Interview with Sergey Belousov

Sergey Belousov is the founder and director of Parallels , which, in his own words, works in the “non-existent” virtualization software market. This market, however, provided it with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual turnover, its headquarters in Switzerland, offices in Asia, the United States and throughout Europe, as well as a strong place alongside such companies as Citrix, VMware and Microsoft.

In addition, Sergey is a co-owner of Acronis companies, widely known abroad for their backup and recovery systems. In general, over 15 years, more than 10 companies around the world were created under his leadership or direct participation, each of which began to generate profit less than a year after it began work. It may seem interesting to you that at the end of the 90s. it was he who participated in the development of the Sunrise retail chain and consumer electronics manufacturer Rolsen. But he is not engaged in the day-to-day management of these companies, having fully concentrated his efforts on Parallels.

Despite such an impressive experience, Belousov does not seek to once again draw public attention to his person. And according to his colleagues, he spends half his life on business flights between continents. So catching him up for a conversation in Moscow is a rare opportunity, which I gladly agreed to use. We talked about the “personality cult”, about the value of the team, about the young generation of Russian IT specialists and, of course, about the crisis.

Before the beginning of the interview, I notice the statuette of the “Runet Prize”, which stands on the cabinet in the corner of Sergei's office. I'm interested in what she is for. He says that he no longer remembers it was long ago ( it turned out that in 2004 Parallels, then still SWsoft, took a special nomination ). “I even threatened to break the glass in the room with it if our business executives did not ventilate,” he recalls. Belousov, smiling, gives me to weigh the gilded column in my hand - and the truth is that you will break through any double-glazed window. The fact is that the business center on Altufevskoe highway, where the Parallels office is located, was wonderfully built in such a way that not a single window opened in it.
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Having repulsed from such an unusual approach to the symbols of recognition in society, we start a conversation.

Recently I read several interviews with you. In one of them, the author noted that you are not flashing in the headlines. But this is, in fact, not the case. Do you still started to purposefully promote yourself?

In fact, I do not aspire to “self-popularization”, but to promote our company and what it does. But for some reason, our PR people, unfortunately, turned this into a popularization of me. They promise all the time that it will stop, but it does not stop, and it is not far to the cult of personality. (Smiles with reproach.) But in general, the press has already begun to interview other members of our team: Stas Protasov, Kohl Dobrovolsky. Here I play the maximum role of a producer, and there are still writers, directors, and illuminators.

Software development is the fruit of collective work. And we need fame to make it easier to hire more advanced developers and managers. We have interesting, but at the same time complex technologies. In addition to intelligence, education, the candidate must also have experience. Without experience he will not be able to write high-quality system software. And there are very few experienced people.

You once said that in the 90s, businesses in IT were created by people who studied mathematics and physics at a university, and they came to IT in some kind of roundabout way. Is there already a new generation of young professionals who immediately studied for this industry?

Maybe there is. But I think that, in general, the quality of the specialists who are supplied by the education system has deteriorated. Education is such a difficult thing in our country, which was built for many, many years, then collapsed for many years, and now it will be restored for many years. Therefore, the specialists of the 90s, though they studied at physicists and mathematicians, but received an excellent education. They had good teachers, they studied a lot and diligently.

Probably, in recent years, the educational system is still being restored. But those people who can be hired from universities right now, although they received a more focused education, but its quality is much lower. The old faculty naturally “leaves”, students have less time to study, because almost all of them still need to earn money.

This applies to technicians. And what about managers and marketers? Do you think business can prepare them for itself?

This applies to all. I do not think that business can independently revive the education system. For him, this is fraught with too long a period of return on investment. Still, education is the task of the state. Investments in it return in 10 years, and maybe through all 30. Such horizons are usually not available to business.

But you open your basic departments and scientific laboratories in some universities ...

Yes, but it does not replace education. It's just some kind of additive. In our laboratories, we try to select specialists for ourselves and somehow direct their thoughts to topics that are related to the technologies that we are developing.

Are you somehow attracted to technoparks?

No, we didn't really think about it. One of the main problems that technoparks solve is the high rental value of real estate. Our IT business is traditionally grouped around Moscow, and in Moscow offices are expensive - ten times more expensive than in America. We pay for rent $ 600 / m2 per year (and it is cheap by Moscow standards!). For normal working conditions per person you need 10 m2, so consider: in Moscow one person’s place per year can cost $ 10,000. And this is a huge part of the salary of a specialist. In the West, by the way, there are no technology parks for this reason - young companies there already need very small initial investments for rent.
But in general, a specialist with us is still cheaper than in the US. There's just more salary.

But this does not mean that a unit of the product produced is cheaper in Russia. Labor efficiency in a company like Microsoft is significantly higher than in an average software company in Russia. Yes, our efficiency is gradually increasing, we are constantly introducing some new technological processes. But it takes time. Microsoft has been doing this for 30 years, our team has so far only 10, and none of the major Russian developers have more than 15.

And what else, besides cheap real estate, do you need a young company?

In order for small companies to appear, you need venture financing, which in fact does not exist in Russia yet. These funds can be counted on the fingers. Therefore, small companies formed a little. This does not mean that the actual demand for venture capital funds exceeds supply. No supply - no demand. But the potential demand is probably several times higher than the current supply.

The tendency when start-ups tend to immediately reach the level of payback and start making money without waiting for investors is, of course, very good. But practically no idea can be developed without investments. We are talking about any investments: even when 10 specialists make a project a year, they finance it with their unearned salaries.

All small companies should now work for the near future. They cannot afford to think about what will happen in 10 years, because if they do not focus on what will be after 3 years, they may simply not live through these 3 years.

Are there not yet staff turnover from large companies towards small ones? How do you feel about the now popular idea of ​​firing expensive developers, and then hiring them again, but for half the salaries?

That's bullshit. The main thing is not just to minimize costs, but to reach a certain level of productivity. And such methods, perhaps, cheapen the work of professionals by 10-20%, but at the same time completely demotivating them. Efficiency worsens several times. We will not go for it. Moreover, now, and this is a positive moment of the crisis, our staff turnover has decreased, and we do not need any radical methods.

So we got to the crisis. How much do you think it is necessary to divide the forecasts for this year in terms of turnover, profits, software exports ..?

It's a difficult question. You can try to answer, but, most likely, will be a finger to the sky. The world economy is a very complex system. And most importantly, it is very much changing now. Since the last crisis of 2001, it has become much more global. Previously, we had many small seas, all the storms in which were known and predictable. And then suddenly all these seas united together. And it is very difficult to say what will happen in this new huge sea, because no one has yet seen the storms in it. For estimates and projections there are many indicators. All more or less accurate predictions can be made later in the second quarter of this year.

Regarding the software market development forecasts, everything here is very dependent on the type of software. For example, in this quarter, Acronis sales will be 15-20 percent less than it could be. I think Kaspersky can also have a significant fall, but less than Acronis, because it’s security - it’s harder to do without it. And Parallels doesn't have - we have another software, it helps to immediately start saving on the operation of the server infrastructure after its implementation. In software, without which you can do without, the decline in sales will be stronger, and in allowing to save - much less.

Do everyone now just sit and wait, what will happen?

Yes, everyone is sitting and waiting, focusing, trying to cut costs, making more conservative decisions on long-term investments, but waiting.

At a recent conference, it was thought that the practice of reducing costs by investing in IT is insane. Do you support this idea?

Information technology increases the productivity of business processes. Therefore, reducing the IT budget to save money can have the opposite effect. But we have to admit that companies buy a lot of excess. And this superfluous, probably, will get less now.

In the Russian IT industry, it seems, there are no longer enough “icons” that people could follow. You, David Yang from ABBYY, Eugene Kaspersky and people from much less well-known but strong companies could become such “icons”. What are the prospects for Russian companies in the global IT Olympus?

Legally, Parallels is not a Russian company. But to Russia, of course, we have a relationship: of course, I was born, studied and grew up in Russia, I have a Russian name and am not going to change it. The basis of our team is the Russian people, also with Russian surnames. All products we sell are developed here. And more than 600 of our 800 employees work here.

As for global recognition, I think that many of our smaller companies can run a larger business. Both Kaspersky and Acronis, and Parallels - we are in a transition period through which everyone passes. The company is no longer small, but also not large. In addition, most of these companies are private. In principle, they could become public by placing their papers somewhere. But it is obvious that due to the financial crisis this will not happen for a long time, two years. In general, a software company can be considered successful if it has reached a turnover of one billion dollars, and until this point all of us is far enough. Therefore, they will remain so far more or less imperceptible - just other concerns are enough.

By the way, this interview was recorded before the New Year. But from the fact that it still has not lost relevance, it only seems more interesting to me.