Ratmir Vilyevich Timashev is a Russian IT

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

, founder and former

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Veeam Software Veeam Software is a privately held US-based information technology company owned by Insight Partners that develops backup, disaster recovery and modern data protection software for virtual, physical and multi-cloud infrastructures. The company's ...

. He also owns ABRT

Venture Fund Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

, which invests in early stage IT

startup companies A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

. He has been listed in The Top 25 Innovators of the Year by ''

CRN Magazine ''CRN'' is an American computer magazine. It was first launched as ''Computer Retail Week'' on June 7, 1982, as a magazine targeted to computer resellers. It soon after was renamed ''Computer Reseller News''. History and profile Originally laun ...

'' and won a Silver

Stevie Award The Stevie Awards are a set of eight business awards competitions staged annually by Stevie Awards, Inc., which grew to fourteen categories by 2017. They were created in 2002 for companies and business people. Its first program, ''The American B ...

for Executive of the Year — Computer Services.

Early life and education

Ratmir Timashev was born in

Ufa Ufa ( ba, Өфө , Öfö; russian: Уфа́, r=Ufá, p=ʊˈfa) is the largest city and capital of Bashkortostan, Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Belaya and Ufa rivers, in the centre-north of Bashkortostan, on hills forming the ...

Russian SFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

, in 1966. He earned two master's degrees in Physics from

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT; russian: Московский Физико-Технический институт, also known as PhysTech), is a public research university located in Moscow Oblast, Russia. It prepares speciali ...

(in 1990) and in Chemical Physics from the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

(in 1996).

Career

In 1995, while still a graduate student at OSU, he started his first business with his college roommate, Andrei Baronov. The first business established by Timashev was an internet

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

start-up. With his partner, Baronov, he built an online store to sell computer parts. Later in 1996, the two partners created several tools for

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems sc ...

administrators and these tools' sales soon exceeded the revenue from the computer parts' sales, which led Timashev to start a new company, Aelita Software. Started in 1997, Aelita Software, was focused on

Windows Server Windows Server (formerly Windows NT Server) is a group of operating systems (OS) for servers that Microsoft has been developing since July 27, 1993. The first OS that was released for this platform was Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server. With the r ...

systems management and monitoring software. Over the next eight years, Aelita grew to $30 million in sales. At the beginning of 2004, the company was sold to its prime competitor,

Quest Software Quest Software, also known as Quest, is a privately held software company headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, United States. Quest provides cloud management, software as a service, security, workforce mobility, and backup & recovery. The c ...

, for about $115 million. Timashev had become a General Manager at Quest Software responsible for the new Windows Enterprise Management business unit. He left Quest Software at the beginning of 2005. In late 2005, Timashev realized the potential of

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

technologies. He decided to do something similar to what he and Baronov had done for Windows NT, but for the virtual environment instead. In 2006, Timashev started a new company that he named Veeam Software. The first Veeam products were designed for managing and monitoring the

VMware ESX VMware ESXi (formerly ESX) is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware for deploying and serving virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a software application that is installed on an operating system (OS); ...

virtualization platform. In 2008 the company released a backup tool called

Veeam Backup & Replication Veeam Backup & Replication is a proprietary backup app developed by Veeam for virtual environments built on VMware vSphere, Nutanix AHV, and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors. The software provides backup, restore and replication functionality fo ...

. The tool soon became Veeam's flagship product and helped company enter the backup market. By the end of 2015, Veeam Software employed more than 1,950 people worldwide and reported $474 million in revenue. In 2011,

Forbes magazine ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also repo ...

included Timashev among the top 30 IT businessmen in Russia. In 2016

Kommersant ''Kommersant'' (russian: Коммерсантъ, , ''The Businessman'' or Commerce Man, often shortened to Ъ) is a nationally distributed daily newspaper published in Russia mostly devoted to politics and business. The TNS Media and NRS Russia ...

listed him in the top 100 Russian Internet millionaires. In 2018, Forbes had him as 116th among the 200 richest businessmen in Russia with a fortune of $950 million.

Venture activities

Since 2004, Timashev and Baronov started investing in information technology companies that develop internet and software products. They established ABRT Venture Fund (the name ABRT came from the first letters of the founders’ names: Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev). The company mainly invests in eastern and central European-based companies. The fund invests in startup companies, provides its own specialists to enable sales, marketing and other necessary activities, and then exits on IPO or a company’s sale stage.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Timashev, Ratmir 1966 births Living people 21st-century American businesspeople American people of Russian descent American technology company founders Chief executives in the technology industry Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology alumni Ohio State University Graduate School alumni People from Ufa Software engineers Technology company founders