Fledgling startup Ostrovok has captured the attention of some of the US's biggest investors in travel to launch a Booking.com-style product in Russia.
General Catalyst Partners (backer of ITA Software and Kayak) and Accel Partners (HotelTonight and others) are among a string of investors supporting the round, including Peter Thiel and Founders Fund (Facebook), Niklas Zennstrom and Atomico (Skype), Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga), Esther Dyson (Yandex board member) and Fritz Demopoulos (founder of Qunar).
The US-centric backing has fed into the ethos of the company, with founders Serge Faguet and Kirill Makharinsky bringing their combined experience at Google, Tokbox, Younoodle and Quid to create what is touted as a "Silicon Valley-type" startup to Moscow.
The company has already amassed a headcount of 40 people and is predicting a total of 100 within the business by the end of year. A number of people on the engineering side are from Yandex, hotel sales and operations from Booking.com.
Initially the focus will be on building a Russian-targeted service of 100,000 hotels across mainstream Europe, with some in Asia and parts of the CIS.
An initial outlay of $1 million was put into the business in November 2010.