In the month a few thousand ideas come to analysts of venture capital funds and business angels, only 10% of it are theoretically able to attract investors. What is wrong? Most entrepreneurs do not understand the features of venture business, do not take into account the fund industry specialization or even offer to invest in illegal or contrary to common sense of fantasy. Forbes asked for business angels and managing partners of venture capital funds to talk about the craziest ideas received by them.
LACK OF FOCUS
The attempt to create something comprehensive, at once a huge, is one of the most common sins of beginning entrepreneurs. Once Runa Capital Fund received a project of portal that combines search services of medicines in pharmacies, booking of hotels and cafes, blog hosting, news feed, online gift shop, online cinema, labor exchange, discount aggregator, social network for schools and political parties. All of this is planning to implement by a team of three people; the target audience of the project is the southern regions of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and India.
A similar project was rejected by Softline Venture Partners. Startups have come up with a Web resource that satisfies all the needs of the user from editing images to order tickets and get information about traffic jams. “How the project will replace the entire Internet and what it should be, we did not understand, the business plan has not been sent, only the schema functionality in Paint, - laughed head of the fund Elena Volotovskaya. - And in general should follow accepted standards of presentation materials, express thoughts clearly and briefly and do not try to sell investors “killers of Facebook””.
SECRET KNOWLEDGE
“Once upon a time I was offered to invest in “the social networking of 4th generation” (of course, I would like to know what were the 2nd and 3rd generation), - said the business angel Vyacheslav Davydenko. - The founder did not tell the essence of the idea, and he engaged in the development of four people, for which he “cut” task so that none of them knew what makes the neighbor”.
There is a social network from a publisher of books on esoteric, “which has no analogues in the market”. “Unfortunately, all the details of this system I can not open through the Internet, but I assure, we immediately recapture a significant audience of sites: vk.com, avito.ru, irr.ru. Run time is 5 months, required investments are 2 million rubles”- such proposal was delivered to Runa Capital. “Venture capital funds are usually not interested in a very niche projects that can not be scaled to serious proportions. Startup should solve a massive problem, then the chances of attracting users and rapidly grow the business is much higher”, - said managing partner of the Fund Dmitry Chikhachev.
WHY DOES IT?
Venture partner of Bright Capital Ilya Pavlov in one of the contests met with “temnarik” is a “flashlight” that “shines” instead of light to darkness. “Great name, and applications are seen darkness ... but there is no such phenomenon, which can be done today “temnarik”, - said the expert.
NOT COMPLETELY OPENING
Once in Bright Capital came a presentation of a company Black Light Power for the extraction of energy from water by plasma technology. There are many publications, and bright team, and investment, and a loud PR with demonstrations. “Everything in the company was beautiful. One small detail is the theory of energy production is based on a new type of hydrogen that contemporary classical nuclear physics has not yet discovered”, - said Ilya Pavlov. According to him, the fund, working with high-tech projects, necessarily need to hire professionals with a basic natural-scientific education to understand at once: does not contradict the beautiful idea to basic laws of physics.
SOCIAL OR COMMERCIAL?
Once in the venture capital fund AddVenture came a project to install video cameras in the zoo. The purpose of the startup is to make the equivalent of popular game about the farm, but not on virtual animals, but on the real, live people to see their pets, could feed them, play with them. “The real Tamagotchi, - summed up Maxim Medvedev, managing partner of the Fund. - As a social project I really liked, but to its commercial potential of the big questions”.
Seed fund AddVenture works with companies in the early stages of development, and 95% of submitted materials are in the basket. “In recent years it has become fashionable to have own startup. The quality of the presentations changed for the better, but the degree of development of business model has remained at the same low level”, - complained Medvedev.
BIG AMBITIONS
Investment manager Alexander Zhurba met an ambitious project in a distant Russian outback. Solid professors of Soviet hardening on the basis of the Club for young technicians were going to create a technopark. They requested only $10 million at the start of a pilot project - a supersonic passenger aircraft to 6 seats.
GOOD FOR THE MONEY
Business angel Igor Ryabensky has a whole collection of nonsenses. The main theme of such business opuses is the happiness for all mankind. For example, there is a project on upgrading of urban space. You help your city, you mark in social networks, what good have you done for the day, and get special prizes. Or a project Mentor place — meet mentors and startups blindly. The first don not know who to help, and the second is who helps. The main objective is to increase the amount of good in the world. "I do not understand why such projects come for venture capital investment? Why founders need money to do good?”, - wondered Ryabensky.
http://www.forbes.ru/
