Partner, Strategy and Vision
ex-Founder and CEO of Forticom Group
Partner, Operations and Finance
ex-Founder and CFO of Forticom Group
Partner, Technology Operations
ex-CTO of Odnoklassniki.ru
Igor Shlahov
Partner, Platform Architecture
ex-Chief Software Architect of Odnoklassniki.ru
Pavel Arajums
Partner, Platform Development
ex-Software Architect of Odnoklassniki.ru
For the last 10 years, as founders of Forticom, we have been building four of the largest internet companies in Europe: ODNOKLASSNIKI.ru, NK.pl, ONE.lv and ONE.lt. Right from the very beginning we personally worked through every development stage pushing these companies forward. During this time we have learned what it really takes to scale a business organizationally and technologically. Today our experience is very tangible and practical. It saves our startups time and protects them from many critical mistakes.
www.odnoklassniki.ru
2007-2010
www.nk.pl
2008-2011
www.one.lv
2002-2006
As entrepreneurs we were fortunate to work with the best investors in the world who provided the funds necessary to fuel our growth. However, they could not solve our technological problems. Those we always had to tackle ourselves. This required time which we did not have since our number of users grew exponentially. Technical issues were a constant threat. Therefore, as investors we develop proprietary, high performance and platform independent set of tools, so that our startups can solve any technical bottlenecks. Every day highly talented software engineers and system administrators of our fund work to help accelerate the growth of many young companies.
Scaling Odnoklassniki.ru, the second largest social network in Russia, was our most exciting experience. When we invested in Odnoklassniki (as Forticom), it was a small, but already growing startup. During the due diligence we quickly realized that we would have to change the entire hardware and software platform for this service to survive. In the short period of only three months we did exactly that. The user growth exploded as we switched to our new platform.
Shortly after the success with Odnoklassniki.ru, we met another young company in the same area of social networking. This time the startup was in Poland. Immediately the situation seemed familiar to us. The founders desperately needed our help to solve many critical infrastructure bottlenecks. Their growing service was on the edge of breakdown. So, we (as Forticom) urgently became investors in NK.pl. A few months later we fixed it. NK.pl became the largest social network in Poland.
In our fund we hate bureaucracy. We do not have investment committees. We do not require long business plans. We make decisions and invest very fast. However, we stay very focused and true to our investment policy. Only startups with proven user growth get funded. The numbers do not have to be in the millions right away. They could be as low as a few hundred. All we need to see is that users clearly like your product, return on regular basis and invite their friends.
As a principle we invest only into businesses that we can understand, thus we can add value. We do not pretend to be specialists in everything. Most of our experience comes from building consumer oriented internet and mobile companies. We also favor only certain areas like communication, content sharing, social media and crowd sourcing. Creative new ideas in these areas are set to produce the exponential user growth.
Many venture funds can provide investments to companies today. However, money is only one instrument out of many necessary to successfully scale startup. Very often cash cannot solve immediate growth problems. You need working technical solutions, proven business models, clear product vision and many professionals to accelerate your growth. When we invest in companies they immediately benefit from all our knowledge, technological assets and professional people.
Startups
Professionals
Partners
Are you the founder of a promising and growing startup that needs help? Are you an experienced software developer, system administrator, designer or product manager who wants to work with startups? Are you the manager of an IT outsourcing company that wants to partner with us? Write to us. We will reply. It is guaranteed!
