Silicon Valley Islet

OLS (Ostrovok Lecture Series) is a lecture with the stars of the global web industry. Esther Dyson, Timur Artemyev, Joe Cutler have already visited our office and Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom spoke on Skype.

Yesterday, in the framework of the OLS, funny guys from Y Combinator, Virool and DST came to our office: Harj Taggar, Garry Tan, Alexander Debelov and Felix Shpilman. They came to Russia at the All-Russian Innovation Convention 2011, but we know that they are curious about the interesting things happening in IT in Russia. And is it true that St. Basil's Cathedral is a giant petrified carrot.

We showed our office and asked the guys to talk about how it turned out that they are engaged in investments at an early stage, what they did before and how they are going to develop. Then all interested employees of Ostrovka communicated with them, asked questions, asked opinions about their ideas and ideas of their acquaintances.

Photo taken on ipad, sorry.
From left to right: Harj Taggar (Harj Taggar), Alexander Debelov, Garry Tan, Yevgeny Kuryshev, Sergey Fage
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Data

Harzh Taggar founded Auctomatic, an auction software development company and sold it to eBay at 22 years old.
Harry Tan created Posterous, a very popular blogging platform.
Felix Spielman is one of the advisers at DST, directing their investments in small companies.
Sasha Debelov, a native of Rostov-on-Don, went to study in San Francisco, but managed not only to learn, but also co-founded The Kairos Society - the largest organization for student entrepreneurs and found Virool - the largest network for distributing video content. Sasha was many times recognized as the “Best Young Entrepreneur” by various reputable international journals.
At one time, Harry Tan worked as a manager at Microsoft, and he seemed rather stupid to quit a good job and do some kind of startup.
Kharzh Taggar still has to convince his relatives that he is not unemployed. It became a little easier after the release of the film "Social Network".
Felix did not finish his studies at a school in Moscow, but this did not prevent him from investing in Islet and a bunch of other companies.
Harj Taggar and Harry Tan - partners in Y Combinator. They have invested over 360 startups. Over the past year - 100, next will be 120.
If you already have a small office and a team, some sales, some profit, some partners, then you are almost of no interest to Y Combinator.
Y Combinator does not give $ 10 million for a 50% stake in the company. They give 15-20 thousand dollars at a stage when there is nothing but an idea and those who want to embody it. And, yes, they charge an average of 6% of the company's share. Hello Russian counterparts! =)

Silicon tips

Kharzh recommends reading all the essays on the Paul Graham website to all aspiring entrepreneurs.
There are a lot of them there, but Harry insists that this is simply the necessary knowledge for everyone who starts his business. By the way, Paul himself works as a boss at Y Combinator.

It is best to start your startup while there is still enough foolishness in your head and not enough pragmatism to “clearly understand” that you will definitely fail.

The guys repeat that Y Combinator are not investors, but, first of all, teachers . They say: “We are a university for startups. You take exams, come to our campus and study. Well, you work too. And we also pay for it. "

Dropbox - one of the best graduates »Y Combinator . A couple of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007 offered their idea to various clever uncles with a lot of money, but everywhere they met the question - “Why is it necessary? There are already a lot of ways to transfer and share files on the Internet. This is done by serious companies. ” And YCombinator has invested its small funds, receiving a share, which now costs much more. In 2011, Dropbox was valued at more than $ 5 billion.

In Silicon Valley, there are many companies operating on the same principle as Y Combinator. Nevertheless, the guys believe that their main competitors are large IT companies . Harry says: “In every major company in San Francisco, like Google or Amazon, there are a bunch of talented young people who, unfortunately, will never make a new start-up startup ... if we don’t help them. Large companies are very comfortable, good and attractive. But one of them is so hard to leave - everything around convinces me to stay and give up my foolish undertakings. ”

About Russia

The main problem of Russian startups collectively appointed a pulsating thought to a novice domestic entrepreneur “oh, it’s so difficult, these investors are awesome, they’re not sleeping jackets, they’re how far, and I ... didn’t finish the Stanford, I didn’t touch Peter Till’s hand, and in general I small and unhappy cat, go while I read Habr. "

Top 5 most popular questions in Russia for start-ups and those who finance them, which convincingly show that people still do not understand how IT start-ups work and bring money:

When do you go to self-sufficiency?
What salary did you assign yourself after receiving funding?
What will you do when the money runs out?
Investors take all the profits or remains to live?
Do investors allow you to do X or Y?

Hats with earflaps are very cool , but St. Basil's Cathedral is still not a gingerbread.

" Startups are such incomprehensible heaps of hipster geeks who make some kind of lurid and useless websites."

At least, it seems that this is exactly how many people in Russia who have been in contact with Harry Tan. In fact, this is not at all the case; these are just the most visible examples. Harry himself remembered how he worked at Palantir Technologies - a startup that wrote software for the CIA and the FBI.

Where to learn how to do a startup

Contact the incubator

“And what problems? Here, take a business card ... Just send us a small presentation about your project, well, an elevator pitch, then come to us for a couple of months - let's talk, work together, learn and then come back and unfold to its full height. There are no problems, it’s even cool that you are from Russia, ”said Gary at the end of a conversation with our backend Seryozha, who shared the idea of his startup.

Get a job in a startup

The second on the list of the best ways to learn how to start up after “stupidly taking and doing your startup”, our guests acknowledged working in any foreign startup , especially at its early stage of development: almost unlimited responsibility, the ability to see with their own eyes how it is born and grows company, learn from the mistakes of others, communicate with the founders and meet with investors. In addition, at the initial stage in a startup it is often possible to get an option (such as here, in the Island), and with it the chance to receive a substantial amount of money, which can be very useful when starting your business.