The CEO of Generation Partners, Sergey Kartashov (Sergejs Kartasovs), talks about his work. He, with his team, helps investors in managing their financial capital wisely. The startup markets have thousands of projects and companies. The job of an IT asset management firm is to find worthwhile projects and bring them to the investors. It is risky, so the analysts diversify the portfolio of the investors on the principle of putting eggs in different baskets apart from putting them in a single basket.
Finding Unique Products
According to Sergey Kartashov, the most important task of an IT asset management firm is to find unique, worthwhile, and problem-solving startups. There are only a few startups in the market that go on to become stable companies. The asset managers perform market analysis, diversify clients’ portfolios, and study the prospects of a startup. The unique and problem-solving products allow asset management analysts to minimize the risk of investment. The value of a product and a startup is dependent on its uniqueness. “Our task—just like gold hunters—is to find nuggets and bring them to investors,” says Sergey Kartashov (Sergejs Kartasovs). His company prefers to invest in various projects at the same time to tackle the risks.
Important Roles of Analysts
The analysts with the IT asset management firms study a company by keeping various aspects under consideration including the legal compliance, competency of employees, and management skills. Many outstanding products fail to get success due to the lack of marketing and management skills of their developers. “‘Developers are geeks, but often they behave like creative people. Often, they can create an ingenious product, but at the same time, they may not be able to competently bring it to the market,” adds Sergey Kartashov. The asset management firms find the true potential of a startup that can turn into a stable company. Generation Partners focuses on investing in those startups that solve an urgent problem. The IT asset management analysts have another important job of counseling the startups in terms of choosing a country to relocate to. There are dozens of countries that provide moderate to the excellent business environment for IT companies. The companies from post-Soviet countries should relocate to Cyprus as it is one of the best destinations for IT startups. Sergey Kartashov says about Cyprus, “Here you have a large IT community that was born here and now helps the industry to develop and improve further.” The IP-Box regime, various Double Taxation Agreements, and favorable legislation allow IT startups to flourish on this island. The standard of living and infrastructure are other noticeable features of Cyprus. There are various other countries that are having an excellent environment for conducting IT businesses including the US, Germany, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Malta. The future of Cyprus is bright in the field of IT development.
