A Russian Tech Pioneer Sets the Pace
You may not have heard of serial entrepreneur Serguei Beloussov, founder of SWsoft, but Western investors go ga-ga over his startups
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Like other Russians growing up under Communist rule in the city then known as Leningrad, Serguei Beloussov was taught, he says, that "being involved in business is something really bad." So he set his sights on becoming a neurosurgeon and later switched to scientific research—a career that his parents, both physicists, encouraged him to pursue.
Not long after enrolling in Moscow's Institute of Physics & Technology, though, Beloussov found that he had a knack for balance sheets. That proved to be a fortuitous discovery: Today, the 35-year-old Russian and his business partner, college buddy Ilya Zubarev, are both multimillionaires.