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Miro (RealtimeBoard Inc.)

Visual Collaboration SoftwareFounded 2011
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Company data updated: October 2026

Founders

Who Founded Miro?

Andrey Khusid, Oleg Shardin · Founded 2011 · HQ today: San Francisco, California, United States & Amsterdam, Netherlands

Who founded Miro?

Miro was founded by Andrey Khusid, Oleg Shardin in 2011. It is now led by Andrey Khusid.

Founders
Andrey Khusid, Oleg Shardin
Founded
2011
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States & Amsterdam, Netherlands
Number of founders
2
Current CEO
Andrey Khusid (since 2011)
Where was Miro founded?
Miro was founded in Perm, Russia in 2011.
When was Miro founded?
Miro was founded in 2011.
Who started Miro?
Miro was founded by Andrey Khusid and Oleg Shardin.
How old is Miro?
Miro is 15 years old as of 2026.

Founding Story

In 2011 Andrey Khusid was running a small design agency in Perm, Russia, and found it hard to share and discuss work with clients in other cities. With Oleg Shardin he built an online whiteboard for the agency's own use. Clients and other teams wanted it too, so the founders turned it into a product called RealtimeBoard. The company later moved its headquarters to the United States and the Netherlands and, in 2019, renamed itself Miro after the Spanish artist Joan Miró.

Andrey Khusid

Background

Before Miro, Andrey Khusid ran a design agency in Perm, Russia, where the difficulty of collaborating with remote clients led to the first version of the product.

Role at Miro (RealtimeBoard Inc.)

Andrey Khusid co-founded RealtimeBoard in 2011 and has led it as CEO ever since, taking it from an agency side project to a global company rebranded as Miro in 2019. He oversaw the company's venture rounds from Accel and ICONIQ Growth, the 2022 exit from Russia, the 2023 and 2024 restructurings, and the September 2026 agreement to sell Miro to Bending Spoons. Andrey Khusid was born in 1988.

Oleg Shardin

Background

Russian software engineer and entrepreneur.

Role at Miro (RealtimeBoard Inc.)

Oleg Shardin co-founded Miro (originally RealtimeBoard) in 2011 alongside Andrey Khusid. Based in Perm, Russia, the two realized that remote design agencies had absolutely no way to replicate the experience of standing around a physical whiteboard. Shardin architected the highly complex early software capable of smoothly rendering thousands of digital sticky notes in real-time across the globe without browser lag. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Miro (RealtimeBoard Inc.): CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Andrey Khusid

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder

2011 – Present

As Co-Founder and CEO, he successfully relocated the company's headquarters out of Russia to the US and Netherlands, transforming a niche design tool into a $17 billion enterprise behemoth.

Oleg Shardin

Co-Founder

2011 – Present

As Co-Founder, he oversees the massive engineering hubs distributed across Europe, ensuring the platform maintains its signature, butter-smooth infinite canvas experience.

Compare Miro (RealtimeBoard Inc.) Leadership With Competitors

Miro (RealtimeBoard Inc.) vs ClickUp Leadership →Overview

Keep researching Miro

Who Founded Miro? FAQ

How did Andrey Khusid and Oleg Shardin conceive RealtimeBoard in 2011?

In 2011 Andrey Khusid ran a design agency in Perm, Russia, and struggled to collaborate with remote clients. He and Oleg Shardin built an online whiteboard to solve it, then launched it as the product RealtimeBoard.

How did the founders bootstrap the company before institutional venture capital?

For the first seven years (2011 to 2018), Khusid and Shardin grew the business profitably through customer subscription cash flows without taking outside Silicon Valley venture capital, refining product-market fit and building a loyal grassroots base of designers and agile practitioners.

What was the landmark 2018 Series A funding round led by Accel?

In 2018 RealtimeBoard raised a $25 million Series A led by Accel, its first major institutional round, to fund hiring and international expansion.

Why did the founders establish dual headquarters in San Francisco and Amsterdam?

The founders moved the company's base out of Russia and built leadership hubs in San Francisco, for the US market, and Amsterdam, for Europe.

What was the founding team's insight regarding the limits of physical whiteboards?

The founders recognized that physical office whiteboards had three fatal flaws: they run out of space, they cannot be shared with remote colleagues, and someone inevitably erases them with a 'Do Not Erase' note. They built Miro to preserve intellectual work permanently on an infinite, searchable digital plane.

Who was Oleg Shardin and what role did he play in founding Miro?

Oleg Shardin co-founded RealtimeBoard in 2011 alongside Andrey Khusid. Shardin served as the early technical co-founder and product architect, engineering the core low-latency vector graphics engine that enabled hundreds of remote users to interact smoothly on a single shared infinite canvas simultaneously without browser crashes.

What was the initial agency problem that motivated the creation of RealtimeBoard?

Andrey Khusid ran an interactive marketing and design agency in the early 2010s called Vitamin Group. When pitching visual concepts to corporate clients across different cities, emailing static PDFs and slide decks caused severe miscommunication. Khusid teamed up with engineer Oleg Shardin to build an interactive vector board that felt like standing together at a real whiteboard.

How did the founders transition RealtimeBoard into an international Silicon Valley unicorn?

In 2018, the founders relocated corporate operations to Amsterdam and San Francisco, raising early venture funding from AltaIR Capital and later Accel. They recognized that visual collaboration was an enterprise-wide necessity, not just a niche design tool, triggering the 2019 rebrand to Miro and rapid international expansion.

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Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.