As an immigrant from Russia launched the most popular platform for truckers in the USA

CEO Trucker Path lives and works in Silicon Valley, where the company's headquarters is located. Another office is located in Austin (TX).

— Is it true that you don’t hire Silicon Valley developers in principle?

- We tried to take people both in Moscow and in the Valley. And immediately saw the difference. US programmers are in short supply, which is why they often require unrealistic salaries, while giving up skill set programmers from Russia. In our Moscow office sits all the development, we hire the best talents from Yandex, Mail.ru and other large companies. We take people with good knowledge of the English language and pay them above the market.

“They told me: oil, money, career - come to your senses!”

Photo: Masha Parfitt, rb.ru

— Let's return to the end of zero, when you lived in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and made a career in the company Exxon Neftegaz Ltd. What happened next?

- I got bored. For a year I was terribly tired of office life, I wanted something creative and initiative. I was a financial analyst, and the prospects were good. But I did not want to sit in the office, I felt like a small cog in a big car. When he was about to quit, everyone told me - what are you doing? Oil, money, career - come to your senses! Colleagues from Exxon persuaded me to stay even through my parents.

— At that time in Exxon ran Rex Tillerson, the current US Secretary of State?

- Yes, he was the main one there, he visited Sakhalin several times. Fun fact: somewhere in our home there is a photo of Tillerson shaking hands with my father.

— It is said that Tillerson has the nickname Ti-Rex.

- I personally have not heard, but in general, yes. Because of his severe temper, he is also called Thrillerson.

— Tell us how you left Sakhalin and ended up in Japan?

- I decided to get a new experience - to live in another country. I won a grant from the Japanese Embassy and spent a year at Hokkaido University. Everything was great, but I quickly realized that in this country it is very difficult to make a business and a career if you are not Japanese. Any initiative is punishable. My wife also lived in Japan, worked in a large bank, and we always laugh with her when we remember different stories.

Once she was very stuffy in the office, and she opened the window. Immediately her boss came running up - they say that what you are doing is impossible! My wife asked - why not? And the boss could not answer, because she did not know why. Many things the Japanese follow thoughtlessly. They can spend the whole day at work, but do everything slowly, if only to sit their due position. It seems to me that today this conservatism impedes the Japanese economy very much.

— Is it true that you made your first money in the States playing concerts in clubs?

- I would call it artistic exaggeration (laughing). But my friends and I really had a group called Ampty jones. We lived and played in New York, but at some point the guys couldn’t withstand the emigrant life, and the group collapsed. Then I began to collaborate with American musicians. Actually, I immediately understood that you can’t make a lot of money on music, so at the same time I was engaged in various business projects.

— How are you, a person who has nothing to do with IT-startups started their way to Silicon Valley?

- I have been engaged in export business for two years, we have established a logistics company with partners. Exported everything from computers to excavators. I even had to move from New York to Los Angeles, because there were a lot of shipments to the Far East. So I had a background in logistics and IT.

Then I started to get into the theme of startups, we had an idea to enter the freight industry, but we didn’t know how to approach this. I was an absolute newcomer in Silicon Valley, without experience and connections. And then I decided to create a blog RusValley.ru. He began to meet people from start-up parties, interview them and write articles. As a journalist, I went to different conferences for free - for example, TechCrunch. Communicated with the founder Evernote Stepan Pachikov, venture capital investor Max Skibinsky and other Russian-speaking guys who have made a career in the Valley.

— What startups did you put your hand on before you took up Trucker Path?

- Oh, I had a lot of stupid ideas. (laughing). But some of them were completely nothing! I tried different things. He was a co-founder of a bitcoin startup that raised $ 1,5 million. Participated in the creation of a social network and marketplace for neighbors - an analogue of a fairly successful startup today Nextdoor. For me it was a very important basic experience. An understanding of how to make startups was formed. And while living in Los Angeles, I began to travel regularly to the Valley, pitching different ideas, overgrown with acquaintances.

— Remember the moment you got the idea Trucker Path?

- It did not happen suddenly. I have seen startups rise Uber и Lyftwhich, due to Mobile, invaded traditional industries. And I was thinking - well, how could it be, why didn’t anyone think of doing something similar in the giant American trucking? These thoughts excited and charged me. As you can see, for good reason.

"These are brutal guys - about, like Stallone"

Photo: Masha Parfitt, rb.ru

— ЕIf cars are removed from the roads in the US, life in the country will stop. Is this really true?

— Yes, roads in the States are like human blood vessels. After the Great Depression, gasoline in the country was very cheap, and the government boosted the economy through active construction of infrastructure, in particular roads. The bet was initially placed on trucks. Therefore, 70% of cargo transportation in the United States is carried out by road transport, in other words, trucks. This is a gigantic market worth more than $700 billion.

— Why did the mobile go there for so long?

- Because the industry is very conservative and in terms of technology is five years behind. Do not believe it, but many companies still use faxes. When the HYIP started, and people realized that in this industry it was necessary to change something, we managed to ride the trend and made a really good application for truck drivers. We were among the first and therefore took a solid market share - 30%. Our audience has become a natural entrance barrier for other startups.

— Explain how you managed to get the stern American truckers to install on their smartphones an application invented by a Russian guy from Sakhalin?

- We relied on crowdsourcing and decided to create a platform where people could leave comments, give ratings to places, help other drivers. And this story eventually went well. The app should be useful. For example, now our most important feature in terms of crowdsourcing - we show where there is free parking. For drivers, this is very important, because they are very limited in time, and they need to take regular breaks, otherwise they fall on heavy fines and lose customers. Parking is usually clogged, and many carriers have to look for a place for an hour and a half. And here they just see the parking statuses: green — free, yellow — there is a place in some places, red — it's better not to drive in.

— That is, drivers using Trucker Path tell other drivers where to relax and have a break?

- Yes, and at the moment it is the only working solution on the market that effectively shows parking. We calculated that we save 11 hours per driver per month and approximately $ 600. Imagine how much you can save if the carrier has 1000 trucks. Therefore, large companies establish Trucker Path your drivers. In addition to parking, drivers can see the status of weighing stations (open or closed), as well as real-time fuel prices and state taxes.

— Is it true that truckers in the States earn $ 15 thousand per month?

- If the driver works for the park, then about $ 40-50 thousand per year. And if it is for myself, it is from $ 70 thousand, although I know some truckers who earn $ 120-150.

Today in the States, a truck driver is the most profitable job for a person without higher education. Among truckers, by the way, there are quite a lot of immigrants, including Russians.

— How did you study the audience? Hitchhiker?

- Hitchhiking in the USA at truckers is prohibited - they can be fired from work, and I did not drive long-haul flights. But my friends had such an experience, and they told me that they had a thrill - drivers constantly drink energy drinks, watch movies on the road, so as not to fall asleep, but still, it happens that they get drunk at the wheel.

In general, these are pretty brutal guys - like Stallone in the movie "Struggling," where he played a truck driver and an armwrestler. The film fell through at the box office, but I love it since childhood.

I have a lot of trucker friends on Facebook, and it's always fun to read what they say. When there were presidential elections, no one stoked for Trump as much as they did. I thought that with such support he would definitely become president. I am sure that the majority of our users voted for him.