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Safari Diary. Sept’24. Day 7

Agenda: Julian Zegelman, Robert Shwentker, Tim Draper, Sasha Johnson, Demo Day SF

Another interesting and busy day in the United States began with a meeting with Julian Zegelman, partner of Velton-Zegelman law firm. The subject of the meeting was legal basics for startup, how to open a bank account and a company in the United States, how law firms work with startups in the United States – specialties and conditions.

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Later we met up with Robert Shwentker, Developer & Startup Relations @ PayPal, who held a workshop on the effective use of Twitter in business communications for us.

In the CIS, Twitter is definitely gaining momentum, especially lately. Thus, the number of Ukrainian Twitter users increased by 1.5 times over the past year and a half and now stands at more than 430 thousand users. However, many people still underestimate the value of twitter and its use for both personal and business communications.

Robert told us how to work with Twitter: how to develop your personal page and company page, attract new users, tools and applications to improve performance when working in Twitter.

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Our next stop is San Mateo, Draper University of Heroes and a meeting with the incredible Tim Draper, founder and managing partner of Draper Fisher Juvertson venture capital fund. Tim Draper is a venture capitalist in the third generation. In 1985, he created Draper Fisher Jurvetson company, which invested in projects such as Baidu, Skype, Hotmail, Tesla Motors and many others. Now Draper’s company has affiliated offices in 30 cities around the world and over $ 7 billion in capital commitments. In 2008, Tim Draper was recognized as a "Number one venture capitalist”.

Tim shared his experiences, telling what he is guided by when investing in projects nobody believes in. Advised us on how to present the product to the investor. Spoke about the latest market development trends of technology products. He also touched upon the issue of Bitcoins, which he has high hopes for. It was a very inspiring meeting.

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After meeting Tim, we had a very interesting meeting with Sasha Johnson, Managing Director DFJ-branded affiliate - DFJ VTB Aurora. Sasha told us about the history of development of DFJ fund, its portfolio companies, the criteria based upon which the investor makes a decision in favor of a startup, how to properly execute the pitch for the investor and what is necessary for a startup to attract investment from DFJ.

The day turned out to be very busy, but it didn't end there. We had Startup House Demo Day ahead of us in San Francisco as well as an exciting FIRST pitching session for our startups in front of the startup community. Pitches, best pitch competition, beer and snacks, communication with the local community - the evening was a success!

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