Silicon Valley is an amazing place, but I’m taking a bet about Russia… или пост о том, как Райaн приехал работать в Островок из Кремниевой долины

С недавнего времени в команде Островка работает Райан, разработчик из Кремниевой долины. Чаще всего его спрашивают, зачем он приехал работать в Россию и как вобще здесь оказался. Он рассказал об этом, о работе в американских стартапах, о работе в Островке, и о том, почему he feesl like there is a shift happening in Russia.

Родом Райан из тундры, из Сент-Пола (штат Миннесота), который очень похож климатическими условиями на Москву. Интерес к компьютерам у него появился еще в детстве, когда он разбирал компьютеры на части и изучал их детали. Программирование Райан начал с qbasic, когда писал программу на VisualBasic для взлома AOL, которая позволяла «выкинуть» любого человека из чата. После окончания средней школы наиболее логичным для Райана, по его словам, было пойти в колледж в Кремниевой Долине, чтобы быть максимально близко к технологиям. Что он и сделал, переехал в долину и поступил в университет Санта-Клары, но уже во время учебы на первом понял, что хочет изучать то, чего еще не знает. Райан получил два образования по специальности экономика и операционный менеджмент и поклялся, что никогда не вернется в технологии. Но это продлилось недолго, и в колледже Райан присоединился к CyberSource.

My first job in was for CyberSource, one of the largest credit card processors in the United States. I then got connected with Derek Dukes, a fellow alumni at Santa Clara University, who was the fourth employee at Yahoo. He was about to start his own company (http://dipity.com), and I joined my senior year in college as employee 4. It was an incredible experience. I would take the 45 minute train from Santa Clara to San Francisco in between classes to go to work. I was writing production code before I took a single computer science class in college, which might be surprising to some. Not a lot of engineers get the chance to work on real products and for real businesses before learning how to write a Fibonacci sequence in C.

Как это случается со старт-апами, закончились деньги и Райан ушел работать в небольшой (тогда) стартап sharethrough.com.

Sharethrough started when Dan Greenberg taught a Stanford class with Dave McClure on how to develop applications on the Facebook platform, shortly after F8. Well, it turns out that the Facebook apps were SO successful they started an advertising company using the Facebook applications as a very large distribution network. The company developed a specialized video network and I was hired to take over the 100+ Facebook apps and completely rewrite them in order to adapt to the new Facebook platform changes. It was one of the most exciting jobs I have ever had. A product manager and I were able to revive the apps and at our best were able generate revenues close to $90k/month in ad revenue. This is example traffic of just ONE of the apps called «Hugs» which, by the way, was copied to Vkontakte shortly after.

I was able to experience the «hockey stick» growth and it was one the hardest operational challenges I have ever faced.

Finally I was introduced to Ashvin Kumar from Blippy (Blippy is a free and safe site that lets you share your purchases and see what your friends are buying online and in real life) through mutual friends and thought the idea was extremely compelling and extremely risky. It's an idea that is ahead of its time. I joined shortly after as employee 5. Over a year ago we decided to focus our energy on other products form what we learned building Blippy. The team has been pretty quiet about what they are working on, but I can tell you one of the products flying under the radar right now is a website called tophatter.com it’s not really public, so hopefully TechCrunch doesn't know how to read Russian :) When we stopped working on Blippy I was able to work 4-5 different products that were essentially experiments. I got the opportunity to help build three iPhone/iPad apps, a daily deals site, and finally, Tophatter, which has been by far the most exciting consumer web products I have ever worked on. Since I have been at Ostrovok I have worked on the newly released mobile version of the website, and now working on exciting promotion with Eviterra.

Еще до приезда в Россию Райан посмотрел отчет Cоmscore о пользователях в российских социальных сетях, увлекся новыми тенденциями, которые происходили в России и через некоторое время переехал работать в Островок.

That being said, I feel like there is a shift happening in Russia. It's exciting. It's a country with 9 time zones and it's becoming clearer that Internet/technology sector is going to be an important link to move Russia forward. Russia has just discovered banking, traveling, and social networking. I don't mean this in a negative way, but technology services in Russia are still very much in their infancy. The reason for this, in my opinion, includes many complicated factors, stemming from the political, cultural, and socioeconomic environment that exists inside Russia. As middle class grows in Russia, and as the walls of the Soviet Union come down, one of the first leisure activities people spend discretionary money on, is travel.

I recognize that there are entirely new emerging behaviors in Russia, and one of the most obvious to me seems to be travel. There is this idea that emerging markets aren't interesting because you aren't really innovating, just copying something that has already worked in the states. Personally, I think that's a bunch of bullshit. There is nothing harder then taking a consumer web, or financial service, and trying to make it work in a foreign market. Why is building a photo sharing app more innovative then trying to engineer solutions to an entirely different market?

In the same way I want to be able to order a taxi with the press of a button, transfer money to a friend, buy a ticket to a local concert, order toothpaste from and have it delivered to me by next day, interact with government, watch movies, play games, find dates, the growing middle class of Muscovites are no different.

This place is an entrepreneurial heaven, I’m not kidding. You just have to be a little crazy to make the jump. Silicon Valley is an amazing place, but I’m taking a bet about Russia, the bet may be wrong, but I’m taking it and not looking back.

Автор: Ostrovok