A new early stage technology support entity called ImpulseVC was launched last week in Moscow to invest in new media and web-based entertainment startups. ImpulseVC includes a venture fund, an accelerator and an incubator.
The founders of Sape.ru, a six-year-old online exchange that buys and sells links from a wide variety of websites and is estimated to be worth around $100 million, are behind the move, as reported by the Russian business daily Vedomosti.
The $65 million fund is a five-year project designed to back an array of segments in today’s Internet markets – a noticeable diversification from Sape’s prior focus on link exchange technologies.
According to Kirill Belov, a co-founder of ImpulseVC, the acceleration side of the business has the capacity to support up to 50 projects a year. Each project may receive anything between $25,000 and $100,000 in exchange for 7-15% of its shares. Belov likened the new entity to a “project-growing machine.”
The best acceleration program participants seeking seed investment will become residents of ImpulseVC’s business incubator. At this stage, the teams will have to comply with more rigorous requirements for their projects. However, they may expect a much more substantial investment in excess of $500,000, ceding to their new investor a 25-to-35% stake in their companies.
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich also controls a stake in Sape and his affiliated businesses are involved in the ImpulseVC project, an unnamed “acquaintance of Abramovich” told Vedomosti.
Several sizeable venture funds have been launched in Russia since the beginning of the year. These include the IIDF (FRII in Russian, the country’s largest startup fund), Maxfield Capital, a $100 million fund linked to Russian oligarch and Skolkovo President Viktor Vekselberg, Genezis, which is backed by the founders of startup Accelerator TexDrive, and the Russian Internet Technology Fund.
The latest one is Flint Capital, launched earlier this month by former executives of the financial group Finam Global.
