Russian immigrant startups tell why they moved to the USA

Edition secretmag.ru talks about a new wave of start-up emigration from Russia.

The founder of the educational project Eduson.tv Elena Masolova, investors brothers Daniil and David Lieberman, a participant in the Forbes list of the richest Russians and founder of Svyaznoy Maxim Nogotkov, founder of TrendsBrands Anastasia Sartan, founder of Budista (now Wakie) moved to San Francisco and Silicon Valley Grachik Adzhamyan, former PR director of Mail.Ru Group Ksenia Chabanenko, founder of amoCRM and QSOFT Mikhail Tokovinin.

The list also includes the former restaurant columnist of Afisha, the author of the smart messenger Luka Evgeniya Kuyda, the founders of Coub Anton and Igor Gladkoborodov, the founder of AlterGeo Anton Baranchuk, the founder of the Theories and Practices website and the startup Sweatcoin Danil Perushev, the founder of the Amplifr service Nat Gadzhibalaev, head Stampsy Sergey Poido, former Digital October curator Maria Adamyan and many others.

According to estimates, Nikolai Davydov, who moved here a year ago from Gagarin Capital, moved about a thousand people, and the flow does not run low.

Sergey Poydo

Every morning Sergey go out Stampsy wakes up, leaves the two-room apartment he rents with Evgenia Kuyda for $4000 between them, and goes to the Galvanize co-working space, located in the South of Market, a typical industrial neighborhood where local factories were converted into lofts in the 1980s and 90s.

Here are Airbnb, Dropbox and Pinterest.

“This is an opportunity to learn something new and find people who can help you in some way with the project - a kind of networking. In Russia there are two or three such events a week, but here there are dozens every day,” says Poido.

Meetups replaced parties for him: “The first few months here you miss the Moscow rhythm. Then you get used to it. There is a special term FoMO (fear of missing out, “fear of missing something”), which describes a big city resident’s fear of being taken out of context. In Moscow, you should be in the spotlight so that they don’t forget about you, and in San Francisco, your project should be in the spotlight.”

Having gotten used to it, Poido realized that moving was one of the best decisions in his life. He demonstrates the confidence that if his business fails, he can try to get a job in the company. Poido claims that he was not afraid of moving - it’s difficult to be the first, and friends were waiting for him in San Francisco, ready to help with documents and finding housing: Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda, the Liberman brothers.

Move

Entrepreneurs from Russia began actively moving to San Francisco two years ago, confirms Anna Dvornikova, president of the Ambar business association: “As soon as the conflict with Ukraine began, I actually worked as a free consultant on immigration issues - I was always recommending some lawyers, helping with paperwork."

Investor Pavel Cherkashin believes that one of the reasons why startups choose California is the “seeds of immigration” available here. “These are the people who arrive first and gather a crowd around them,” he explains. “They are like guides for others.” When a critical mass of such people reaches, the rest begin to be attracted to them.”

In San Francisco, a critical mass began to form in 2014. By the fall, Russia had left more than in any other year of Vladimir Putin’s reign, Bloomberg considered, citing Rosstat.

By the end of 2014, 308 people left Russia—475% more than the year before. Mostly labor migrants left. 65 people moved to the United States.

“What is a thousand people on a national scale? This is nothing at all,” says Nikolai Davydov. — But what is a thousand entrepreneurs who left? This is a big deal, it’s several million jobs, a lot of taxes and innovation,” he says.

Anton Generalov

I decided to leave a year ago - our Industrial Investors fund wanted to strengthen its presence in Silicon Valley, and in addition to this, I wanted to get an MBA at California State University. We currently have three funds in the Valley: Nano Dimension ($150 million), Industrial Investors and the new Stereo Capital fund for $225 million.

Initially, we wanted to create our own fund in the Valley, but we realized that with local experienced partners and their connections we would be able to achieve great success. We began our search and went out to our current partners who were also looking for co-investors: Mohr Davidow Ventures partner Jim Smith, a man with vast VC experience and extensive connections in the Valley, and former vice-president of Mail.Ru, a successful entrepreneur and business angel Dmitry Dakhnovsky long lived in the United States. We are faced with many tasks, it’s no secret that there are many funds in the Valley, but we have something to offer. Our LPs are not only from Russia, but from Asia and Europe, we are a global foundation.

Nikolay Davydov

While still working at the iTech Capital fund, he often visited the Valley - he flew here three or four times a year, but at the end of 2014 he decided to leave iTech Capital to launch his own investment fund, Gagarin Capital.

“Since they knew me here before moving, it was easier for me,” explains Davydov. — So far, our money is mostly Russian, but we always work with investors about whose capital there is not a shadow of doubt. Although, in fact, it’s not so important whose money you have, as who you are. A good example is Yuri Milner. He started with the money of Usmanov, an oligarch close to power. You can't imagine anything worse for the IT business. But Yuri Borisovich built an excellent reputation, showed the entire Valley how smart, efficient, charming he is, and made several hundred deals, each of which is worthy of a separate article or book.” In March 2016, Davydov himself also contributed to a high-profile deal in the Valley - the sale of the Belarusian application MSQRD to Facebook itself. The transaction amount was not disclosed, but according to some estimates, it was at least $20 million.

No less difficult a task than gaining the trust of locals in the Valley is finding housing. “You sit for hours on the classifieds site craigslist, press F5 every 15 minutes and see what’s new there,” recalls Davydov. “When you see an offer, you immediately write a letter to the agent or home owner and include a presentation with family photos explaining why you deserve to live here. I indicated everything: my awards, a list of publications about me, all my wife’s degrees and my daughter’s medals, and attached a photo of my dog.” After that, you need to come to an open house to see the house. It’s worth arriving about two hours in advance, since besides you there will be five or six other couples in the queue.

“Then everyone pays $50 to have their credit score checked. Russians who have moved do not have a credit score, but they still have to pay 50 bucks. A self-employed Russian with a dog without a credit score like me is just like Mexican Illegal sounds After going through all the procedures, you hope that the owner will let you go to bidding for the house. I saw one house that gave up for $ 6200 a month, we offered $ 7500 for it, and it went for $ 9800. ”

In order to rent a house in Los Altos Hills, Davydov took almost three months. During this time, he managed to live in hotels, friends and apartments, shot through Airbnb. Before I got a place to live, I had to look at 56 houses, get three offers and finally stop at one.

“I realized that the course that Russia has chosen for itself now is not very good for the future of my children. I was going to send them to study in the UK, where I studied myself, or in the States. I didn’t want to send my children alone, so I was mentally prepared to live in two houses, like people live, for example, between Moscow and London. As a result, our whole family ended up in the USA,” says Davydov.

Maria Adamyan

In parallel with the search for housing, Russians moving here go through another important procedure - obtaining a visa. One of the most popular visas among new immigrants is the O-1. This is a three-year work visa intended for foreigners with “extraordinary abilities.”

To prove your extraordinaryness, you will have to provide documents confirming that the candidate has international or national awards, his publications or publications about him in the media, a dozen letters of recommendation, experience in organizations with a high reputation and much more.

“When people moved here, they mostly did some kind of work visa, such as the standard H1B. But some time ago, quotas were introduced for such visas, and it became very difficult to obtain them,” Maria Adamyan, a former curator of Digital October and organizer of TechCrunch Moscow, who lives in Palo Alto, explains to me. “O-1 is more difficult to complete (it can take months to collect the correct dossier), but you are not competing with anyone, you are considered separately, and if you convincingly build a case, you can prove that almost any person is extraordinary.”

The easiest way, says Adamyan, is for people with an academic degree and scientific publications. Entrepreneurs and venture investors prove their talent differently: “When a person arrives here and unexpectedly hires a PR person to help with articles in specialized publications, it becomes clear: he is preparing documents for O-1. I noticed how last year several people suddenly began to write their own blogs and publish texts about investments and startups in the media. Now almost all of them live and work here on O-1 visas.”

Anastasia Sartan

Life in California is attractive not only because of venture capital money, professionals, and great ideas. It's comfortable, sunny and close to the ocean. Russians prefer to live in the suburbs. It is inconvenient to transport a family in San Francisco - the city is often criticized for problems with housing and a huge number of homeless people on the streets. It is believed that the quiet suburb is safer and cleaner. The founder of the independent clothing brand TrendsBrands store, Anastasia Sartan, lives in one of these quiet areas.

“To get home, I take the $15 train to the Valley and back to San Francisco. I pass by places of power - Menlo Park (Facebook office), Palo Alto (Steve Jobs' home) and Mountain View (Google headquarters) - I get off at the Santa Clara stop, take an Uber and a few minutes later find myself at Starbucks "in the town of Los Gatos," she says.

Sartan comes to the meeting with her husband and baby - they always spend Wednesday evenings together. She is wearing a loose vest and a casually thrown multi-colored scarf. “When I moved here, I realized that I didn’t want to sell my one hundred and twenty-fifth unnecessary blouse again,” she says. — I was thinking about what I would like to do in America, I made a list of what was interesting to me, and there was an item bring real value to people. Perhaps this was due to pregnancy - all feelings are heightened, you want to do good for the world.

She found a compromise - she created an Epytom bot (from English “role model”) for Telegram, which once a day sends its subscribers photos of clothing sets selected from 40 basic items.

“In Epytom, I explain how to combine these items, and every day I send subscribers a new look,” says Sartan. — It works like this: you contact the bot, and it advises you which of these 40 things to wear, depending on the weather and other parameters: Hi, today is Wednesday, let's combine wide trousers with sneakers. Perfect wide trousers should be made of natural fabric and look like, — and gives photographic examples of such beautiful combinations.” How the project will make money is still unclear; There are several options - for example, take a percentage from online stores whose product links are sent by Epytom.

Brothers Gladkoborovy

The co-founder of the Coub service, which allows you to make short looped videos, Igor Gladkoborod moved to Los Altos, and his elder brother Anton is still engaged in obtaining a visa and lives in two countries: the United States and Russia. The elder creates, in the opinion of the younger, the chaos - feeding squirrels on the balcony. Squirrels quickly got used to luxury and stayed on the balcony.

We meet with the Gladkoborodovs in a coffee shop, because we would have to stand in line for delicious sandwiches in a neighboring cafe for about 40 minutes - like in any other fashionable public catering establishment in San Francisco. Coub is not profitable and lives off investments - the company has raised $3,5 million; the last $2,5 million was received in 2014 from the Vaizra Capital fund of VKontakte co-founders Lev Leviev and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili. The main income comes from special projects - for example, Coub collaborated with Disney before the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

“On the one hand, things are not great in Russia now, but on the other hand, there has never been much of a startup industry there, so promising projects immediately had to go to other countries,” says Anton Gladkoborodov, looking at the unnaturally bright pitaya dessert. — Technology startups should work for the whole world from the very beginning. That's what we wanted." Coub moved to the USA in April 2015, but a few months later the brothers moved to Dolina, and the developers remained in Moscow: “We are still a technological project. At some point we realized that we needed to be here. New York is more for the media market.

“The nature of immigration has changed: before, when leaving Russia, you burned bridges behind you and lost contact with everyone, committed social suicide, worked whatever you had to. And now professionals, people with cool projects, are leaving the country. We cannot say that we will spend our entire lives in the USA. As long as it is interesting and profitable for us to be in San Francisco, we are here. Then we’ll see.”

See also:

Personal experience. How much is a month of living in California

Catch the tail of the American dream: six stories of people who won the green card

Lottery "Green Card-2017" in questions and answers

Personal Experience: Love and Hate for San Francisco

Personal experience. How we arrived in the United States on a student visa

From the first person: how Muscovite settles in Los Angeles

Personal experience. How I moved to the US

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