bearing on its profitability afterwards, it is at least a starting point.)

Some sparse Extra M performance information from 2007: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/julia-malofeeva/5/98a/39a

Financial information about the Consumer Goods sector: http://biz.yahoo.com/p/3conameu.html

This is little bizarre: http://search.appliances-china.com/Look.php?ID=CaoGP4TW%2F%2... ... Extra M "company details" reads as follows: "We are international purchaser of Machinery & Industrial products for long time." It's proving difficult to find much info about Extra M.

Here's some company backround: http://enc.ex.ru/cgi-bin/n1firm.pl?lang=2&f=1143

Re: How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

#50

Post by rdl »

0x12 wrote: post #20
mathattack wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on subsequent valuations it would seem like Facebook, Groupon and others are doing very well. It only takes a few home runs to cover a lot of strikeouts and singles.

Only when you sell the stock. So the money to buy all that stock still had to come from somewhere. Macaroni somehow doesn't cut it.

He bought into Russia's mail.ru (through a merger; he's considered a founder, even though mail.ru's roots go back years before), during the first dotcom boom.

He led it and helped it get huge. A lot of people got rich, including Millner, and Russians had great mail service. It went public on the LSE a few years ago, and is worth billions.

So, on top of substantial personal wealth, he became a known successful tech entrepreneur, so it was possible for him to get LPs for his fund.

If you change the countries and company names around, he's basically Marc Andreessen or one of the PayPal mafia.

It's not so much that silicon valley is like the Russian finance economy, it's that tech businesses are pretty similar the world around.

It's a lot more probable than a journalist becoming one of Silicon Valley's top VCs (Mike Moritz).

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