My Eastern European trip last week took me to St Petersburgh in Russia – a cold but beautiful city in the Northern part of the country – which hosted the annual Russian Venture Conference.

My overall impression was that the Russian VC/startup scene is nascent – but booming. There is an Interesting dichotomy between the sophistication of Russian VCs (the ones I met all have US experience/networks) and the “mad scientist” , “completely-disconnected-from-market-reality” characteristic of Russian entrepreneurs.There are now several private (ie, non- government) Russian funds. Noteworthy VCs active in Russia include

·         well-known Russian VC Alexander Galitsky ( former director of the Soviet Space Agency thus huge technology expertise, worked / lived in SV for several years thus well-versed in US VC culture. He also moderated  Microsoft’s “Russia day” in Redmond on 10/15.

·         Ratmir Timashev, president of Russian fund ABRT. He has several investments in Russian, WE and US startups. He used to work for Microsoft in Redmond.

·         Peter Loukianoff, Alloy Ventures. He is based in Palo Alto, oversees Russian deals for Alloy.

·         Mangrove partners (based in Luxembourg, active in Russia

I had Interesting 1-1 meetings with the following Russian startups:

·         Great Studios: a game developer and certified XBOX360 developer. they have an interactive stereo demo running on XBOX360 and IZ3D stereo monitor. This display was invented by another Russia company  (Neurok) which has managed to carry it to mass production phase. First monitors hit the US market just few weeks ago.The potential for consoles such as Xbox360 is to bring stereoscopic effect to computer games.

·         Gravitonus: Extremely creative/innovative tech – and also very niche.  They make a super-expensive device that enables handicapped people to play video games and otherwise control their computer with their tongue (as they have no other motion options). Their estimated WW market is less than 1 million users. Yet, their CEO, Alex Kosik managed to get a meeting with Bill Gates a year ago, who is a big supporter of their technology from a humanitarian perspective. Alex received  a $125,000 grant from MS to finish development of his product and he is now ready to sell it.

·         Spb Software House: they develop content for mobile phones, from games to enterprise solutions --exclusively based on Windows Mobile.

·         Elecard: has developed an IPTV solution called Sigma iTV. Their products include HW and SW: AVC/H.264 encoders, VoD and TimeShift servers, DVB-IP streamers and IP-DVB encapsulators, set-top-boxes. Tech is based on MPEG-2 and AVC/H.264 video compression technology.