Sergejs Kartasovs (Sergey Kartashov), the CEO of Generation Partners, talked about the nature of the services his company provides. Generation Partners is an IT asset management company based in Cyprus, one of the most beneficial locations for IT companies.
There are three main activities that are performed by an IT asset management company including market analysis, studying further aspects for a company, and diversifying investments by reducing financial risks. The experts working in an asset management company examine the potential of a company by studying its legal compliance, competency of its employees, and skills of company managers. Sergejs Kartasovs said, “Developers are geeks, but often they behave like creative people. Often, they can create an ingenious product, but at the same time, they may not be able to competently bring it to the market.”
The CEO of Generation Partners considers management and marketing important in the success of a company. A product with the brightest potential can get lost in the market due to a huge number of other similar offers. It depends on management and marketing to make that product stand alone in the competition. The job of Kartashov and other experts is to hunt nuggets and bring them to the investors. Diversity is another important factor in this regard. “At the same time, there is always a risk. It is important to diversify it by investing in various projects,” added Sergejs Kartasovs.
There are thousands of new projects offering thousands of new products in the market. An IT asset management expert finds unique, quality, and worthwhile product from thousands of those products. There are only a few startups that reach the level of being a stable company. Sergejs Kartasovs shared a simple criterion for choosing a company for investment. A company should be analyzed on the basis of its location country, experience, age, last year’s income, uniqueness of its products, and problem-solving capability of its products. The problem-solving capability of a product increases the cost of itself and the company by eliminating competition risks.
Sergey Kartashov and his team also provide valuable advice to the companies related to their relocation. Different countries are offering different benefits to IT startups. The IT companies based in Post-Soviet countries can relocate to Cyprus to take huge advantages. Cyprus is providing all types of comforts to IT businesses. There is an IP-Box regime on the island that requires a company to pay taxes only on a part of its income. Moreover, intellectual property legislation in this country is one of the most attractive features. “Apart from that, here you have a large IT community that was born here and now helps the industry to develop and improve further,” noted Sergejs Kartasovs. He also shared some other countries that are offering huge benefits to the IT firms including Malta, Estonia, the US, Poland, Lithuania, and Germany.
