Determinants of the Venture Investment Size in Russian IT Companies

Abstract

This study investigates the key determinants of the size of investment in Russian IT companies during follow-on rounds starting from the second round. On a sample of 55 deals (2010–2016), which represents the most important deals on Russian market, the research finds out two key factors positively influencing the size of investments: investments in the first round and presence of experienced investor among shareholders. e investor was considered as experienced if she has had success on VC market or has a totally accepted reputation on the same market. Results are consistent with the prior literature including the preliminary results of the authors done on lesser datasets. Additionally, effects of belonging to a particular industry or the time period of investments were proved to be insignificant for Russian VC market for IT companies. New hypothesis proposed by the authors (about impact of the number of founders on the investment in sub-sequent rounds) as well as hypothesis about the impact of target market growth on the investment size are also rejected. The latter is surprising as the target market growth is considered among the most important criteria for the investment decision. The result may be explained by the bias of the dataset as most of the early stage company data is confidential, and the target market growth plays the most significant role at the beginning of investment process.