VEB Ventures CEO Veronika Fidler: «An ideal option is a collaboration between private ventures and government investments!»
In the recent interview Veronika Fidler, chief executive of Veb Ventures revealed the key tendencies in the Telecom market and shared her opinion on the emerging technologies’ development route.
What are the last tendencies and emerging sub-industries in venture market which are focused within the innovative technologies sphere?
The most booming trend of the year is that now major companies consider small startups acquisition as a real way to grow, not just as a hype-gaining method. This tool is now believed to be more effective and less time demanding compared to the internal growth. Currently, the whole venture industry is developing mostly within the sector of business-accelerating for companies thus supporting already established businesses in reaching the goals within the range of the corporate activities.
Are there any new methods of bubbles detection that are being applied by venture funds?
If they had existed investments would stop being that risky and investors would anticipate completely different risk-return profile. But so far this is not technically possible: great number of over-valued technologies occur with extra-high investors’ estimations “heating” the expected return rate. As for the plan VEB Ventures follow, we now invest in more mature projects which have already showed some upward market dynamics and proven some anticipations by their financial performance. And this is a way to secure your assets.
What is the extent of state-owned and private companies’ involvement to interaction with startups and innovative products? What should be done to enlarge the influence?
That depends on the financial constraints and resources, which are completely different for these types of firms While private businesses show high level of flexibility and willingness to develop further in more versatile way, state-owned players are more conservative in their path but have significantly more capabilities. This is why an ideal option is a collaboration between private ventures and government investments, which is organisationally hard, but strategically crucial to reach.
Is providing aid for the promising players a task for authorities or powerful players?
Potentially, the term “aid” itself is a bit odd within this discussion since we should not provoke some extra-supportive actions which might prevent the market from fair competition: and startups are not some special population groups we must help. The only thing we should and will provide (which is true for both private and state-owned businesses) is creating and development of healthy environment for effective and sustainable growth of innovative startups.
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