The entrepreneur began his career with the Soviet military-industrial complex. He successfully implemented large-scale business projects and promoted promising startups to the world market.
Alexander Galitsky could have become a successful journalist, but he managed to develop his abilities in the field of innovative technologies. Today his name is associated with Almaz Capital, a well—known venture fund. How did the businessman implement his large-scale ideas?
Education
Alexander Galitsky, whose biography is inextricably linked with the history of the IT industry and innovative business, is a native of the Ukrainian village of Zarechany, located near Zhytomyr. Date of birth: February 9, 1955.
As for choosing a future profession, during his school years, Galitsky was fond of literature, won Olympiads on this subject, and even composed a romantic story, “Tears of the Sun”,published by a local newspaper. At the same time, he had a penchant for exact sciences, and his father convinced his son to enter a technical university. As a result, the gold medalist became a Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology student
Career path stages: transformation of an engineer into an investor
After successful graduation, Alexander Galitsky was invited to work at the Research Institute of Micro-Devices, part of the ELAS Scientific and Production Association. The organization was engaged in the construction of space complexes based on the latest developments in microelectronics. In 1987, a 32-year-old programmer, by that time a Doctor of Science, was appointed responsible for computer systems and satellite software at ELAS, and 4 years later he arrived as a member of the Russian delegation to the United States.
During the business visit, the engineer visited the famous Silicon Valley, visited its brightest company at that time, Sun Microsystems. There were many unforgettable impressions, interesting acquaintances, some of which later developed into friendships. First of all, we are talking about Geoffrey Baehr, who later became a partner of Alexander Galitsky at Almaz Capital.
The young scientist founded his own company ELVIS+ in autumn 1991. It is known for creating a prototype of modern Wi-Fi in 1993. The development of the first VPN for Windows also belongs to Galitsky’s startup.
Alexander Galitsky: Almaz Capital – key project
In 2004, Galitsky Alexander Vladimirovich acted as the president of the first European Technology Forum “Tech Tour” in the Russian Federation. As part of this project, investors studied regions with growing venture capital markets, getting acquainted with local companies. In 2008, on the basis of investments from Cisco and UFG Asset Management, together with colleagues, Alexander Galitsky founded Almaz Capital, an international venture capital fund with its central office located in Silicon Valley.
The goal of the organization was to invest in companies with potentially large-scale market coverage and a proven business model. Among the companies supported by the foundation are such well-known projects as Yandex, Qik (video messaging service). As Alexander Galitsky noted, Almaz Capital Partners paid off all its investments by investing in Qik.
Later, one of the businessman’s partners, Peter Lukyanov, left the fund, after which Alexander Vladimirovich Galitsky, together with his partners, founded Almaz Capital II. The International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank), serial entrepreneurs, as well as family offices joined the main venture investors here. The third fund also received capital investments from the newly added LP – European Investment Fund.
In 2020-2021, the organization switched to an online format. It was in the virtual environment that communication with representatives of companies took place, although during the initial period of the pandemic Almaz Capital collaborated with projects with which there was a preliminary agreement. In 2021, the third fund was created with a capital of $191 million. In general, over the years Almaz Capital has financially supported about 50 startups that were able to bring their promising developments to the international market. The total amount of investments amounted to over $300 million.
Public projects withdraw
Simultaneously with the implementation of large-scale business projects, Alexander Galitsky paid attention to public activities. However, when the companies changed the vector of their development to the domestic market, Galitsky withdrew from the following organizations, since his main interests have always focused on cross-border projects. The entrepreneur left the Council for the development of venture investment under the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation, the board of Skolkovo and the Russian Venture Company. Alexander Vladimirovich also left the Russian Quantum Center, the Moscow State University business incubator (which existed for one session), Megafon, Alfa-Bank and Skolkovo Venture Investments.
Awards and achievements
The versatile activity of a large businessman has not gone unnoticed. In 2000, Alexander Galitsky was named a “Pioneer in the field of technology” at the Davos Economic Forum. Technological achievements of his projects were awarded in the nomination “Technologies of the new millennium”. In addition, Galitsky became the winner of the prestigious international competition “Entrepreneur of the Year” in the Russian Federation (2013).
