Igor Shoyfot, startup and investor from Silicon Valley



    A very lively interview with Igor Scheufot. Igor lives in San Francisco, created 10 startups: Epsilon Games, Fotki.Com, TMT Investments and others. Now he is engaged in a new startup, investing in the TMT Investments fund, and also teaches at UC Berkeley University of California. He started the project Fotki.Com with his co-founder Dmitry in the late 90s with the idea that sooner or later people will start to keep their photos on the Internet. The guys were one of the first to come up with tools for promotion with various viral mechanisms.


    Hello Igor. Can you talk about what you do and how you came here in San Francisco?
    With great pleasure. Born in Siberia, grew up mainly in Moscow. He spent 12 years in New York, a year and a half in his beloved city of Boston. Three years ago, at the insistence of my friend and Fotki.Com partner Dima Don, he moved to San Francisco and has been happy ever since.
    Now I'm working on my 11th startup. And before that, two successful projects can be noted: one - Epsilon Games, a large gaming portal on microsoftworld.tv, the other - Fotki.Com. And now, together with very nice people, we are engaged in seed and venture investments in TMT Investments.

    Tell us about your Fotki.Com project.
    How did you start it? What difficulties did you encounter? And how did you manage to overcome everything skillfully?

    Basically, we overcame everything very ineptly. And now, looking back, I think that a handful of those barriers through which we tried to jump and clung there with claws, shoes, tails - were not the same barriers. They jumped in the wrong direction, not so fled.
    But, probably, honest startups do not say: "We moved from one success to the second."
    The project was started back in '98 as a hobby, by my very good friend, Dima Don, whom I have known for more than 15 years, and then I joined. We made one of the most photo-sharing sites out of it - several million users, millions of revenues, large B2B clients: Telecom-Italy, Telecom-Argentina and other companies.
    And from success: we were able to grow and were always profitable (profitable), we never raised a penny of money from anywhere.
    From failures: we, unfortunately, lived on the East Coast (the western coast of the USA). Guys, don’t live on the East Coast. Move here to the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s warm, good, nice people, seagulls, pelicans, water, sea food, wonderful girls. And we made a mistake. It was necessary to move here many years ago. And then there would be neither flickers nor phthobakers. But we did not.
    We created several growth mechanisms whose names we did not know at that time. “Viral mechanisms”, when our clients themselves would drag other customers. And so we have grown from zero to several million people. They built quite sensible business processes.

    How did you get the idea for this startup?
    And how did you get started?

    Ah, the beginning was funny. Dima, who is a very good friend of mine, bought a completely amazing camera for himself with crazy money.
    It was the end of the 90s. It cost about 2 thousand dollars.
    Resolution was about one and a half megapixels. And Dima began to rush with her and tell everyone that the future is in digital photo. Everyone, including me, said: “Yes, okay, what are you loading? Why is all this necessary? ” And he had a cool vision (point of view), and, over time, he convinced me and the others.
    I convinced that the photo will be digital, and people will not send them by e-mail, but they will just keep somewhere “on the Internet”. And they will share links to these albums.
    And first, Dima started in a completely amazing way. He just at work at his desk hid the server quietly from the bosses. The bosses found out about this, but allowed him to continue to keep the server.
    Our project began to grow, and we made hundreds of thousands and millions of tens and hundreds of users.
    Our main difficulty was that there were already projects, like ours, thinking about the same as us.
    Just like the iPad is far from the very first tablet. There was a lot before him. The iPhone is far from the first smart phone.
    But someone ultimately succeeds in doing so in such a way that users “drag themselves on so much” that they just send it to each other and say: “Guys, this is high!”.
    And, in general, without false modesty, I’ll say that we did enough high for that time, for the end of the 90s.
    And, probably, for the beginning of the 2000s we also made a lot of goodies.
    We made albums that could be protected with a password, folders, a lot of very interesting things that were not there, and still aren't even there.

    What important lessons did you learn from this startup experience, in addition to moving to the Bay Area?
    By the way, this is the very first and most important lesson.
    Guys, don’t listen to anyone, drop everything, move to the Bay Area.
    Everything here is so high that you will succeed.
    And even if you do not succeed, this is also completely normal. Those who try are respected here.
    And even now, as an investor, when I talk to people who pitch, (a short speech describing a startup that is given to an investor in order to get an investment) is something, I see a huge contrast. New York or Boston are completely different, not to mention other countries.
    No offense to any of those who live there. I love New York very much, I love Boston very much. But even the attitude of investors there is completely different. This is probably the most important thing.

    As for the tips, and why something comes out or doesn’t work out:
    The more mistakes you make, the more you learn something.
    I have such a proverb, I myself came up with (in English):
    “Few things are as misleading as your own successes.” (“Few things are as deceitful as their own successes.”)
    So, the first thing is to be in the right place.
    Second, you must be with the people you love.
    If you are working with some kind of people in a startup that you don’t get along with on a personal level, then it’s better, as they say, to step back.
    Probably, as in marriage, the matter is in the relationship.
    And the third point, he probably very much relates to these places.
    Do not be afraid of investors. In fact, investors are very cool guys. In addition to money, they can open you many doors, but they need to be carefully selected.
    So that there are those people with whom you are pleased to communicate, with whom you are pleased to work together, who will really help you as partners.
    And fourth, the most important thing: whatever you do, the most important thing is not a product. The most important thing is growth.

    We want to motivate our Russian startups and businessmen so that they create more businesses, so that Moscow also flourishes.
    That is, in fact, our goal is not to “publicize” San Francisco and the Bay Area.
    Our goal is to make Moscow even cooler than San Francisco.
    What ideas do you have about improving the “climate” and innovation infrastructure in Russia?
    You can also share your opinion on what is happening in Russia recently.

    I love Moscow as a city of my youth. Very important is attitude (attitude, approach).
    This applies not only to Moscow, but also to New York or Boston, which I also love.
    It’s important that the mood is: “Screw it, let's do it!” (Drop everything, take it and do it.)
    There are a lot of smart, talented people!
    It amazes me that when someone doesn’t succeed here, no one ever cries out. No one ever says: “Oh, rascals, they did wrong. They stole it. "
    As Picasso said: “Talented artists copy, brilliant artists steal.”
    Now, if everyone starts to infect each other with such an attitude that, guys, they say, let's do it, no one is the boss, no one is subordinate. All along, all together, all help each other. I think this is the most important thing.
    Everything else: investments, distribution channels, virality, selling companies - all this will work.
    If there is a society in which people relate to each other positively and with respect, everything will work out.

    What can you say to Russian startups to motivate them?
    The most important wish is this: sometimes you need to step back a step, sit down, think, try to understand and weigh everything.
    Many, especially those who have already succeeded, are sure that they are doing their job correctly. But there is always something that can be done better. And the most “stellar” moment of each person occurs when a person thinks: “What did I do so, what did I do wrong.” And just, as it were, trying to weigh his life, to realize.
    I had such a moment. I sat and thought: “Damn, you're over 40 years old.”
    Julius Caesar had such a wonderful diary entry when he participated in the Gallic wars: "Damn it, I’m already under 30 years old." And for ancient Rome it was like 60. “I haven’t done anything yet, I’m a little official there, what will happen to me?” He had a moment of realization that something needs to be done.
    Julius Caesar would not have been so famous if he
    hadn’t once sat somewhere in what is now Spain, with an open amphora of good Greek wine,
    and didn’t say: “Something I'm doing wrong.” The main advice: sit down, look at yourself, at your partners, at what you are doing, at your business, and think.

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