Digital Sky Technologies (DST) have created a new class of investment in the western world that has caught both the entrepreneurial community and investment community by surprise. They have purchesed significant minority stakes in extremely high profile pre-IPO technology companies such as Zynga, Facebook and Groupon.
They take long positions on these companies by buying large amounts ($100M+) of common stock at relatively high valuations. Traditional investors (venture capital and private equity) would look to invest for preferential equity, board representation and sometimes controlling stakes but DST seem to be happy to take minority common stock with no board representation. Basically, they trust the market leaders with capital to keep doing what they've been doing and it's working out well for them so far. Their $200M investment in Facebook at a $10Bn valuation is already up by 4x, and their $180M investment in Zynga is probably between 2-3x up as well.
I think that the key benefit they are providing to the founders and early employees of these companies is the option to partially cash out without having to prematurely exit or IPO. This has never really been an option for the founders and early employees of these successful technology businesses and it seems to have been mutually beneficial for both DST and the early stage founders.
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