Rubylight

different
fund

people, software and


investments for explosive growth

We are experienced tech entrepreneurs that founded
in 2010 a new technology investment fund.
Our passion is to help fast growing
internet and mobile startups
to scale and expand globally.

Explore our site
and contact us, so that
we can help you reach new heights!

key to
success

only financing


is simply not enough

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.

smart assets combination
  • experience
    experience
  • technology
    technology
  • investments
    investments

Our approach is based on three keywords: Experience, Technology, Investments. We offer startups our professional tech team, proprietary technology and financial funding. This helps young companies to scale and expand globally much faster than their competitors.

experience

experience

our knowledge


is priceless

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 state 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.

Vitaly Rubstein
Vitaly Rubstein
Partner,
Strategy and Vision
ex-Founder and CEO
of Forticom Group
Andrey Ivashin
Andrey Ivashin
Partner,
Technology Operations
ex-CTO
of Odnoklassniki.ru
Aija Perta
Aija Perta
Partner,
Operations and Finance
ex-Founder and CFO
of Forticom Group
Igor Shlahov
Igor Shlahov
Partner,
Platform Architecture
ex-Chief Software Architect
of Odnoklassniki.ru
Dmitry Burbo
Dmitry Burbo
Partner,
Product Development
ex-Head of Product Testing
of Odnoklassniki.ru
Pavel Arajums
Pavel Arajums
Partner,
Platform Development
ex-Software Architect
of Odnoklassniki.ru
Alexey Chirkov
Alexey Chirkov
Partner,
Platform Development
ex-Web Architect
of Odnoklassniki.ru
technology

technology

many tools for


high performance and growth

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.

technology: team, scaling technology, outsourcing partners
core
technical
team
proprietary
scaling
technology
network of
outsourcing
partners

Every day highly talented software engineers and system administrators of our fund work to help accelerate the growth of many young companies.

odnoklassniki.ru
2007-2010
  • 100 million registered users
  • 20 million DAU
  • 3 million users online
  • 2 500 servers
  • 32 Gb/s network traffic
odnoklassniki.ru
  • a - our investment
  • b - new technical platform
  • c - exponential user growth

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.

ask.fm
2011-2013
  • 35 million registered users
  • 15 million DAU
  • 600 000 users online
  • 400 servers
  • 7 Gb/s network traffic
odnoklassniki.ru
  • a - our investment
  • b - new technical platform
  • c - exponential user growth

Our most recent publicly announced investment is Ask.fm, a truly social questions and answers service. We especially like this case since the founders also come from Riga, Latvia. We made our first investment in December 2011. At that time the service had already attracted а few hundred thousand daily unique active users. Although it was pretty clear that this startup created an original and appealing product, its future was burdened by many technical problems and the technical team was too small to conquer them. The founders urgently needed our help. Their growing service was on the edge of breakdown.

Immediately we focused our technical team to tackle the most critical problems. Only a few months later we fixed almost all major issues, moved to a dedicated sever hosting centre and introduced a longterm scalable software platform. As a result, the number of active daily users grew 12 times in just 12 months. Today the product continues to grow rapidly in more than 150 countries worldwide.

technology
investments

investments

money for startups


that want to grow even faster

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. Location of your venture does not matter. We invest internationally. The usage 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.

experiments
growth
stabilization
maturity

our focus areas

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 explosive user growth.

only
B2C

follow us

latest updates


from us and our friends

get
in touch

startups, professionals


and 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 offer its services to us? Or maybe, you are an investor that needs a technical partner?

Write to us. We will reply. It is guaranteed!

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  • check if your venture is inside our investment focus,
  • include a link to your product or service,
  • and provide most recent usage numbers!