A few years ago I was struck when read this quote about Alexander Tamas by Marc Andreessen:
“He (Alexander Tamas) is Yuri Milner's human supercomputer. The investing whiz has placed some of the most impressive investment bets in the history of our industry, including Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Twitter. He is a walking encyclopedia of Internet business models and strategies. He's on speed-dial for everyone trying to build the most successful, highest-scale, global Internet companies today.”
In a deal by deal world, where everyone else is heads down comparing single transactions against each other, having meta-foresight is the difference between seeing the same situation and believing a company is undervalued, in the long term, where others see it as overvalued, in the short term.
Tamas says he believes Facebook is worth every cent of the $10 billion valuation. He says he flew to Palo Alto for his first meeting with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg several months ago and walked away certain Facebook would be the most important global Internet company.
"A lot of this is about Mark," he said, a grin spreading from ear to ear. "He is somebody who wants to build a real business. The mistake people are making here is to say display advertising does not work in social networking. That is true, but what does work is much more intelligent ads. It's much more like television. People have not taken advantage of what Internet as a medium can do."
Cross-border foresight can also be very important, as the history of technology is playing out in different geographies at different speeds.
“For us, it was really the theme of social networking and that was driven by us seeing the success of the companies we have in all our markets. We’re invested in five different social networks that are #1 in 13 different countries.”
“Here people seemed to be obsessed with IPOs. There are hundreds of companies that went public way too early but not that many that went public too late. You do it when it’s right for the company and not be rushed into it. The IPO really is just a step in the proper development—it’s not an exit, it’s not a new beginning. It’s just a natural evolution and I think by trying to push that too hard on a company, you more disrupt than do good.”
Tamas’s name reappeared quietly last week, as his firm Vy Capital, led Reddit’s latest round at a $6B valuation. After GME, and the U.S. Election, there is no doubt that Reddit’s potential influence, and present value, have an asymmetric connection. As entrepreneurs seek to unbundle reddit, Reddit has an opportunity to fortify its community with new connected monetization schemes and products.
His track record speaks for himself. From Vy Capital’s SPAC filing:
At DST, he personally led and sourced some of the most important technology investments of that time, including leading early primary investments in Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, Twitter, JD.com, Alibaba, Xiaomi and Zalando. He also helped to consolidate the Russian Internet sector around Mail.ru as its Managing Director and took the company public in 2010.
Tamas track record is worth watching, and approach worth emulating. No doubt he sees in Reddit, something that others don’t.
2021 #2: Decoding Alexander Tamas