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Comment by simplegeek | Hacker News Reader

If they've good hackers in abundance then why there are no emerging startups? Don't they look at the business side of technology ;) Just curious? Can anyone share some insights about startup scene in Russia?

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For the record there is an OpenCoffee club in Russia: http://opencoffee.ru/. There are no upcoming events probably because everyone is too busy to meet. :)

There are also a number of startup-style conferences in Moscow, the next one being RIT: Russian Internet Technologies: http://rit2008.ru/ (all in Russian, ha ha, because that's their core market)

MS and Intel are scouting Russian hackers and startups with the intent of supporting the startup culture as well: http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2008/03/14/043.html

Many of them leave and create startups else where, for example Google or Parallels.

Then there are startups you probably know about, like Art Lebedev: http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus Most of their startups target the Russian market, for example, Google is in 2nd place among Russian search engines, trailing yandex.ru.

Art Lebedev isn't a startup and has nothing to do with skilled programming. He's good at courtshiping rich companies instead.

There's no friendly start-up culture in Russia, and it's hard to get visas for the US.

no investors. russia is like pg's example of pittsburgh in that essay about making a silicon valley. although, there are rich people in russia, but they don't know tech; they get rich from crime (drugs), oil, or knowing the right people in the kgb^H^Hremlin.

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