Bogdan Gavrila – Core Target | Business Blog

President Medvedev, the first russian owner of an iPhone4 (gift from Steve Jobs) spend all his afternoon promoting Skolkovo (Russian Silicon Valley innovation and business park near to Moscow).

After his meeting with Steve Jobs, Medvedev gave a speech at Stanford University. Read it from his iPad.

The biggest internet event in Russia (more than 5.000 participants) is the Russia Internet Forum. As I’m surfing their website I can only think that It’s a good idea to register for 2010 – www.rif.ru. Continue reading ‘Russia Internet Forum – the biggest internet forum in Russia’

If you read my blog on regular basis you probably know that the Russian Internet market is very interesting for me and right now I’m very excited to hear and meet the “rock stars” of the Russian Internet at LeWeb – the panel is moderated by Jennifer L. Schenker, (Founder & Editor-in-Chie Informilo.com)

Panelists – Russia roundtable:

• - Sasha Galitsky, Almaz Capital Partners
• - Bernard Lukey, CEO, OZON.ru
• - Edward Shenderovich, Managing Director, Kite Ventures
• - Arkady Volozh, CEO, Yandex Continue reading ‘Russia Roundtable at LeWeb in Paris’

I always liked to discover Russia or China as healthy growth alternatives for new business. Last October  I was blogging about Russia’s online market in 2008 and right now I have only positive thoughts about this part of the world since they decided to invest more in new media.

I like the new country and the achievements made in the last years: Russia is now a healthy democracy with an emerging market and a healthy appetite for new business. I know that in Romania, politicians are not very keen to maintain business relationships with Russian entities but the opportunities cannot be ignored as we entered a new era of doing business.

The financial crisis had a different impact but the fact that Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment group, decided to $200 million investment in Facebook was a great signal for entrepreneurs all over the world. Facebook said the investment represents a 1.96% equity stake at a $10 billion valuation and it seems that DST has indicated that it will offer to buy at least $100 million of Facebook common stock from existing common stockholders. Continue reading ‘Russia, the new financial tiger – online business’

The Russian online market is interesting even for some Romanian entrepreneurs. Far more attractive than the western markets and not so much exposed to global risks (just the usual energy/cold crises).

Here are some figures from an article I’ve read this Saturday, published by Lenta.ru:

- total marketing spend for the entire year will be between US$1.04 billion to $1.48 billion;

- Tagline market research predicted that by the end of 2008, media advertising is expected to receive ~$285 million – $390 million investments ;

- $320 million – $450 million – predictions for spent on contextual ads;

- SEM will receive ~$250 million – $400 million;

- web development market estimated between $160 million – $200 million.

- content production, online consultancy, oline PR and blogging will receive ~ $25 million – $35 million (source: Tagline).

- online marketing communications in Russia rising in 2008;

Tagline’s analysis was based on a research involving 600 companies (information acquired using direct interviews and open source intelligence). The funny thing is that the estimates are made in US dollars.