Tim Draper preaches Ukraine’s IT outsourcing industry a prosperous future

American billionaire Tim Draper – Managing Director of the major American investment company

“Draper Fisher Jurvetson”

– confessed that general interest of investors to Hi-Tech projects gets a second wind. Such tendency is much inspired by the recent success of Google search-engine and successful sale of Skype and Baidu. Mainly due to all these companies are in some way associated with Ukraine and Russia, investors put their eye to post-Soviet countries, particularly Ukraine and Russia.

Tim Draper is the founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. The interest rate of the company is about $3 billion, global network of affiliated funds of “DFJ” numbers 16 funds with the investment capital exceeding $2,3 billion and with representative offices in the major technological centers throughout the world. Draper is considered to be a pioneer at new markets and his “DFJ” invested in some very successful projects as Hotmail free e-mail service, Skype Technologies Internet telephony company, and Chinese Baidu.com Inc. search engine. Draper confessed he had had some bad luck, like a failure to invest in young Yahoo because of a lost Yahoo guys’ offer paper and he felt frustrated. As he said, the point is not to miss the opportunity as it arises.

Tim Draper said he believes in Ukraine and preaches it a prosperous future: “The recent political upheaval known as the Orange Revolution provides the opportunity for an economic revolution in Ukraine.” As a prove of his high expectations Mr. Draper and his partners from Ukraine have already established the first Ukrainian technological venture fund – “DFJ-Nexus” with initial authorized capital of $50 million and maximum capital of $150 million. It should be noted that it is the first that large foreign venture capital in Ukraine. “Ukraine will become an economic powerhouse, I know it, I see it, and I smell it.”

Huge potential of Ukrainian Hi-Tech, vast pool of creative IT specialists, short terms for start up of ODCs and BOTs and considerably lower rates compared to Europe, India, and Russia attract foreign investors to Ukraine. Currently not only IT companies are interested in creating Offshore Development Centers in Ukraine but also venture funds. Until recent the main purpose of newcomers was to start up an offshore software development company, search for developers for new projects; now the question is about buying already running firms with more than 100 professionals staff.

Ukraine can provide not only qualified manpower for plain programming, but also creative and self-motivated developers. Ukraine possesses a strong engineering and technical tradition, has lots of R&D institutions. This allows to develop IT products and services that require a fundamental scientific approach, non-trivial solutions and bold decision-making for development of sophisticated algorithms etc. More of Ukrainian IT outsourcing opportunities can be found here.

Lots of gifted IT professionals haunt for their opportunity to embody their ideas, talents and approaches. At that investors do realize that Ukraine is undervalued at the moment and in a while Ukrainian experts and companies will be far more expensive, consequently they consider why not come to Ukraine now.