I’m still amazed by 2020’s boom in SPACs (some $81 billion raised as of December 21 in 242 deals). Increasingly, big players are entering the game: Softbank and Thoma Bravo. Feed the ducks while they are still quacking.
Among this flood of new supply it’s easy for unknown sponsors to get lost in the shuffle. Hat tip to Ramneek who tweeted a quote that got me interested in VYGG, backed by Vy Capital.
Vy Capital is a venture firm founded and run by Alexander Tamas who used to be a key dealmaker at DST, Yuri Milner’s Russian venture firm (with “close links to the Kremlin”). Milner was CEO and Chairman of Mail.Ru and became a household name once DST started writing big checks to US startups, notably $200 million to Facebook in 2009 (more on DST).
After investing in the hottest startups at the time, DST’s third partner Alexander Tamas was blessed with this quote by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz:
“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 the article they ranked him as one of the “most powerful people in tech you’ve never heard of.” To be fair, this was when DST raised eyebrows with their check size and before Softbank’s Vision Fund and VC mega funds.
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