Ours in Silicon Valley: How to Become a Millionaire in the USA - ForumDaily
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Ours in Silicon Valley: how to become a millionaire in the US

Russian Alexander Debelov - the head of Virool startup promoting online video - said TASS about how he became friends with the co-founder of Apple, “stole” a party from Microsoft and became a millionaire in a few years.

Photos: Facebook Alexander Debelov

Alexander Debelov arrived in Silicon Valley with the most ambitious plans: to create a company more than Google. He crossed the United States from the East Coast to the West behind the wheel of a car and stopped for the night at a medium-sized hotel that offered the best discount - the night was quite budget-friendly at $ 100.

In the hall, he noticed a large man with a goatee, who seemed familiar to him. He googled it on his smartphone and was amazed: “It’s Steve Wozniak!” Cult personality of computer geeks around the world, garage colleague of Steve Jobs, creator of the first versions of computers Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), and the co-founder of the company of the same name was slowly leaving the hotel, where he was speaking at a scientific conference. Debelov came up and simply said: “Thank you, Steve, for everything you did!” "You are Russian?" Wozniak asked. “How did you know?!” - the blue-eyed 22-year-old guy from Rostov-on-Don was so sincerely surprised that he made the “great Voz” laugh.

They talked for another two hours and finally the inventor invited him to play Segway polo. Alexander didn’t know how to play, but agreed: how can you refuse the man who gave this aristocratic pastime to the valley, replacing horses with democratic wheels? “Don’t worry, I’ll give you my stick,” Steve Wozniak encouraged the newcomer.

“This is how my life in Silicon Valley began. There are no closed castes of billionaires here; you meet and make friends with cult characters familiar from books and films. Looking at them, you begin to believe that you yourself can make your dreams come true,” recalls Debelov.

The valley lives with dreams

We are sitting in his transparent glass office in San Francisco’s financial district, where there is no one but a boss on Saturday. From the height of the 21-th floor, there is a dizzying panorama of the white-blue city, on the inner wall of the conference room behind the general director the word is written in almost meter letters dream - a dream.

“The valley lives with dreams,” explains the businessman. “Here you can create billion-dollar companies in three years.” For example, Apurva Mehta huddled on my sofa, and now he is the owner of a “unicorn” Instacart (at the rate Fortune, startup is worth $2 billion). We're starting from scratch here."

The beginning, in spite of a landmark meeting with Vos, was not simple: a startup Virool went through the traditional tables of enthusiasts with empty pockets and bright ideas. The company was started together with a St. Petersburg resident Vladimir Gurgov in a rented apartment, because having a garage that was also classical for local inventive culture seemed to be a luxury.

“When I went to the valley, I naively thought: I’ll put together a presentation, show investors the product, they will believe that I can change the world, and they will start writing checks. Energy was boiling inside me, I pitched to twenty investors, they patted me on the shoulder - “well done, keep me updated!” No one said no, but no one gave money either,” Debelov recalls.

The day came when all the savings disappeared and there was nothing to pay for housing. Alexander turned to his parents for help. His family loaned him $3, but on condition: he had to give up the idea of ​​his own business and find a “normal job.” His family gave him a month to do this.

“It was a time when I called myself an idiot and cursed the day I went to Silicon Valley. Even those closest to me didn’t believe in me. And yet I did not give up. Not knowing how to sell a product, I simply called marketing companies, offered our services to the managers who were responsible for the video, sent a presentation... After 25 rejected deals, one person responded and placed an order for $20 thousand. We were saved,” says the guy.

Photos: Facebook Alexander Debelov

How much does it cost to “blow up the internet”?

The pursuit of clicks and likes, which became the measure of popularity in society due to the development of social networks, has created an extensive shadow business. Clicks and likes today are sold by many - this is a gray, and even criminal sale of traffic using imitating humans of robots, creating the illusion of success. But bots are not people, they will not pick up advertising for the promoted service or product.

“You can buy a million clicks and not get a single client. Major advertisers have lost 34-40% of their traffic over the past year due to pirate schemes - programs using bots,” explains the creator Virool the wrong side of clickability.

His company, among others, once came under spam filters Googletightened sanctions against those who wind views on YouTube.

“Emotionally it was very difficult, and our sales fell. But we did not despair, but began to act: we found ways to Google and explained who we are and what we do. The problem was resolved successfully,” assures the developer and high-tech seller.

“Do you want me to give you a million views?” Alexander Debelov, wearing a T-shirt with this inscription, arrived at a major marketing conference in New York five years ago. He couldn’t afford the entrance fee to the professional forum, but he managed to get a free student pass. He was just hyping Virool, realizing that the T-shirt with its own logo will not catch anyone’s eye.

“I understood that a slogan reflecting the essence of my startup was a chance to attract attention. And it worked - professionals read, stopped and said: yes, I’m interested in this. This was my cheapest advertising campaign,” shares Debelov.

Get out to promote the brand in a more than a modest budget had differently, but always with humor. To the party MicrosoftFor example, a start-up came in pre-made penny carnival glasses with backlighting - they love them in nightclubs. Only on the glasses was written I love virool. Guests at the evening loved the eye-catching glasses being given away for free, and soon hundreds of people were dancing and clapping with an illuminated advertisement for the humble startup. “The party was ours!” the boss of a reputable office laughs, recalling the very recent past, showing off those same glasses.

Debelov started selling the service with just $ 10 so that any video creator could try how it works, then switched to large packages, for example for City Bank or Bank of America. For $ 100, the platform ensures that the video is seen by a thousand people, a demonstration in front of an audience Forbes or CNN will cost more. Thousands of 75 videos have already passed through a startup, one of the most successful videos - Turkish Airlines — has been viewed 136 million times. So, wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Do you want me to give you a million views?” at the New York conference, Alexander did not lie.

Photos: Facebook Alexander Debelov

Investors queued up

The first business angel (private investor) Virool became a noodle seller. Accidentally met with Ryan Tu, Debelov interested in promoting video ads in YouTube.

“I didn’t hang noodles on my ears. Ryan called that evening. We met on Thursday, sent him the information on Friday, to be honest, not too hopeful of success. On Sunday he came to my house with all the signed documents and a check for $50 thousand. I felt like I had drawn a lucky lottery ticket!” he recalls.

The noodle seller became a real rescuing angel. Then the second and third investors appeared, and then the project got into the business accelerator. And Combinator - sales from month to month increased two to three times. At the graduation presentation Virool in the accelerator to Alexander Debelov lined up, without exaggeration, the queue of investors.

“It seems to me that our business angels invest in people - in a sense, we are changing the world, making it better,” says Debelov.

Now he is the owner of a large company with branches in New York, London, St. Petersburg, and rotates staff once a year: sends Americans for a month or two to St. Petersburg, and causes Russians to Silicon Valley to refresh perceptions and destroy stereotypes.

Debelov admits that he loves rituals. Every morning, when he wakes up, he says thank you to fate for living in Silicon Valley, for having a company, and for having his team working with him. “I selected the first hundred very carefully, because no matter how many employees I have in the future, the first hundred will preserve and spread our corporate culture to thousands,” he is confident.

Debelov loves his office - with a gong for announcing a big deal and a seating area with soft toys, with a rocking chair on the balcony, from where you can look at the San Francisco financial district from a bird's eye view. There is a sleeping compartment here, it has a similarity of a rocket with sound and light insulation, where the earned IT specialist can lie down until the morning. Most often, this earned is the owner himself. Here he spent the night before our Saturday meeting.

“Recently, a family friend invited me to visit, his wife set the table and served dishes that she had prepared with her own hands. I felt like I was electrocuted - how long have I not eaten normal food?! I spend little on material things; the main expense column is travel,” says Debelov.

And of course, the travel of a startup founder is not like a swimming pool at a five-star hotel. Now Alexander is preparing for an unusual marathon - to cover a distance of 250 km in the sparsely inhabited Amazon jungle in seven days. Extreme sports don’t scare him: “I want to test myself. In the jungle it’s almost like working: you work hard, you don’t know a lot of things, you learn as you go and push yourself to move up.”

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