Where to go Russian in Silicon Valley - answer the questions of a person who wants to move to the Valley

We were contacted by habrazhitel Alexander , a blogger and entrepreneur from Yekaterinburg, who in November moves to the Valley and wanted to ask his questions. This interview turned out to be the answer to questions about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship, the Russian-speaking AmBAR business community, entrepreneurship in Russia and Russian associations. The questions were answered by someone who himself recently moved to Silicon Valley and has a so-called "a fresh look".

In general, anyone who wants to get some education about Silicon Valley, we advise you to read this very inspired article by the founder of Evernote (a company worth $ 2 billion ) Stepan Pachikov, which was published in Ogonyok in 1995. Do you have any questions about Silicon Valley? Feel free to ask in the comments.

So let's go.

From the interviewer:
The interview is not at all the format of my blog , but who knows, maybe I will do them more often with interesting people. And today I am interviewing a very interesting person, Ivan Tsybaev, the creator of SiliconNews.Ru , the vice president of public relations at the American Business Association of Russian- speaking Professionals ( AmBAR ) and an Internet entrepreneur.
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Ivan, what are you doing?

I’m an entrepreneur, now we’ve got a boring start-up for American truckers with a co-finder - one of the products of which is the Trucker Path application (who is interested in iOS and Android, but on iOS it’s still much better), one of the most popular Of these, it is free, but with paid monthly subscriptions for premium features. Now we are committed to significantly expanding its functionality and developing a fundamentally new service.

It's very cool that you are involved in startups, although when I was in the Valley, it seemed to me that even every waiter was engaged in them, which is great! How did you get the idea of ​​such a startup? Did you feel the need to do past business or did it somehow intuitively happen? Have you somehow probed the market, measured potential customers, etc.? What is the success now, how many visitors, is there any profit? What is the project team?

I don’t want to tell about the startup in detail yet.

I think that my activity as a journalist and vice president of public relations in the American Business Association of Russian- speaking Professionals ( AmBAR ) is more interesting. As a journalist, I recently launched my project “On the Life of Silicon Valley”, SiliconNews.Ru , which over time will attract as authors many prominent entrepreneurs and investors from Silicon Valley. For example, one of the authors of SiliconNews.Ru, a well-known entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, Alexei Fedoseev , who sold his Motorola startup for several tens of millions of dollars, worked in Motorola as product development director (one of the key posts), and then after Google how they bought motorola. Before that, I actively published on Habrahabr, Zuckerberg Call and some other publications, recently I was invited to write on " Snob ", where I plan to soon post an article about the Russian-speaking community in Silicon Valley.

My journalistic activism closely echoes my work at AmBAR as vice president of PR. AmBAR is the world's largest business association, uniting Russian-speaking professionals in such areas as IT, finance, law, etc. The association has been around for more than 10 years, many entrepreneurs and world-class investors have spoken at AmBAR events - for example, Google founder Sergey Brin , and a member of the Board of Directors of AmBAR - “co-founder of Google in Russia” Sergey Burkov , whose startup bought Google in the early 2000s. Who cares, you can read about AmBAR more here .


(Sergey Brin and Sergey Burkov perform at AmBAR Event)

Since AmBAR is headquartered in Palo Alto, AmBAR’s main center of activity falls on Silicon Valley (although AmBAR events take place in different states and countries — in August, for example, there was a metap in Moscow), where AmBAR regularly holds events that unite Russian speakers living in the Valley and arriving there, which are also often visited by many well-known English-speaking entrepreneurs and investors. Perhaps the most interesting AmBAR event is the Silicon Valley Open Doors ( SVOD ) conference, which is the “open door” not only to the Valley, but also to many key American investors in general (for example, Accel Partners, Emergence Capital, Sequoia, Google Ventures, etc. .), businessmen and journalists (TechCrunch, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, etc.). This conference, held twice a year, is attended by top investors and entrepreneurs from Russia and the CIS, who, thanks to SVOD, conclude many key deals.

I had a very good acquaintance with AMBAR during my trip to the states. You are very cool guys, everyone who goes to San Francisco constantly recommend you to meet you. How did you get into BARN? What inspires you to do it? Do you see similar organizations in Russia?

I got into AmBAR, because I began to “actively rotate in the environment” + my journalistic efforts contributed. AmBAR is an excellent organization, which unites excellent people in the Valley (by the way, and beyond), and helps those who come to the Valley. For example, the Silicon Valley Open Doors conference gathers many top investors and startups from both the US (not only Russian speakers) and from Russia. In Russia, I like Digital October , its head Dmitry Repin is also an active member of AmBAR and a member of the Consultative Council of AmBAR.

SiliconNews.Ru is a very interesting project. How do you manage to find such cool people for him as Alexey Fedoseev , Igor Shoifot and Max Skibinky ?

Thank you, he is still in beta testing. How did you meet? Networking. Now we are working to connect there more eminent authors. By the way, an interview with the founder of Evernote is soon - who does not know, the company was founded by Stepan Pachikov, who came from the USSR, and in 2012 it was estimated at $ 2 billion .
(Actually, the most probably objectively "cool dude" of all those who are currently on SiliconNews.Ru is Phil Libin , head of Evernote)

How did you get to Silicon Valley

I had a business in Los Angeles in the freight industry, where I actually lived (this is not far from the Valley - 6 hours by car). At the end of 2012, the business began to decline somewhat, and I began to look for new areas, becoming interested in IT. I began to travel to Silicon Valley on short visits, go to events, meet interesting (and useful) people, and then decided to move to the Valley, having sold my business and started doing startups. Before the Trucker Path, I had another “training” startup where I worked on managing such projects and all sorts of different things.

Now it’s understandable that your startup startup’s legs grow - professional niche experience

How long have you been in the states? How is your English? I ask, because many who speak good English in Russia will most certainly not be completely in the states, they need adaptation, etc. How long can it take?

5 years. Pretty good. About the adaptation I will not say - all in different ways.

Where was born and what kind of education?

Born in Vladimir, but lived for 14 years on Sakhalin. The Master in Finance (Financial Management), studied in Russia and Japan, also completed several courses in the United States on insurance, investment and car dealerships.

What inspires and how do you see your future?

People around me, when you are in the right environment in Silicon Valley, you understand why the most successful startups come from here.



What trends do you see in Silicon Valley?

According to the trends I advise you to read this article . In brief, trends: mobile applications and services, mobile advertising, cloud services (cloud computing), B2B startups, startups in the field of education.

Would you now be able to return home?

Most want to return to Japan

What is there that is not in the USA?

Japanese spirit, atmosphere. There you constantly feel in Japan, every second. Few places there is, I think.

Intrigued, you need to plan a trip :)

How do you evaluate entrepreneurs in Russia through the prism of your experience in the Valley

Before I came to the Silicon Valley Open Doors ( SVOD ) conference for the first time, I didn’t suspect that there are SO abrupt young (not in the “inexperienced”) businessmen in Russia. On SVOD, I met Elena Masolova (Eduson.TV, Pixonic, Groupon Russia), Ruslan Fazlyev (Ecwid, X-Cart), Sergey Bulayev (Buy me a pie!) And many others. It turned out that many people come to Silicon Valley to learn from experience, learn, raise money and enter into partnerships / deals. Such Russian businessmen also will give odds to many American ones. The other day, Wired has published an article about the hottest startups in Moscow - many of them have repeatedly been in Silicon Valley. For example, Zingaya pitches (presented) a startup in front of top American investors at the SVOD conference.

By the way, it is also worth saying that in Russia there are not only excellent entrepreneurs, but also investors - and not only because they have a lot of money. For example, Troika Dialog (now Sberbank Venture Capital) were the first investors in Evernote (founder Stepan Pachikov and CEO Phil Libin are both Russian speakers), after which the startup took off so much that in 2012 it was valued at $ 2 billion. And there are many such examples when Russian investors gave not only money, but also helped start-ups, as they say, “put business on the right track” - actively participated in business processes, negotiations with partners and customers, choosing the right key employees, etc.



I agree about the environment in the Valley: I just want to create and conquer the world in it. What makes it so unique in your opinion?

People. There are very nice people here.

Truly Valley is an amazing place in terms of successful people. Though I came only for a month, I got to know with a lot of very successful and mega-cool Russians. And to meet them there is very simple. For example, I somehow went out to breathe and met a Russian-speaking speaker by the pool, who turned out to be Anton Bolotov - the owner of drive.ru. It turned out that in Russia they are in the lead and it is interesting for him to master the American market.

Great. We must also meet. Where is this pool?

In Mountain View, in November I will come, I will show;)

I communicate a lot with students and a very frequent question: we would like to start a startup, we are ready to spend it day and night, but we don’t know what it is worth doing. What do you advise them?

I can not advise anything to anyone - I have not reached heights yet.

I can advise myself to go to the Valley and go to all kinds of parties in search of ideas. On the day I had time to visit up to 7 different very interesting events, just go to the meetup and eventbrite and it's in the bag .

From which three applications on the mobile you start your day and what latest application did you install?

Gmail, Facebook, Twitter. Not so long ago, I installed the SleepBot application that helps to wake up - it really helps (although, maybe this is a self-suggestion).

Thank you very much Ivan for the interview!

Thank you for your attention and for the positive feedback. Subscribe to our blog on Habré , Twitter (an aggregator of interesting news about Silicon Valley), Facebook , YouTube-channel to follow the updates. Previous posts can be found here .

Do you have any questions about Silicon Valley? Feel free to ask in the comments.