Leonid Boguslavsky

In 1989, Boguslavsky started to work in a Soviet Italian joint venture focused on computer network projects in Czechoslovakia. He became deputy director and shareholder of the company.[12]

In 1990, Boguslavsky was offered by Oracle Corporation to distribute Oracle software products in the USSR and he concluded the exclusive distribution agreement with Oracle for the territory of the USSR. He founded LVS in 1990.[10]

From 1991 to 1992, he served as a visiting professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Toronto, Canada.[13]

He returned to Moscow to work for Oracle.

In 1992, Boguslavsky concentrated on his own business – the company LVS which is a systems integration business.[11]

In 1993, LVS developed the Oracle-based information system for the apartment registrar of Moscow.

In 1994, LVS became so dominant as the producer of electronic voting machine equipment and its software that by 1997 PricewaterhouseCoopers chose LVS and its software and equipment as system integrator with Boguslavsky becoming a senior partner and receiving $10 million from Pricewaterhouse's buyout of LVS.[10][11]

In late 1996 Boguslavsky sold LVS to PricewaterhouseCoopers (currently known as PwC) and then became a Managing Partner at PwC, in charge of its Management Consulting Services (MCS) practice in Russia in early 1997.[14]

In December 1999, Boguslavsky met investment bankers Charles Ryan (UFG), Michael Calvey (Baring Vostok) and David Mixer (Rex Capital), who were planning to set up an Internet investment company at that time.[11]

Beginning in 2000, Boguslavsky learned investment principles from Baring Vostok employees Michael Calvey and especially Elena Ivashentseva (Russian: Елена Ивашенцева), a Baring Vostok managing partner, and, as of March 2020, Boguslavsky has six joint projects with Baring Vostok.[15]

In 2000, ru-Net Holdings Limited, an investment company with startup capital of $20 million, was jointly founded by Boguslavsky, Charles Ryan of UFG, Michael Calvey of Baring Vostok and David Mixer of Rex Capital. Boguslavsky invested a substantial amount of the total holdings and became chairman of the board of directors. In the same year, ru-Net Holdings Limited invested in Yandex, paying $5.27 million for a 35% stake, and in the online retailer Ozon.ru, buying a controlling stake for $3 million. Both projects were part of big IT companies – Comptek and Reksoft as non-core businesses; thus, they became two independent companies due to the investments. After Boguslavsky decided to leave PwC and focus on investing in Internet companies. However, he still had his position in PwC for one more year to look for a successor and arrange the formalities of the handover. Boguslavsky left PwC in 2001 and became CEO and chairman of the board of directors of ru-Net Holdings.

During 2000 and 2001, ru-Net Holdings survived the dot-com crisis, although some investors intended to exit the business and distribute the remaining funds. Some investors were especially concerned about the future of Yandex, whose revenues were low at the time.

ru-Net Holdings made its first investments in a couple of system integration and software development companies in 2002, buying stakes in TopS (Russia-based enterprise management systems integrator) and VDI (offshore programming). Later, VDI merged with Epam to become the largest offshore programming and software outsourcing company in Central and Eastern Europe and launched an IPO on NASDAQ. ru-Net Holdings restructured its business in 2006 with only Yandex shares left and the company changed its name to Internet Search Investment Limited (ISIL). Other assets (including shares of Ozon.ru, TopS, and VDI) were distributed among the shareholders of ru-Net Holdings. As a result, Boguslavsky was still a significant shareholder of ISIL and, accordingly, a beneficiary of shareholding in Yandex (he had also invested additional funds) on one hand and obtained corresponding stakes in all other assets on the other hand.

In 2006 he set up his own investment company ru-Net Limited that took control of his assets and made new investments in IT and Internet technologies and services. VDI merged with Epam, and TopS joined Systematica (Russian: «Систематика») and the AND Project companies transforming into Systematica Group. Boguslavsky became chairman of its board of directors. Later a large stake in the Group was bought by A1. Later Systematica Group acquired a large distributor, Landata. ru-Net Limited also owned Energodata, a big IT outsourcing company supporting SAP systems in Russia's federal electric grid sector. Additionally, ru-Net established PSI Energo, a joint venture with the German software company PSI AG, to introduce dispatching information systems into electric grids.[16] The former head of Microsoft in Russia, Olga Dergunova (Russian: Ольга Дергунова), will be an independent director.[16]

In 2007 Boguslavsky invested in HeadHunter and iContext. Boguslavsky left the board of directors in Yandex in 2008 as he started investing in companies that could potentially create a conflict of interest with Yandex. He purchases the Digital Access Company from Leonard Blavatnik and his partners, international music majors and together with Oleg Tumanov set up Russia's online video service ivi.ru. In 2010 Boguslavsky invested in Biglion.

Yandex floated 17.6% of its shares on NASDAQ for $1.3 billion on 24 May 2011. Boguslavsky sold a small portion of his shares during the IPO. He partly used the funds (about $60 million) to invest in the purchase of new shares in Ozon, leading to the largest investment ($100 million) in an Internet company in Russian history.[17]

In 2011 and 2012, ru-Net sold its shareholdings in the system integration and IT service companies EPAM, Systematica, Energodata, and PSI Energo. It purchased a stake in 2GIS and increases its investments in existing portfolio companies.

In 2011 Leonid set up a US-based subsidiary, the venture capital company - ru-Net Technology Partners (RTP Ventures), opening a New York office. Headed by Kirill Sheynkman, RTP actively invests in early-stage companies in the US market with investments in Big Data, SaaS, cloud computing, Fintech, Health Care, IoT and Information Security. ru-Net also started investing in Europe and India. Among some of the early investments was German startup Delivery Hero that later in 2017 was valuated at €4.5 billion at IPO.[18]

In India, Boguslavsky invested in Practo, Faasos, Snapdeal and other companies. In the United States his investments include RingCentral, which had a successful IPO in 2013.[19]

In 2016, Boguslavsky invested in the coaching company Iloverunning Family (that now is known as I Love SuperSport holding company), and in European internet company Urban Sport Club, that sells passes to sport and fitness clubs. He also co-founded the first professional international league in triathlon - Super League Triathlon (SLT).[20] His partners are the triathlon athlete Chris McCormack and Michael D’Hulst.[6]

In October 2018, ru-Net rebranded to RTP Global.[21]

In March 2020, Boguslavsky explained in an interview that he has two companies focusing on artificial intelligence (AI): one in Russia and one in Germany.[15] His Russian AI company Dasha (Russian: «Даша») employs persons from Novosibirsk and has very advanced chatbots which replace call centers with very natural voices and can cold call a potential customer to sell them items but the customer does not know the customer is talking to a machine.[15] His German AI company uses deep learning through a photograph of a plant from a smart phone to identify which herbicides and pesticides are needed to fight an agricultural disease.[15]

He received an investment return of 400 or 500 times from his original stake of $11 million in 2012 with his American company Datadog after its IPO which has a capitalization of $32 billion at the end of 2020, generating approximately $5 billion in profit.[10][15] Datadog was developed from his New York office under the auspices of the software entrepreneur Kirill Sheinkman (Russian: Кирилл Шейнкман).[15]

In 2020, Leonid set up RTP Global third fund of $650 million.[22] RTP Global manages assets in excess of $3 billion as of early 2022.

In all of RTP Global's funds since inception, the vast majority of capital has derived from him.[23] He contributes >99% of the capital in the current fund, the vast majority of his wealth having been created in Europe and in the US.

RTP Global does not invest in Russia.[24] Its portfolio includes businesses from 18 countries across the world.[23]

Boguslavsky released a statement in February 2022 calling "for an immediate end to the catastrophic and unjustified war in Ukraine", adding that he "could not remain silent seeing what is happening in Ukraine". [28] The statement included that he "moved from Russia to Canada as a young man to work as a University Professor, and it was from here that he started an investment career that has turned into a global portfolio of successful businesses [...] Leonid has no political ties to Russia".[25] RTP Global has never received an investment from a Russian institution and more than 99% of Boguslavsky's net worth was created outside of Russia.[5] It does not invest in Russia.[24]