Video interview from Silicon Valley. Sergey Burkov - a serial entrepreneur, mentor 500 Startups, the first head of the Google development center in Russia

Sergey Burkov was the first head of the Google development center in Russia. In less than 2 years, under his leadership, Google has significantly improved the quality of the Russian-language search, released more than a dozen products, tripled traffic and increased its share in the Russian web search market from 10% to 27%. Before joining Google, Sergey was the founder and leader of three startups - the last of which, Dulance, who created the search engine for products, was bought by Google. Sergey Burkov was a co-founder of AmBAR , the largest business association of Russian- speaking high-tech professionals in the United States. Now Sergey works as a mentor with budding startups and is a mentor of 500 Startups, one of the world's best startup accelerators.

In addition to 500 Startups, Sergey Burkov is a mentor / adviser to the following companies:
- Zingaya (client-less web telephony)
- Choister (smart apartment search in Russia)
- Chadwick (NLP-driven sports app)
- Magnifis (Robin, the Siri for Android)
- Cloudessa (RADIUS server in the cloud)
- Builders Cloud (construction blueprints on iPad + cloud)
- Open Cancer Network (patient - physician forum and info base)

Sergey also led the integration and further development of technology, which grew out of Google’s acquisition of start-up company Dulance, Inc., which Sergey had previously founded - as a result, the Dulance team formed the backbone of the Moscow office of Google. Dulance worked on a search engine for a new generation of products that can find any product that sells on the Internet. With the help of artificial intelligence technologies, the search engine retrieves the names of goods, prices and pictures directly from the pages of online stores. This approach allows you to cover almost all small and specialty stores around the world that sell any, even the rarest goods.

In the past, Sergei Burkov was a physicist who worked at leading American universities, including Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin. Author of more than 40 scientific papers in physics and mathematics, Sergey graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and defended his thesis on theoretical physics at the Institute of Theoretical Physics. Landau.
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Interview Questions:

• How do you choose startups with whom you will work as a mentor? What are the criteria?
• Is the start-up boom going on or has it gone down?
• What are the most promising areas for start-ups, and in which areas is it better not to “meddle”?
• I would like to clarify about B2B. Should I focus on large corporations or small businesses?
• At what stage of a company is it better for startups to apply for an accelerator?
• What are the main selection criteria for the accelerator?
• How important is it to have recommendations for a startup and be in the Valley?
• In your opinion, what are new startups missing? What is most worth paying attention to?
• It turns out that the main recommendation: pay more attention to Customer Development?
• As for fundraising, there are 2 points of view: 1) you need as early as possible (go to the accelerator or to the investor), 2) you need as late as possible (if the company can exist for the time being without attracting additional financing)
• Is there anything else that you think is important to say about startups?
• So copyite (clones) is a business?
• How do you assess the SVOD conference (conducted by AmBAR ), as an opportunity for Russian companies and investors to “light up” in the Valley, learn, make connections and make deals?

Thank you for your attention and for the positive feedback. Subscribe to the channel to follow the video updates (reports and interviews). If someone wants to help with decoding - it would be great. I have this, unfortunately, just do not have time. The article used excerpts from the biographical reference RVK .

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