As an American, he sold a business worth $ 1,4 billion in the United States and launched a startup in Ukraine

John Sung Kim sold the company with a capitalization of $ 1,4 billion in San Francisco and went to Kiev, where, together with a Ukrainian partner, he started developing a marketing and sales automation startup. Now an American entrepreneur lives between two countries. John spoke about his impressions of life and work in Ukraine and why he left America.

After the sale of the company Five9 with a capitalization of $ 1,4 billion in the US, he moved to Kiev, where he assembled a team of developers and, together with a Ukrainian partner, began work on a startup Jetbridge, writes MC Today. According to John, in Kiev, the best restaurants in the world and many talented people, but start-ups often lie to investors and do not know how to develop business, and employees do not trust their superiors.

No democracy and free speech: why did I leave San Francisco?

Before launching JetBridge and moving to Kiev, I основал and subsequently sold two startups in the USA - Five9 и Doctorbase. On the day of the IPO, Five9 raised $ 350 million, now it's a company with 600 employees and capitalization in the region of $ 1,4 billion, its shares are traded on the NASDAQ.

In San Francisco, I have a big house, many good friends, and an incredible network of working contacts. But after selling the second company, I realized that after 15 years of nonstop work I want to leave California and go traveling.

By 2015, I earned enough money not to look at the price tag in any city in the world, and for me the values ​​like freedom and cool people around me came first. And if I have complete order with my friends in the USA, then things are much worse with freedom.

YCombinator President Sam Altman recently wrote on his Facebook page that even in communist China there is more freedom than in San Francisco.

Here you can not openly talk about your thoughts and views and must carefully select each word. Once I went on a date with a Jewish, intelligent and talented girl. We sat in a Korean restaurant and I joked about the Koreans, to which I received in response the phrase: “O Lord! It is racist and offensive. ” But I'm a Korean, damn it, why can't I joke about my countrymen ?!

Exactly the same situation with political views. If you publicly admit that you vote for the “wrong person” of a politician, then you may lose your job.

I did not vote for Trump and consider him an idiot, but if I suddenly voted for him and admitted it on Facebook, I would have problems in the market.

What kind of democracy are we talking about? My engineers voted for Trump secretly from others, and after his victory they had a secret party in San Francisco.

In Kiev, excellent restaurants, delicious beer and snow at Christmas

Ukraine is not an ideal country, but there is freedom and diversity here that is lacking in California and Western Europe. Budapest is good, but it is small, the same can be said about other European cities. When I first came to Ukraine, I visited Kiev, Lviv and Odessa - and I was amazed how different they were from each other. If you are bored with Kiev traffic jams, then you can hit the road to Odessa to lie on the beach or relax at the weekend in Lviv. I always stay in Lviv in the same hotel and go to dinner in the Pravda beer theater.

Let it sound like madness, but I chose Kiev in many respects because of the great restaurants. I do not know how to cook, but in Kiev I am calm, there are plenty of places with delicious food. In the Life of Wonderful People cafe I ate the best mushroom soup in life, BAO is one of my favorite restaurants in the world as a whole, Alaska has excellent seafood, and in the Must steakhouse at TSUM there are excellent steaks, and believe me go on forever.

In late December, Kiev was covered with snow, I was delighted, this is Christmas! I told this to my friends from Unit City, and the girl next to me was very surprised at my delight: “Have you lost your mind?”. And I thought that you always want to have what is not, and for an American living in Ukraine, everything is absolutely new, and this is a wonderful experience.

They say that in Ukraine there is nothing to do without knowledge of Russian or Ukrainian languages, but for me this is not a problem. Most of my interlocutors speak English.

Now I hired a Russian language tutor, it's interesting and fun. Now I speak exactly like the Russian mafia from the James Bond movie saga.

Americans think that it is dangerous in Ukraine, there is war, corruption and everything is bad in general. Therefore, this year I will definitely bring American venture capitalists to Kiev, show them the Unit City, and Kiev, which is not inferior to Budapest, Lisbon or Warsaw. Then we will go to Lviv to have a beer, and from there we will go to the night clubs of Odessa, so that they have plenty of fun and see how Ukrainians love life.

I want my friends to return to Silicon Valley and tell colleagues: “You know, John and Misha (co-founder of JetBridge. - Ed.) Drove me to Ukraine, I spoke at Unit City, met smart people and this is a fun country with great restaurants. There is no terrible war and all this shit that Western media feeds us. ”

Team Jet Bridge. Photo: jetbridge.com

The only thing I don’t like in Ukraine is the situation with older people. It feels like nobody cares about them. In Paris or Barcelona, ​​older couples are well dressed, go to cafes and drink cappuccino, and it is clear that the state supports them. In Ukraine, they do not look healthy or happy. I worry that if you are aging and did not manage to earn money in IT, then you can find yourself in old age without any help and support. Hope this will change in the future.

Ukrainian startups lie at every turn

Now I am developing JetBridge and in parallel looking for projects for angelic investments. But this is still difficult. Ukrainian startups lack experience in creating products and building companies. They know nothing about business models, negotiating with investors, communicating with partners and investors, and constantly lie.

Here are some fresh examples. I listened to the startup pitch and asked:

- Do you have competitors?
- No, we have a unique product.
- Guys, I just searched Google. You have two competitors. The Chinese company and, in fact, Google itself, which recently released a similar product.

And here's another.

“This technology is so popular that we have already signed contracts with three large corporations as our clients.
- It's beautiful, but what kind of customers?
- We signed the NDA, so we will not say anything.

And the third example.

- We have an advanced technology of artificial intelligence.
“Good, but I myself am a software developer, and this is not AI, or even machine learning.”
- Well, yes, we know that, but now we are working on a pitch for Russian investors, but they are not as smart as you. If you say AI, it excites them.

So you can not pitch western investors. It's normal to have Google as a competitor, but you need to talk about it. It is normal to negotiate with corporations and so far not receive a single payment from them, but this needs to be talked about.

This is not normal - after all the comments, say “Ok, bye-bye” and disappear.

It would be much more correct to say: “Ok, John, I understand that you don’t like this idea yet, but tell me two things: 1) What should I change to make it like that? 2) Can I ask you some additional questions? ”. I gave three examples, but the exact same stories happen when you begin to delve into the program code, marketing, project management and other aspects of the business.

Employees do not trust company founders

Team Jet Bridge. Photo: jetbridge.com

I see potential in Ukraine and I think that Kiev will become the next Berlin. There are many young and intelligent IT engineers, marketers, product managers, designers and talented university graduates in Ukraine. But for global success, Ukrainians need to learn from the experience of Western companies. Twice a year I drive my team to Silicon Valley. There they communicate with colleagues from Google and Facebook, venture capitalists and successful entrepreneurs. And if one day they leave my company and decide to start their own business, they will have direct access to people from Silicon Valley and they will not have to start from scratch.

Not all Ukrainians like the western approach, many things common in California are unacceptable in Ukraine. In Silicon Valley, each startup employee owns a percentage of the company through an option. In Ukraine, this is an alien concept. Employees do not trust company owners, and company owners do not trust employees. Many Ukrainians in response to the offer to get a share in the company said: “This is not for me. You're a foreigner, I don't like you. ”

When I hired the first employees in Kiev, I asked the engineer: “Would you like to receive $ 3000 per month without equity participation or $ 2500 with an option?” And he said: “Give me $ 3000. The option won't be full. ” It was hard for me to understand, because in the long run, it is cheaper for me to pay extra $ 500. I tried to explain that in the Valley we do not eat options, but buy houses on them, but without success.

I wrote my own concept, which I call “do you want bread today or steak tomorrow?”. And in Ukraine, many people say: “I don’t know anything about tomorrow, give me bread today.” The same question in the Valley will be answered to you: “I want bread, but today I will give it back to you. And tomorrow I will have my own restaurant with steaks. ”

Now I invest only in projects where employees have options, all funds and investors in the United States do the same.

No venture capitalist will give money to a company where 100% is owned by one person.

There are many successful teams in Ukraine, and I hope that when their employees start buying houses in Chicago or apartments in new buildings in the center of Kiev, the situation will change.

I came to Silicon Valley 15 years ago when start-up culture did not exist, and desperate and risky people started their projects. It was the beginning of a revolution. Now the same revolution is taking place in Ukraine, and I am happy that I am standing at its source.

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