Meeting with Gates helped launch software career
It’s not every day you get to meet Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, much less get a compliment from him about your computer software, but serial entrepreneur Serguei Beloussov can claim the distinction
Apr 09, 2015
It came when Mr Gates visited Singapore in 1998 on a whirlwind one-day tour.
He was due to give a talk at Suntec City where he also caught up with some local software companies that had set up booths showcasing their products.
Among the demonstrations he saw was Mr Beloussov’s pricing and risk management software called Cassandra, which was designed for the financial derivatives markets using Microsoft’s technology.
"At that time, to have Bill Gates talk to me and tell me that my software had great architecture was impressive, so I started to think I must be the most advanced software developer in the world," Russian-born Mr Beloussov, who became a Singapore citizen in 2001, said with a laugh.
It was the launch pad he needed to penetrate the world of software computing.
Before that, Mr Beloussov, 43, had been involved in the retail and resourcing side of electronic goods.
He honed his business acumen at Russian personal computer company Sunrise in 1992, doing sales and setting up operations while studying for a physics and electrical engineering master’s degree at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
Those were heady days in Russia, which was then opening up after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
"Demand was huge then, there were maybe about 10,000 personal computers sold in Russia in 1991 and, in 1994, it was perhaps two million, the market went up very quickly, so there was a huge opportunity."
The company sent him to Singapore in 1994 to source for computer spare parts but he eventually struck out on his own, establishing consumer electronics manufacturing company Rolsen in 1995.
Rolsen became a household name in Russia and had an annual revenue of some US$500 million during its heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
By then, Mr Beloussov, who has a PhD in computer science, was not heavily involved in Rolsen, having been bitten by the computer programming bug.
While running Rolsen, he also started Solomon Software Southeast Asia in 1996.
This company held exclusive franchising distribution rights to Solomon Software, a United States outfit that provided enterprise resource planning software.
Not content with being the exclusive franchising distributor, Mr Beloussov also started re-working the software architecture, which culminated in the eventual sale of Solomon Software to Great Plains in 2000.
Great Plains was in turn sold to Microsoft in 2001.
Mr Beloussov then started software development firm SWSoft in 2000, which spun off storage management and disaster recovery software business Acronis in 2001.
Acronis - Mr Beloussov is its chief executive - became a separate entity in 2004 and it made Singapore its international headquarters last year, with a spanking new office in Suntec City that hires about 40 people now.
Plans are afoot to increase the headcount in Singapore to 200 within the next three years as it beefs up its research and development centre, adding to the 650 global staff strength.
The decision to base its headquarters here is due to Mr Beloussov’s forecast that Asia would make up more than 50 per cent of its revenue in five years, up from about 30 per cent now.
The US makes up 40 per cent of turnover, with the remaining 30 per cent from Europe. "Asia will have the largest number of people and businesses and most of them are located within an eight-hour flight from Singapore," he said.
"As a business headquarters, you want to be where your customers are and Singapore is central, neutral, politically stable and friendly to expatriates, which is important for us because we hire people from everywhere."
Acronis has about 300,000 corporate clients and five million individual customers, with data management services that cost anywhere between $50 and $5 million. The company had revenue of around US$200 million (S$274 million) last year. Mr Beloussov believes the number can grow to US$1 billion.
"It becomes more important to protect data because every person and company has more and more of their lives in digital form, communicating and transacting digitally."
Acronis could list within five years, although the eventual destination is likely to be Nasdaq, not the Singapore Exchange.
"In order for the company to be valued to its full potential, the investment community has to be familiar with the type of business," said Mr Beloussov.
"Nasdaq has the largest number of analysts, brokers, investors who are experts in software, so if you list the company there, you will get a much better understanding of why your company is valuable or not."
He was due to give a talk at Suntec City where he also caught up with some local software companies that had set up booths showcasing their products.
Among the demonstrations he saw was Mr Beloussov’s pricing and risk management software called Cassandra, which was designed for the financial derivatives markets using Microsoft’s technology.
"At that time, to have Bill Gates talk to me and tell me that my software had great architecture was impressive, so I started to think I must be the most advanced software developer in the world," Russian-born Mr Beloussov, who became a Singapore citizen in 2001, said with a laugh.
It was the launch pad he needed to penetrate the world of software computing.
Before that, Mr Beloussov, 43, had been involved in the retail and resourcing side of electronic goods.
He honed his business acumen at Russian personal computer company Sunrise in 1992, doing sales and setting up operations while studying for a physics and electrical engineering master’s degree at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
Those were heady days in Russia, which was then opening up after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
"Demand was huge then, there were maybe about 10,000 personal computers sold in Russia in 1991 and, in 1994, it was perhaps two million, the market went up very quickly, so there was a huge opportunity."
The company sent him to Singapore in 1994 to source for computer spare parts but he eventually struck out on his own, establishing consumer electronics manufacturing company Rolsen in 1995.
Rolsen became a household name in Russia and had an annual revenue of some US$500 million during its heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
By then, Mr Beloussov, who has a PhD in computer science, was not heavily involved in Rolsen, having been bitten by the computer programming bug.
While running Rolsen, he also started Solomon Software Southeast Asia in 1996.
This company held exclusive franchising distribution rights to Solomon Software, a United States outfit that provided enterprise resource planning software.
Not content with being the exclusive franchising distributor, Mr Beloussov also started re-working the software architecture, which culminated in the eventual sale of Solomon Software to Great Plains in 2000.
Great Plains was in turn sold to Microsoft in 2001.
Mr Beloussov then started software development firm SWSoft in 2000, which spun off storage management and disaster recovery software business Acronis in 2001.
Acronis - Mr Beloussov is its chief executive - became a separate entity in 2004 and it made Singapore its international headquarters last year, with a spanking new office in Suntec City that hires about 40 people now.
Plans are afoot to increase the headcount in Singapore to 200 within the next three years as it beefs up its research and development centre, adding to the 650 global staff strength.
The decision to base its headquarters here is due to Mr Beloussov’s forecast that Asia would make up more than 50 per cent of its revenue in five years, up from about 30 per cent now.
The US makes up 40 per cent of turnover, with the remaining 30 per cent from Europe. "Asia will have the largest number of people and businesses and most of them are located within an eight-hour flight from Singapore," he said.
"As a business headquarters, you want to be where your customers are and Singapore is central, neutral, politically stable and friendly to expatriates, which is important for us because we hire people from everywhere."
Acronis has about 300,000 corporate clients and five million individual customers, with data management services that cost anywhere between $50 and $5 million. The company had revenue of around US$200 million (S$274 million) last year. Mr Beloussov believes the number can grow to US$1 billion.
"It becomes more important to protect data because every person and company has more and more of their lives in digital form, communicating and transacting digitally."
Acronis could list within five years, although the eventual destination is likely to be Nasdaq, not the Singapore Exchange.
"In order for the company to be valued to its full potential, the investment community has to be familiar with the type of business," said Mr Beloussov.
"Nasdaq has the largest number of analysts, brokers, investors who are experts in software, so if you list the company there, you will get a much better understanding of why your company is valuable or not."