Timashev Ratmir

Timashev Ratmir

Biography

Education

Ratmir Timashev graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1990, and in 1995 received a master's degree in chemical physics from Ohio State University.

Ratmir Timashev met his business partner Andrei Baronov in the summer of 1985 in the hostel of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology: both came to transfer from their institutes. Timashev - from Ufa, from the second year of the Ufa Aviation, Baronov - from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology. Neither one nor the other managed to enter Fiztech the first time. Baronov failed his eyesight, Timashev did not score enough points. But both managed to transfer without problems.

Timashev and Baronov studied together and earned a living together. First, in construction teams, then they got a job in one of the first construction cooperatives in the country. "And in the sixth year of Fiztech, we have already begun to find the objects themselves," says Timashev. The money earned over the summer was enough later for the whole year. By the sixth year, Timashev bought both a car and an apartment in St. Petersburg.

In 1992, MIPT graduate student Timashev submitted documents to several American universities. Out of curiosity, and not at all because he wanted to be a scientist and did not find a place for himself in the new Russian economy, he says.

He was admitted to Ohio University in provincial Columbus. The student visa did not give the right to either get a job or do your own business.

In 1995, his family received the right to reside in the United States. That same year, he graduated from Ohio State University with a master's degree in chemical physics.

Own business

Timashev immediately started his own business. His Russian friends were engaged in the assembly of computers, and he began to supply them with components: memory, hard drives, graphics cards. He managed to establish strong relations with large American distributors - Ingram Micro, Merysell, Techdata.

"We bought about $100,000 a month," Timashev said. "Distributors sent us a catalog for several hundred thousand items." These catalogs prompted Timashev to the idea of ​ ​ an online store. "Then all the magazines wrote that the Internet would replace almost everything, even you can not go to church," he says. To implement his "revolutionary idea," Timashev needed a computer genius. And on another visit to Moscow, he called his friend Baronov to America.

Thanks to him, just a few months later, the online store started working safely - much earlier than the famous one amazon.com. "We started too early," Timashev is now sure. In the technology industry, it is very important to get to the point: not too early and not too late, he says. "I myself made the first purchase on the Internet in 1999, and tried to sell in 1996," laughs Timashev.

The only good thing that came out of the venture with the online store is that Baronov learned Windows NT, says Timashev. And six months later he became one of the world's best experts on this platform. Well, I found, of course, several holes in it.

And then Baronov quietly wrote a small program - "crack" - and posted it on the Internet. All this program knew how to do was open passwords on remote computers running Windows NT. In just one night, more people downloaded it than there were visitors to the online store, which had to be advertised throughout the Web.

Why not try to sell this program, entrepreneurs thought. But it is necessary to position it not as a "crack machine," but as a product that checks the strength of password protection, Timashev suggested. Since then, they have worked in tandem. Baronov wrote programs, Timashev figured out how to advertise and sell them.

One of the intermediate results was a package that entrepreneurs called the "Red Button," or Red Button. The program exploited weaknesses in Windows NT protection and allowed the owner to gain access with administrator rights to any computer on the network. A couple of other utilities fixed this problem. Entrepreneurs offered Microsoft to fix the hole they discovered, but she had to tell her customers what and how it was fixed, and publicly thank Baronov and Timashev. The corporation refused. Its representatives suggested that Baronov and Timashev simply work as consultants. Those requested $30,000 and were once again refused. "Then we posted the" Red Button "on the Internet. A couple of days later, on April 2, 1997, they launched two utilities on the market that eliminated the Red Button threat.

Aelita Software

It is April 2, 1997 that Timashev and Baronov consider the birthday of their main achievement so far - Aelita Software. In 1997, they managed to sell utilities for $200,000, in 1998 - for 1.5 million. "We've learned how to market good software products. Baronov became one of the best programmers in the world, and I became a cool marketer, "says Timashev. And then the Internet boom began, and any American who wrote half the programs on base, immediately offered a salary of $50,000 per year. Therefore, Baronov moved to St. Petersburg and created a development unit, and Timashev remained in the United States with a group of sellers and marketers.

In 2002, third-party investors appeared in Aelita Software. "We didn't attract them because of the money," Timashev says. "Our annual turnover then exceeded $15 million, and the bank held $8 million of cash." Entrepreneurs needed three things, he says. First, they wanted to put a kind of quality mark on the business. Secondly, an outside look was needed. Thirdly, I wanted to expand ties in the industry.

For all these purposes, the Insight Venture Partners Foundation was a perfect fit. Scott Maxwell, then chief operating officer of Insight Venture Partners, and later managing partner of the venture capital fund Open View Ventures, met Timashev at the end of 2001. "We were looking for investment facilities and contacted the creators of Aelita Software," Maxwell said.

Aelita Software received $10 million in exchange for just over a third of the shares.

By 2004, Aelita Software had pushed back two of its closest competitors and came close to the leader of the segment - Quest Software. But Aelita employed 300 programmers in Moscow and St. Petersburg, while Quest employed just 100 in Canada. Aelita made more software products and put them on the market faster.

"We were bought because we were afraid that we would get ahead of them," says Timashev. In 2004, recent competitors hit their hands: Aelita Software sold for $115 million.

Insight received $47 million. "A reasonable return on investment," says Maxwell. - On average, the companies in which we invested brought us a fivefold refund. In this case, the coefficient was 4.7. "

Baronov and Timashev got about half of the total amount ($57.5 million).

Quest Software

For about a year, Timashev worked for Quest. Ratmir took over as CEO of Quest for Microsoft Solutions (General Manager of Microsoft Business Unit). And a year later he went on a free voyage.

ABRT

In 2005, Ratmir Timashev and his partner Andrei Baronov founded the ABRT Venture Fund, named after the first letters of the names of the creators of ABRT. "We have learned a lot from Insight and would like to work on their principles, i.e. find software companies in Russia in the growth stage, help them with money and advice, and then find a strategic investor for them," he says.

Veeam Software

In 2006, when Ratmir became convinced that Quest follows Aelita's strategy and offers solutions of the same level, together with Andrei Baronov founded Veeam Software, a company developing similar solutions for system administration of virtual data centers.

As of October 28, 2015, Ratmir Timashev worked as executive director, president of Veeam Software.

As of October 2018 - Member of the Board as Director of Veeam.

At the end of October 2018, Veeam co-founder Ratmir Timashev became executive vice president of the company for sales and marketing (EVP, WW Sales and Marketing). In this capacity, reports Veeam CEO Andrei Baronov.

On January 9, 2020, Veeam Software was announced to be sold to Insight Partners investment company for $5 billion. As a result of this deal, which is scheduled to close in the first quarter, the manufacturer of software for backing up virtual machines and monitoring virtual environments will become a US company. Previously, its headquarters was located in Switzerland.

Veeam co-founders Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov will resign from the company's board of directors, as well as from their leadership positions. They will become top executives at Insight Partners. Read more here.

2022: Investing in Monq Lab's IT disaster remediation platform

In mid-January 2022, the Russian startup Monq Lab, which is a resident of Skolkovo, raised $1.5 million in investments. The funding round was led by former Veeam CEO Ratmir Timashev. The New Nordic Ventures fund and a number of other investors also took part in the deal. Read more here.

2024: Renunciation of Russian citizenship

On February 29, 2024, it became known that the founders of the American IT companies Veeam Software and Object First Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev renounced Russian citizenship. The decision is related to the current geopolitical situation. Read more here.

State

2020

Fortune - $1.2 billion after the sale of Veeam

In early 2020, Veeam Software founders Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov became dollar billionaires after they agreed to sell the company to the American investment fund Insight Venture Partners.

According to Forbes magazine, Timashev and Baronov have been on the list of 200 richest Russians since 2017. According to the publication, in 2018, the fortune of each of them was estimated at $950 million. In the spring of 2019, the value of the assets of businessmen amounted to about $700 million. By the beginning of 2020, Forbes observers estimated their condition after the deal with Insight Partners and taking into account the value of other assets at $1.2 billion for each.

Veeam Software Ratmir Timashev and Andrey Baronov became dollar billionaires after they agreed to sell the company to the American investment fund Insight Venture Partners

Earlier, Forbes compiled a list of the ten most successful Russian billionaires of the decade. From 2010 to 2019, their fortune in general increased by $111 billion.

After the deal with Insight Venture Partners, Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov will leave the Veeam shareholders, and will also leave the company after a while. At the same time, entrepreneurs will continue to receive a good share of Veaam's profits in the future, a source at Insight Venture Partners told Forbes.^[1]

Fortune - $700 million

By mid-April 2020, Ratmir Timashev's fortune is estimated by Forbes at $700 million. Read more here.

Quotes

"I don't know, damn it, why we're still not billionaires," says Ratmir Timashev, founder of venture capital fund ABRT and president of Veeam Software. "After all, we were the world's first spammers, the world's first Internet merchants, the world's first payment system and, perhaps, even the world's first computer blackmailers" (2005).

"Virtualization is not just the future of today's data centers. It has become a reality today, and a modern data center simply needs advanced data protection technologies that take into account the features of the virtual environment and are designed specifically for it. From the outset, our goal at Veeam was to leverage virtualization as a fundamentally new approach to backup and deliver an efficient, easy-to-use, affordable data protection solution. "