Runa Capital
Runa Capital is an international venture capital firm headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States that invests in deep tech, cloud business software, fintech, edutech and digital health startups on early stages. From 2010 through 2019 Runa Capital raised 3 funds and invested in over 60 companies in more than 12 countries betweenEurope and North America, including Nginx, MariaDB, Zopa, Brainly, drchrono, Smava and Mambu.
History
Runa Capital was founded by technological entrepreneurs Serguei Beloussov and Ilya Zubarev, and their Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology mate Dmitry Chikhachev. The idea of venture firm took shape in 2009 and was formally incorporated in 2010. The partners contributed their own money into the first fund and raised capital from friends and other international investors including Achim Weiss and Andreas Gauger, founders of German hosting provider 1&1, and Edward Nicholson, former CEO of Brunswick-UBS in Russia.In 2011 Andre Bliznyuk, former head of Russia/CIS Equity Capital Markets Group in Goldman Sachs joined Runa Capital as investment partner. As of July 2019 the firm had over 340 million dollars under management in 3 funds.
Funds
- Runa Capital I, firm's first namesake fund was launched in 2010, reached its final size of $135 million by 2012 and was focused on investments from seed to Series B stage. The initial idea was to fund globally oriented Russian startups in the fields of cloud computing, machine learning, virtualization, mobile and internet apps, but later the partners expanded investment area to Europe and USA.
- Runa Capital II was launched in 2014 and reached $135 million by 2016 with large commitments from the first fund's backers. The second fund aimed at Series A and B rounds. Firm's new office was opened in California in 2015.
- Runa Capital III raised the first $70 million in July with target sum of $135 million. The third fund followed strategy of the second fund with increased focus on deep tech startups.
Investments
| Company | Description | HQ location | Invested | Acquired | Acquirer |
| Nginx | Open-source web server | San Francisco | 2011 | 2019 | F5 |
| Metabar | Recommendations plug-in | Moscow | 2011 | 2014 | Yandex |
| Mambu | SaaS banking platform | Berlin | 2012 | — | — |
| ThinkGrid | Cloud computing platform | London | 2012 | 2012 | Colt Technology Services) |
| Capptain | Mobile analytics | Paris | 2012 | 2014 | Microsoft |
| StopTheHacker | Anti-malware | Burlingame, CA | 2012 | 2014 | CloudFlare |
| Acumatica | Cloud ERP | Bellevue, WA | 2013 | 2019 | EQT Partners |
| Zopa | Peer-to-peer lending | London | 2013 | — | — |
| Rocketbank | Mobile banking app | Moscow | 2013 | 2016 | Otkritie FC Bank |
| BackupAgent | Cloud backup service | Delft | 2013 | 2014 | Acronis |
| Brainly | Social learning network | Krakow | 2014 | — | — |
| SchoolMint | Enrollment service for US schools | San Francisco | 2014 | 2017 | Hero K12 |
| MariaDB | Relational database management system | Espoo; Redwood City, CA | 2015 | — | — |
| Critizr | Experience management platform for retail | Paris | 2015 | — | — |
| Procurify | Cloud-based procurement software | Vancouver | 2016 | — | — |
| drchrono | Electronic health record platform | Mountain View, CA | 2017 | — | — |
| Smava | Consumer loan portal | Berlin | 2018 | — | — |
| Final | Credit card startup | Oakland, CA | 2016 | 2018 | Goldman Sachs |
| Kreditech | Online banking | Hamburg | 2019 | — | — |
Affiliated funds
Runa Capital’s partners were involved in the creation of several other venture funds:- Quantum Wave headquartered in Boston is a $30 million early-stage fund focused on companies working in the field of quantum technology. Serguei Beloussov is QWave's venture partner. According to TechCrunch, QWave effectively served as a "materials science" arm for Runa Capital. Its notable investments include Swiss quantum cryptography startup ID Quantique that was acquired by SK Telecom in 2018.
- Phystech Ventures was venture firm founded in 2013 by several technological entrepreneurs including MIPT alumni Serguei Beloussov and Dmitry Chikachev. In 2019 Phystech Ventures and North Energy Ventures united their portfolios and formed the Terra VC venture firm.