Runa Capital

The focus of Runa Capital is software, mobile applications and Internet services, the main task is to bring talented Russian-speaking technology teams to world markets.

Fund Partners

The fund's partners were:

• founder of 1 & 1 hosting provider Andreas Gauger,
• CTO of this company Achim Weiss,
• founder of Russian companies Rolsen and Acronis (Belousov's partner) Ilya Zubarev,
• founder of the Russian reseller, ON Softline Igor Borovikov
• UFG Asset Management chairman Charles Ryan and
• founder of the antivirus developer "Dr.Web" Igor Danilov.

History

2022

Bringing $26 million investment to Chattermill online feedback analysis platform

Chattermill raised $26 million from Beringea, an American venture capital firm, as well as a number of other venture capital funds, including Runa Capital, DN Capital, Ventech, Btov, SVB and Blossom Street Ventures. This became known in December 2022. Read more here.

Investing in a Free OpenReplay Site Troubleshooting Tool

OpenReplay, a startup that provides developers with tools to find and fix technical bugs on sites, announced on June 28, 2022, it raised $4.7 million in seed funding. The round was led by Runa Capital with contributions from Expa, 468 Capital, Rheinghau Founders and Tekion co-founders. The startup will use the funding received to develop its community, accelerate the implementation of the project and improve the user experience. Read more here.

Investing in an American Enterprise Risk Management Platform

On February 24, 2022, AnyRoad, an enterprise risk management platform, announced the closure of the Series B funding round and an investment of $47 million. The funding came from funds managed by BlackRock with contributions from Runa Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Kaiser Permanente. Existing investors Rally Ventures, Precursor Ventures and Day One Ventures, as well as new investors Commonfund and Corner Ventures, joined the round with a re-subscription. Read more here.

Investing in a logistics platform for Bigblue online retailers

At the end of March 2022 Runa Capital , she invested in the French logistics platform for online stores Bigblue. The company operates a fulfillment platform for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands Startup Bigblue. raised $15 million in Series A funding. Runa Capital led the round, with LPV acting as the secondary lead investor. Existing investor Samaipata also took part in the funding round. More. here

Investing in Hubuc Financial Services Platform

On February 24, 2022, it became known about the investment of $10 million in the Spanish company Hubuc, which is developing a platform for financial services. The start-up closed the seed round, which was led by WndrCo and Runa Capital. Read more here.

Investing in Method Financial Debt Repayment Platform

On February 2, 2022, it became known about investing $2.5 million in Method. Runa Capital participated in the funding round. Other investors in the startup include Y Combinator, Ardent Venture Partners, LiveOak Venture Partners and a host of venture and angel investors including Harun Mokhtarzada (CEO and co-founder of Truebill), Vela Gui (VP Product at Upstart) and others. Read more here.

Investing in Sourcery's custom code writing platform

In early February 2022, Sourcery raised $1.75 million in investments. The seed funding round was led by Forward Partners along with Runa Capital, Techstars, Angel Invest, CapitalX, Acequia Capital and other unnamed private business angels. Read more here.

Developers of quantum solutions with investments Runa Capital merged into one company

At the end of January 2022, Pasqal announced a merger with Qu & Co, which will create a new company that will specialize in quantum computing. Pasqal plans to combine its neutral-atom technology with Qu & Co's portfolio of algorithms. A new quantum solution company with investments, Runa Capital, will be based in Paris and operate in seven countries. Read more here.

2021

Investing in a Zambian fintech startup Union54

On October 27, 2021, it became known that the Zambian startup Union54 raised $3 million in investments from venture capital funds Tiger Global, Runa Capital, Ace and Company, Todd & Rahul Angel Fund and Vibe VC. The detailed parameters of the transaction were not disclosed, including the estimated value of the Union54. Read more here.

Investing in UK collaboration platform OfficeRnD

In mid-October 2021, the Runa Capital fund invested in. The startup OfficeRnD funding round came amid the growing popularity of the organization's hybrid format, where employees combine remote operation with an office one. More. here

Investing in Quantum Computer Software Developer Qu & Co

In mid-August 2021, Qu & Co announced the completion of a new funding round led by Cantonization. Runa Capital and SPInvest also invested in the company. Read more here.

Investing in the developer of the video analysis system for machine learning SuperAnnotate

In mid-July 2021, the developer of the video analysis system for machine learning SuperAnnotate raised $14.5 million in the Series A investment round, which was headed by Base10 Partners. startup Existing investors Point Nine Capital, Runa Capital and Fathom Capital have also invested in. More. here

Investing in quantum processor maker Pasqal

In early June 2021, the French manufacturer of quantum processors Pasqal raised 25 million euros in the Series A round, which was headed by the Quantum and Defense Innovation Fund, which is managed by Bpifrance. The round was also attended by Runa Capital, Daphni, Eni Next, as well as the EIC Fund. Read more here.

Investing in quantum mechanics technology developer Qnami

In May 2021, Qnami announced an investment of 3.6 million euros in the Series A round, which was headed by venture capital funds Runa Capital (previously invested in quantum projects) and SIT Capital. The financial deal also involved Cantonization, Verve Ventures, ZKB Start-up Finance and High Tech Gründerfond. Read more here.

Investing in blockchain company TON Labs

In early April 2021, it became known about raising $6 million with an investment by TON Labs. The venture capital fund Runa Capital and the investment company RTP Global Leonid Boguslavsky, as well as a number of foreign funds, have invested in it. Read more here.

Investing in Monite Small Business Management Platform

In early March 2021, it became known about the attraction of €1.1 million investments by Monite. Venture capital funds Runa Capital, Tomahawk VC, signals Venture Capital, InVentures, as well as several angel businesses have invested in it. Details of the investment deal were not disclosed. Read more here.

Investing in feint company Oxygen

In mid-January 2021, the Oxygen digital banking platform raised $17 million in a Series A funding round. Runa Capital, S7V, 1984.vc, EFG Hermes, Rucker Park, Inventions and other investors invested in the company's development. Read more here.

Investing in cloud developer for Mambu MFIs

In early January 2021, Mambu announced the closure of the funding round, as a result of which it was able to attract 110 million euros, and the estimated value of the startup was 1.7 billion euros. Among the investors is the Runa Capital fund, which was previously invested in a German company. Read more here.

2020

Investing in Brainly's online platform

The educational technology company Brainly, the owner of the Knowledge joint homework solution service and the community for collective education of students, students, parents and teachers, announced to TAdviser on December 17, 2020 that it had raised $80 million in the Series D investment round. The fundraising was led by Learn Capital. Read more here.

Investing in diabetic app developer Undermyfork

At the end of August 2020, Undermyfork announced the attraction of $400 thousand investments. AltaIR Capital, Runa Capital, as well as investors from the AltaClub community have invested in the medical tech startup. Read more here.

Raising $157 million for a third fund

On May 6, 2020, it became known that Runa Capital raised $157 million in investments in its third investment fund. Initially, it was planned to raise $135 million. Read more here.

Investment in SimpliField Store Performance Monitoring Service

In mid-January 2020, SimpliField announced it was raising $11 million in investments. Among the investors was the Runa Capital fund. Most of all, the American fund Five Elms Capital invested in the startup. Read more here.

2017: Acronis, Runa Capital and Parallels open centre in Malta

Acronis, Runa Capital and Parallels announced in October the opening of the European Technology Center on the Mediterranean island of Malta.

The Republic of Malta is undergoing a transformation into an international technology center. Within the framework of the concept of "Smart Island" developed by the Maltese Government, technology is the main factor in the business and transformation of Malta into a European ICT innovation center.

2014

First exit in Russia: Metabar sold to Yandex

In early December 2014, it became known that Yandex bought the Metabar company, which develops the Advisor service, which this company launched in 2013. At the end of 2014, it has more than 2 million users, according to the company.

"Advisor" in its work from the very beginning focused on the data of Yandex.Market, which shares income for clicks. The annual revenue of Metabar was less than $1 million, Vedomosti knows. By the time the deal was announced, the company was already profitable, according to Runa Capital. In previous months, Metabar's revenue grew by 30-40%, says its creator Mikhail Ushakov. According to Kartoteki, in 2013 the company's revenue was 12.9 million rubles, net profit was 6.9 million rubles, Kommersant writes.

This is Runa Capital's first exit in Russia, Liliana Pertenava, a representative of Runa Capital, told Kommersant. According to her, the sale of Metabar brought the fund a "multiple return on the investment."

Yandex cost several million dollars, but no more than $5 million, according to a Vedomosti source. Yandex bought everything except a legal entity - intellectual property, a team and a user base. All 11 people of the Metabar team went to work in a search engine.

Yandex plans to use the Advisor to show not only the best prices from Yandex.Market, but also for other areas.

"We plan to use it to choose different goods and services, for example, plane tickets," Alexander Feoktistov, head of the Yandex.Market marketing service, told Kommersant.

Third exit. Capptain stake sold to Microsoft

In May 2014, it became known that the Runa Capital fund left the French startup Captain - 100% of the French company was bought by Microsoft, said Dmitry Chikhachev, managing partner of Runa Capital. He refused to disclose the amount of the transaction, saying only that Runa's internal rate of return (IRR) for it exceeded 100%.

Runa invested in Captain in March 2012, investing $1.5 million in Round A, and Chikhachev then joined the company's board of directors. Thus, Runa received for its share more than $6 million^[1].

According to Chikhachev, in addition to Runa Capital, investors included mainly French business angels, and Runa itself learned about the project through a large Russian application developer who is a client of Captain - what kind of developer it is, he does not say.

For the Runa Capital fund, this is the third exit from investments, Runa said in a statement - in 2012, Colt Telecom bought the British startup ThinkGrid, and in 2014 CloudFlare acquired the StopTheHacker portfolio project. Chikhachev did not disclose what share the fund had, saying only that at the time of entering the project, Runa was the only participant in the funding round. According to him, usually participants in round A receive from 10 to 30% of the company and this case was no exception.

Captain is an analytics platform for mobile applications that, on the one hand, monitors mobile applications in real time, and on the other, the marketing push notification system. The platform analyzes the behavior of the application user and allows you to segment the audience by this behavior, as well as by various data that this application receives from the device - its models, locations, etc., says Chikhachev. This allows you to solve the problem of returning the user to the application or selling goods within the application using push messages, explains Chikhachev. According to him, the effectiveness of Captain is more than 10% - that is, every 10th user of the application responds to the message. The startup earns money from customers for the number of active users of the mobile application - several cents per user per month.

Captain technology will subsequently be integrated with Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, Runa said in a statement. Capptain Development will continue as a separate business unit within Microsoft.

Capptain was originally a platform that made it quite easy to set up push notifications for mobile app users, says Igor Matsanyuk, co-owner of mobile game developer Game Insight. He considers the addition of analytics to it logical - after all, the platform already has all the necessary data. In any case, in the current situation, the successful withdrawal of the Russian fund from investments - even if a French company was bought - is a good sign.

Microsoft President in Russia Nikolai Pryanishnikov also recalled that Runa Capital is Microsoft's partner in Russia in the Seed Financing Fund.

2013: Investment in VitaPortal

In October 2012, Prostor Capital, together with Esther Dyson, a well-known angel business, invested in VitaPortal, an Internet project dedicated to health and medicine. VitaPortal entered the market in 2011. Like other startups launched by the FastLane group, it is based on a proven international model, the American portal WebMD.com - the most popular online health resource among American citizens.

In 2013, the venture capital fund Runa Capital joined the number of investors of VitaPortal. Runa Capital, Prostor Capital and Fastlane combined part of their assets: as part of the transaction, two resources were combined - VitaPortal and HealthOnline (a company developing a medical platform and an electronic medical card, an asset of Runa Capital). As a result of the merger, an Internet company was formed that manages the largest online services in the field of health in Runet.

In July 2015, the company began the process of merging with the Eureka Group, specializing in working with a professional medical audience on the Internet (more than 49,000 specialists). The goal of combining assets is to increase the development potential of each of them and create a company - the leader of the "health and medicine" segment in Runet. According to the terms of the transaction, the shares of the shareholders of VitaPortal and Eureka Group in the combined company are divided on a parity basis. It was expected that on the horizon of three years the value of the combined company could be $20 million. Meanwhile, as of December 2019, the audience of the vitaportal.ru was less than 50 thousand people per month.

2012

Increase in capital from 75 to $135 million

In June 2012, it became known that the capital of the venture capital fund Runa Capital increased from 75 to $135 million. The increase in capital was due to the attraction of additional funds from existing members of Runa Capital. Now the fund will invest in companies at a later stage, increase the maximum size of one transaction to $10 million and will be able to begin cooperation with startups engaged in the development of Internet projects, and not just software. The fund cooperates with 11 companies, in plans to increase this number to 40-50. Investments in Internet startups will be made at the early and sowing stages and will range from 100,000 to $1 million.

Cloud Application Developer Support

The Runa Capital investment fund, created by Parallels founder Sergei Belousov,' and Parallels directly began a joint project to stimulate sales of cloud applications by Russian and foreign developers.

Within the framework of projects, those developers who are ready to unify their applications under the requirements of the APS (Application Packaging Standard) standard will receive financial and marketing support. Support for this standard will allow the distribution of software through the networks of more than 5 thousand partners of Parallels service providers. "This program will be beneficial for developers not only through financial and marketing support, but also by reaching more than 12 million end customers - small and medium-sized businesses around the world," said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels.

At the same time, the developers of the most promising solutions will be able to count on investments from Runa Capital. As Dmitry Chikhachev, managing partner of RunaCapital, told TAdviser, at the moment the size of the investment fund is $75 million, usually the fund invests in one project from $1 million to $3 million, concluding more than 10 transactions a year. The term of the fund is 10 years, returns usually begin in 3-5 years, he explained.

The purpose of this program is to find investment attractive seed and early stage projects that can be included in the Parallels ecosystem through the use of APS. However, the main factor in the selection of projects will be not so much the readiness to connect to APS as the investment attractiveness of the technology, Dmitry Chikhachev assured.

The very concept of investment attractiveness, according to the fund's managing partner, consists of the presence of a strong team, scalable technology, as well as an orientation towards a growing market.

"We look mainly at projects that can be developed on the global market and try to invest in companies whose capitalization in the next 5-10 years can reach $100 million or more," the top manager explained to TAdviser.

He also told TAdviser that the smart money strategy that Runa Capital adheres to means that the fund not only gives the team the means to develop, but also actively promotes it. An agreement with Parallels to support developers of cloud services for SMB is just one of the varieties of such assistance.

The peculiarity of Runa Capital is that its venture partners are successful IT entrepreneurs, founders of the world-famous companies Parallels, Acronis, Acumatica, UnitedInternet, Dr.Web, 1 & 1, United Internet, Fotolia, Softline and others. The value of the assets they created reaches more than $10 billion. "These people are very active in supporting our portfolio companies with their experience, connections. That is why we understand more in complex, unique technologies than any other fund, and invest only in those companies that can significantly help in business development, "says Dmitry Chikhachev.

As mentioned above, Runa Capital only invests in global-oriented startups. The fund has projects with teams from Russia, England, America, Ukraine and other countries. There are still features of investing in Russian startups, admits Dmitry Chikhachev. "They need much more help at the stage of product creation, business development, solving operational issues, in attracting further investment. On the other hand, there are chances to find very complex non-trivial technologies, "he said.

One of Runa Capital's Russian "finds" is Nginx, the second most popular web server in the world. It was created by Igor Sysoev during his work as a sysadmin at Rambler, now running 45 million websites around the world, including Facebook, Wordpress, Yandex, Techcrunch and other most heavily loaded websites.

Runa Capital invested in it along with the BVCapital fund and the Michael Dell fund. A few weeks ago, Nginx beat Microsoft's web server in popularity and continues to grow.

As for APS certification, the products of three portfolio companies Runa Capital have already received it. It is a cloud platform for Jelastic application development, used by 10 thousand developers around the world; SaaS website security SaaS services StopTheHacker, which allows you to identify and protect yourself from hacker attacks and malware. As well as Ecwid, the world's first developer of a universal cross-platform widget for creating online stores.

According to Parallels, applications such as, for example,, Google Apps McAfee. Symantec Cloud,, VMware Zimbra Mozy from, EMC Apptix Hosted Microsoft Exchange and Alteva Hosted PBX for BroadSoft are also adapted for APS. At the same time, the number of cloud applications certified according to the APS standard is steadily growing.

In 2011, Parallels partners recorded a 66% increase in the number of applications and services adapted to APS requirements. The number of downloads of APS applications by hosters, service providers and their customers has exceeded 2 million. Today, the full list of APS catalog names is more than 300 applications, and several dozen more certification applications will be considered in the coming year.

2011

Purchase of control at Metabar for $1 million

In 2011, Runa Capital received more than 50% for an investment of $1 million in Mikhail Ushakov's company Metabar, the developer of the Advisor service, a browser extension that suggests where you can buy goods from an open page cheaper than^[2].

The idea of ​ ​ Metabar itself is a browser application designer with which site owners could create applications for their audience.

Increase in the size of the fund from 30 to $50 million

On February 3, 2011, the Runa Capital fund will be increased from $30 million to more than $50 million, its representatives said, explaining this decision by "great interest in participating in the fund among Russian and world technology entrepreneurs and investors."

The increase in the fund was mainly due to professional investors, one of whom is Edward Nicholson, former Chief Managing Director of Brunswick UBS Bank for Russia and the CIS. In addition, IT entrepreneurs continue to invest in the fund, Alexander Katalov, an investor in Begun, Softkey, Alawar and ElcomSoft, became the new partner from this category.

In 2011, the fund plans to announce eight to ten more transactions^[3].

2010: Investment in two projects

In 2010, Runa Capital received several hundred applications from startups, but decided to invest in only two projects - the voice social network OnAir3G (it announced its intention to invest more than $2 million) and the platform for creating Internet services Hivext.com ($500 thousand).

Notes