Bootstrapping a Virtual Company to $25 Million: Percona CEO Peter Zaitsev (Part 1)

I am a huge fan of virtual companies, and here is one that has been built with excellent execution from London by a Russian entrepreneur.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Peter Zaitsev: I was born in what was the Soviet Union. I studied Math and Computer Science in Moscow State University. I started my first startup company while studying.

Sramana Mitra: You were very young when you started your first company in Russia.

Peter Zaitsev: Yes. I was 19 years old.

Sramana Mitra: What prompted you to do that? You were a very young teenager studying Computer Science and then you started this company. What were the circumstances that pushed you that far?

Peter Zaitsev: I was the co-founder. The other co-founder was older and more experienced with entrepreneurship. I wanted to be independent and not taking orders. That was a good experience.

Sramana Mitra: There was another older person who was driving this. You basically got a lot of mentorship very early on in entrepreneurship. 

Peter Zaitsev: Yes, that’s right.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do? What kind of a company was this?

Peter Zaitsev: The company was SpyLOG. It’s similar to what Google Analytics does right now.

Sramana Mitra: Who were the customers?

Peter Zaitsev: The customers at that time were a lot of Russian websites. They wanted to understand how to promote their websites better. We also started doing advisory services. A new company would come to us wanting to understand the internet. We’d give them guidance.

Sramana Mitra: How long did this go on?

Peter Zaitsev: This was in 1999. In 2001, the dot-com crash happened. There’re a lot of stories about that. It was worse in Russia. From 1999 to 2000, there were a lot of investors looking for companies in Russia. But by 2001, they packed up and left. Me and my co-founder were pushed out as owners. I continued working for a little bit more time until we found a replacement. I wanted to leave on good terms. In the end, the company survived that nuclear winter.

Sramana Mitra: What year did you leave and what year was the company sold?

Peter Zaitsev: I left in 2002. The company was sold around 2005.

Sramana Mitra: Did you make any money off that transaction?

Peter Zaitsev: No. The folks pushed us out, and we didn’t get anything.

Sramana Mitra: It was just push out with nothing?

Peter Zaitsev: In Russia at that time, it was more common.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do next?

Peter Zaitsev: I looked for a job. I didn’t want to do entrepreneurship again in Russia. I wanted to find a job that would allow me to move outside of Russia. That is how I found a job in a young company called MySQL. I was employee number 45.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Peter Zaitsev: I started working at MySQL for about two years. I worked out of Moscow. Then I moved to USA. That was back in 2004. I worked for a couple more years. My focus was still very technical. I was doing some development training and support.

In the end, I managed the high-performance group. They worked on complicated performance problems. By 2006, MySQL was growing rapidly. You don’t really see yourself as an employee in small companies. Maybe you’re not the founder, but you feel like you are contributing to something.

As the company grows, your impact is not as big anymore. I felt that it was time for me to leave. I already had that entrepreneur itch. There was no good way for me to stay in the US. I moved to the United Kingdom in 2006.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Bootstrapping a Virtual Company to $25 Million: Percona CEO Peter Zaitsev
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