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.

Agenda: Institute for the Future, PayPal/ eBay Inc., Dialect Inc., Namo Media

Tuesday morning we arrived in Palo Alto and got ... to the future. This happened thanks to Sean Ness, Director of Business Development at the Institute for the Future. Institute for the Future is an independent, nonprofit organization with a long history (founded in 1968), which deals with research, development of global forecasts and modeling of the future with their subsequent graphical visualization. Three main areas of research and forecasts at Institute for the Future are technology, health and organizations. The Institute regularly publishes a variety of reports and maps from which you can easily find out what awaits us decades later in different areas of our lives. Many companies from the Fortune500 list use the services of Institute for the Future, in order to identify trends, prevent potential problems, and to anticipate the needs of the future (foresight - insight - action). At a meeting with Sean, we talked about the trends, technologies that affect the quality of life, and, of course, eco technologies as one of the most promising and popular trends of our time.

Agenda: Scaale Group, Pavel Cherkashin, Sprayable, Dinner with mentors

A new and active week of our business tour started at the very heart of San Francisco, on the Market Street in one of the Scaale Group offices with hospitable and welcoming Kaushal Chokshi and Marta Emerson. Scaale Group is a venture resource group that helps startups and small businesses develop through investment, sales and talent attraction. The group consists of 7 companies that join 300 employees from 10 countries together. Today Scaale leads over 100 customers from Europe, USA and Latin America. A startup or a young company can get the knowledge, expertise, entering new markets strategy and assistance in its implementation, when contacting Scaale Group. Cross Border Angels is a particularly noteworthy organization within Scaale Group companies, which joins over 150 business angels and investors from USA, Asia and Europe. CBA specializes on cross-border deals, constantly developing its network and embracing new markets.

Day off

The first day off on the tour. A great opportunity to enjoy the ocean, wonder around the wonderful streets of San Francisco, admire the beauty of the Golden Gate Bridge, try oysters at the seafront or… hold a number of business meetings arranged during the turbulent working days – exactly what some of our teams have chosen. Well done!

Agenda: Vitaly Golomb, Igor Shoifot, AVentures

The day began with a meeting with Happy Farm's Board advisor, a serial entrepreneur, designer, startup mentor and co-producer of Startup AddVenture Vitaly Golomb. An overcast  Saturday morning in San Francisco was suddenly replaced by a hot summer day, which awaited us in the valley. The office of Vitaly's company, Keen Systems, is located in a pretty office center in San Mateo. Like the nost of residential areas in the valley, the city is surrounded by greenery and flowers and its cleanliness and tidiness are pleasing to the eye. Vitaly Golomb, who was born in Ukraine, moved to the United States with his family at an early age. His current company, Keen Systems, provides cloud-based solutions for the printing industry.

Agenda: Madeline Duva, Marvin Liao 500 Startups, Roman Kostochka Coursmos 

Not having time to recover after a busy day at the conference, our teams have already met with Happy Farm mentor Madeline Duva the following morning. Madeleine is the perfect candidate for the start of a long series of workshops and meetings that we had planned for the next two weeks in the States. Madeline has 20 years of entrepreneurship experience. She serves on the supervisory boards of numerous startups in the mobile industry (such as Drop, Eyefi, mPerpetuo, Phone Halo, SplashTop), mentors Founder Institute, Happy Farm, Highway1 accelerators' startups and regularly advises hundreds of startups around the world.At a meeting with Madeleine participants of the tour had a great opportunity to pitch their projects, get feedback and answers to their questions regarding business models, technology development, starting a startup in the valley and promotion of the product on the US market.

Agenda: Ukraine Tech Gem conference

With almost 10,000 km behind us, our big and friendly group – this time it's 25 people from 13 teams – successfully landed at San Francisco airport. Taking the first breath you can tell that the ocean is close by. The gusty wind refreshes a body tired after a long flight and queues at passport control. However, not everyone can yet sense that it's the wind of change.

There is almost no time to look around. Ukraine Tech Gem conference at Hyatt Regency San Francisco is ahead, which means – a lot of useful information and new contacts. The time has come to meet potential clients, mentors and investors, give out your business cards and test out your pitches, previously prepared in Kyiv, on American audience. No buildup and no postponing «for later». Full speed ahead!

After breakfast we drove to San Mateo to meet Vitaly Golomb at the Keen offices. He introduced himself and explained what Keen does: it is the first cloud-based services that allow companies to build and deploy an e-commerce driven web presence.

He talked about raising angel and seed investments and then raising Series A. He also talked a bit about investments and funds in Europe and about the lack of angel investments and seed investments.

On Day 4 we drive down to San Mateo where will have our next two meetings. 

The first meeting is with Pavel Cherkashin, one of the leading business angels and early-stage private investors in Russia. In the past he has started and exited three companies in Russia: Actis Systems, a web design company; AdWatch, an online ad agency and Sputnik Labs, a provider of CRM in Russia. He also worked as a general manager for Adobe Systems, Siebel Systems and Microsoft Online Services.

On day three, we drove down to the famous Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, well known for its concentration of venture capital companies. We were there to meet Jim Smith, General Partner at Mohr Davidow, an early stage VC fund. MD does seed, series A and series B investments, sometimes also later rounds. They are especially interested in consumer and enterprise software.