Parallels CEO launches a Russian venture capital fund

Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels, along with Alexander Galitsky, founder of Almaz Capital Partners, just launched a new Russian venture capital fund: Runa Capital, capable to offer approximately $30 million in seed financing.

Almaz Capital Partners is the same VC firm that bought 5% of Parallels stake in April 2009, equal to about $11M, previously owned by Insight Fund.
Runa Capital investment activities will be supported by Runapark business incubator.

Runa Capital list of venture partners include some well-known high-tech entrepreneurs and investors: Andreas Gauger and Achim Weiss, co-founders of the world’s largest hosting provider 1&1, Ilya Zubarev, co-founder of Rolsen and Acronis, Igor Borovikov, founder of the largest Russian software distributor Softline, Charles Ryan, сhairman of UFG Asset Management, and Igor Daniloff, founder of ‘Doctor Web’ antivirus company.
Some of these people already sit in the Parallels board of directors or are tightly connected to the company.

This is an extremely good move for Parallels, which will be able to scout for new talents in Russia and EMEA before competitors. At the same time, investing in stealth mode and early-stage startups will allow the virtualization player to either influence the development of new products in a way that they will add value to the Parallels product suite, and to potentially acquire the young companies at a much cheaper value.