Remembering Russia
It’s been almost a decade since my first visit to Russia, but I’ve been thinking about my experiences there a lot lately given what all is going on in the world and Russia’s impact in today’s global innovation economy. There was a period of time when I spent 7-10 nights per month in Russia so I thought I’d write a bit about some of my experiences there. In case you’re wondering, da, ya gavaryu nimnoga paruski (excuse the phonetic spelling, I don’t have Cyrillic fonts installed).
I grew up a military brat in the Reagan-era believing that the U.S.S.R. was the “bad guy” and was a big fan of James Bond, Tom Clancy, and other espionage genre content focused on the Soviets so it was with a bit of both trepidation and intrigue that I took my first trip there in ‘99 on behalf of Intel during an acquisition we were in the middle of in Nizhny Novgorod (f.k.a. Gorky). I returned from Nizhny feeling a bit confused — either my expectations had been too low or something in my thinking was amiss. I would go on to discover it was a combination of both as I developed many friendships in Russia and a great sense of respect for the Russian people I encountered during my travels there. For example, I was in Moscow during Reagan’s funeral procession and was actually the only American in a room full of Russians and was surprised to find that I was the only one not crying during the procession while watching it on TV (more posts on this incident later).
In addition to Nizhny, I traveled extensively throughout Russia and spent time in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Akademorodok, Sarov (f.k.a. Arzamas-16…the closed nuclear city akin to Los Alamos, New Mexico), and surrounding regions. I found the people to be compassionate yet dour (some more so than others) and managed to put on roughly thirty pounds thanks to palmeni, vodka, and Georgian wines. In total, I was involved in four acquisitions, a couple of investments, and a litany of other corporate/economic/emerging market development activities there and spent forty-something weeks “in-country” over a six year period.
Toward the end of my Intel career, I participated in a number of “Russia related” symposiums and conferences such as the annual U.S. - Russia Investment Symposium (see the picture below and see if you can point me out) and learned a great deal about Russia as well as myself.
While it my time in Russia was at least partially responsible for my decision to leave Intel, it was simply a matter of being away from my family rather than anything else. I have nothing but truly fond memories of Russia its people. To put that statement in perspective, during my first trip to Novosibirsk, I exited the plane wearing only a suit (thanks to the last minute nature of the trip and my re-routing from Cologne, Germany)…and walked down the steps of the plane to the tarmac in -47 degrees Celsius and swear I could hear the blood in my ears crystallizing before I reached the tarmac.
I have many more thoughts here, but I’ll save them for later posts and simply use this post to set the stage. So, why the seemingly sudden musings on Russia? Well, I continue to encounter Russians (or ex-Russians) in my profession to the extent that there are so many of them in scientific and engineering professions and my career continues to revolve around innovation… so I thought I’d start spending some time on the matter since a number of you have asked about my experiences there over the years and there seems to be a renewed interest in Russia’s VC landscape. I’m not going to share all of my Russian stories here, just those relevant to my profession and Russia’s future impact on the global innovation markets. Until next time, na zdarovye!
