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Comment by BossingAround | Hacker News Reader

Isn't JetBrains a Russian company that moved their HQ to Prague due to fear of Russian government?

Based on Wikipedia it was founded in the Czech Republic by three Russians in 2000 which makes it a Czech company just as much as Tesla is an American company (rather than South African).

edit: Fixed founding date, coffee hasn't kicked in yet

They weren't founded in 2010, but in 2000.

I was a bit confused for a moment, because I distinctly remember using either IntelliJ or RubyMine in 2008.

I had no idea they were a Czech company with Russian founders though. Good to hear not everything comes from SV.

Ooops, fixed, thanks.

As I understood it Tesla was founded by Americans and later Musk bought in.

> Tesla was founded (as Tesla Motors) on July 1, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in San Carlos, California ... A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five (Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk and Straubel) to call themselves co-founders

Well, SpaceX isn't exactly considered "Africa's Space Programme" either. (But Jetbrains is surely far more Russian than SpaceX is South African)

>"...Tesla is an American company (rather than South African)"

Difference being that Tesla does not keep their core team in South Africa.

No, not due to fear. It's just somewhat easier to sell their products using a EU based legal entity. Another example would be Yandex, registered in the Nethelands.

JetBrains main dev offices are in St Petersburg, Moscow, Novosibirsk.

The Czech Republic wasn’t part of the EU in 2000.

Well, it was "a bit" closer to EU than Russia :)

I've never met JetBrains dev who wasn't Russian, and I've met a few (all really smart).

It's just marketing & taxes (I assume).

Everything else is in St.Petersburg. Not too long ago they even bought[1] hotel complex for their office.

Now they are building another business center[2] near by.

[1] https://vc.ru/office/83175-ofis-jetbrains-v-sankt-peterburge [2] https://nsp.ru/5683-mozgi-sobirayutsya-u-gazproma

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