1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach of One Way Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask the question in the context of non-Indian and non-Israeli founders. We also talk to a lot of European investors. One of the things I’m hearing is, there’s a real optimism right now in France. Paris is the story of 2017 as one of the investors based in London quoted recently to me.

What are you seeing? Where are the big pockets of immigrant founders that you are encountering? Cultures have biases. India benefits from the fact that there there’s a very big pool of IT services and offshore companies that have been based in India. There’s a very large trained workforce out of India. A large portion of that is here as well. The bridge has developed over a 20 to 30 year period.

Let’s take the Italians. The Italians have a completely different style of entrepreneurship. The Italians have been successful in luxury fashion. The French have been successful in luxury fashion.

Semyon Dukach: I don’t disagree with you. Everything you’re saying is true, but we just don’t think in those terms. We look at every founder as an individual and we’re looking for extraordinary people with big dreams who want to change the world. We don’t care where they come from. We like the immigrant experience because it frees them from the default of being loyal to whatever group they grew up in.

They’ve gone through this transition of finding how to communicate in a different culture where they don’t understand the rules. They still get to a point where they can build their own business. It gives them a big advantage over people who haven’t gone through that experience. I’m sure that there’re more fashion companies in Italy than there are in India and there are all sorts of other things that are true on average but we really just look at the most amazing founders we can find and help them build businesses.

Right now, my partner and I are both based in Boston. That makes us naturally gravitate towards immigrants from other countries to the US. However as an angel, I invested quite a bit in Europe and other places. Looking forward, we intend to create a larger fund with many partners. We want to back immigrants from anywhere to anywhere. We want to back people who leave the United States and move to Paris because they like the lifestyle and want to build a business over there. That will be just as interesting to us over the long term as a French founder who moves to Boston or San Francisco.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you from originally?

Semyon Dukach: I was born in Russia.

Sramana Mitra: Are you well connected in the Russian technology startup network today?

Semyon Dukach: I don’t have any particular ties. I was only 10 years old when I left the Soviet Union. The political scene in Russia is so awful at the moment. It’s a difficult area to work with. I happen to have a lot of connections to Ukraine where a lot of people still speak Russian. I’ve had five or six angel investments in Kiev. My partner, who’s from Brazil, actually spent several years living in Ukraine which is where I met her.

Berlin is interesting. Brazil is interesting. India is extremely interesting to us. We are thinking globally from day one. I would say that we’re almost certainly going to expand outside the US before we add any more presence in the US outside of Boston. Before we go to New York, we’re going to be in Berlin, India, or Kiev.

Sramana Mitra: The charter of the fund allows you to invest outside of the US.

Semyon Dukach: Yes. As an angel, I made about 150 investments all together. Before I took over TechStars in Boston, it was another 50 or so. As an angel, at least two-thirds of all the companies I’ve ever backed were in Boston. I’ve been here since I went to grad school at MIT in 1990. I’ve been here for 27 years. I have investments in Berlin and different places in Europe. I have at least 15 in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Some of the best outcomes do tend to concentrate over there.

Sramana Mitra: The bridge with us is interesting. Our community is full of immigrants of foreigners who are not even immigrants. It’s helpful for our community to get familiar with what you’re thinking is in terms of supporting immigrant founders and international founders in general. Our community would be appealing for you to pay attention to.

Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach of One Way Ventures
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