Zet Universe: Developer of collaborative software. The company's platform is designed as a tool for information workers to visually organize their project files, and to find them on their tablets and ultrabooks. Growth rate over eight weeks: 8.6%

Between it's universities and business communities, Boston draws talented individuals and startups from all over the globe, eager to take advantage of the opportunities for growth.

Yesterday marked another milestone for the city's international presence when Russian Venture Company and Russian Innovation Center hosted its cardinal event in Boston as part of Russian Innovation Week. The Hub was the first stop on RIW's multi-day tour, which is now underway in Silicon Valley."There's a stigma in other countries that everything [in entrepreneurship] in the U.S. happens in Silicon Valley," explained RVC CEO Axel Tillmann, who led the charge in bringing RIW to Boston. "Not many people know high tech in Massachusetts and the East Coast companies. It's really excellent stuff...we're building this on a very good tradition."


Zet Universe: Started by a former hacker of Microsoft Windows and ex-Google employee Daniel Kornev, Zet Universe is a reinvention of the way file exports and sharing works. The startup uses a fluid interface designed for touch screen mobile devices that allows users to drag and drop different files to create groups of documents to easily share to friends and coworkers via nearly all cloud platforms like DropBox. Similar to Google Docs, those shared can then make comments and all members can see what docs someone is looking at. Zet Universe's visual collaboration environment will be available for Android and iOS in the coming months.

BOSTON, Aug. 14, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — Today at the Demo Showcase for Autodesk Executives, Zet Universe announced closing of pre-seed round of financing from 3 VC firms: MSU Business Incubator, LETA Capital and Altair.VC. The investment would help the company to complete its first visual collaborative and sharing app for Intel-powered ultrabooks and tablets running Windows 8.

Being the finalist of MassChallenge 2013, Zet Universe currently works on its first version of the product by tailoring the research prototype into the market-acceptable application. With experience from the leading high-technology companies, the team came together to create Zet Universe. Aspiration of the team is to change the way people use Intel-powered ultrabooks and Windows 8 touch devices (primarily slates).

The app will provide a new dimension for productivity on the touch devices. Zet Universe introduces a natural, touch-first, visual way to organize and share documents for the mobile information workers.
“A year ago, we came together as a group of creators from Microsoft, Google and Microsoft Research, and beyond because we needed better tools for visual information organization and sharing. Today we welcome MSU Business Incubator, LETA Capital, and Altair.VC teams to help us build an innovative suite of mobile productivity software”, said Daniel Kornev, CEO at Zet Universe, Inc.

Investors are optimistic about Zet Universe. “Zet Universe may open a new era of user interaction with the information contributing to the general trend of radical changes in human-computer interface. And there is no doubt that a skilled team of founders will be able to create a truly innovative product, so we are excited to support Zet Universe”, noted Sergey Toporov, Principal at Leta Capital.

“Zet Universe is like visual Dropbox and brings innovation into productivity software. We believe in the concept and are excited to support the team”, said Kirill Klokov, Partner at MSU Business Incubator.
“Altair.VC has been supporting and consulting Zet Universe during their participation in MSU Business Incubator program. They have made solid progress and have become one of the 4 Russian companies represented in the final of MassChallenge 2013. This proves the potential of the product and the team, so our decision to support Zet Universe came naturally”, emphasized Igor Ryabenkiy, CEO of Altair.VC.

A closed group of professionals from leading U.S. and Russian IT companies has already tried out the private alpha version of the product, and provided valuable input back to the product team. Following the initial test deployments, the company will invest the funds raised into accelerating the development of the next release to better address the business needs of the first customers.

BOSTON — In the city where the American revolution began in the 1770s and the east coast dot-com revolution was launched more than 200 years later, four teams of young Russian entrepreneurs are working to revolutionize the way the world sees high-tech companies from Russia as they take part in a prestigious competition for startups.

The teams, consisting of two Russians each, were among 128 new business entrepreneurs from around the world selected for this year's MassChallenge, "the largest accelerator competition in the world," said Scott Bailey, MassChallenge's director of partnerships.


Zet Universe, makers of an application that organizes information on new devices like tablets or phones, into aesthetic visual blocks using touch and gestures, is the fourth Russian team competing in the challenge.

Eight companies in IT and biologically-inspired branches became graduates of Lomonosov Moscow State University business incubator. Within the limits of “incubation” program residents took a course on business basis study, garnered instructional and consultative support. Besides, becoming a resident, each company received initial funds on development from investing partners Leta Capital and investing company AltaIR.


Kirill Klokov, chief of MSU business incubator direction on projects development and cooperation with investors, added: “Current intake is significantly clever. Among graduated there are people with great working experience in Google, Microsoft, Innova, Wargaming and other reputable companies. Almost all residents for the whole working period in incubator managed to issue its first product, and some of them – make first sales. There are prizewinners both of Russian and International contests, for example, resident Zet Universe came through to the final in International contest Masschallenge.

Last week, MassChallenge announced the names of the 128 teams that were selected to participate in the 2013 Accelerator Program. There were over 1,200 applicants this year from over 39 countries. Of those applicants, 54 came from Russia, making Russia the country with the second highest number of applicants after the US. RVC USA, a two-time sponsor of MassChallenge, is proud to present the four Russian teams that were chosen to join the MassChallenge class of 2013 to compete for over $1 million in prizes:


Zet Universe: Zet Universe helps analysts and businesses capture, organize and retrieve information by providing an integrated information platform to visually organize data.