Peter and I had the privilege of visiting a new startup incubator in Kazan while we were visiting our office in Russia this week.  They invited us to do a presentation and we did a talk called “How to compete with Silicon Valley from Russia” with a focus on early stage startups and perspective from the incubator/accelerator ecosystem in the US.  We started by answering the red herring title of the talk… don’t try to be Silicon Valley, build a great startup culture in Kazan.  And we drew a lot of parallels to what we’ve been focused on building in New Orleans.  Here’s my favorite “quote” from the talk:

«Мы любим стартапы! У вас, в России, есть прекрасные инженеры, прекрасные программисты, и мы рады тренировать начинающих бизнесменов, рады им помогать», – считает  Крис Шульц.

” We love startups! Do you, in Russia, there are excellent engineers, excellent programmers, and we are happy to train novice businessmen are happy to help them “- says Chris Schultz.

It has been fascinating to watch the startup ecosystem emerge in Kazan.  The IT Park is a beautiful facility that has opened with a lot of government support.  Of course, the energy is in the grass roots, and the collaboration thats emerging on the ground between Flatstack and the many spinoffs created by former employees is really exciting.

Slides and video of our talk below. We borrowed a lot of ideas from Dave McClure, Paul Graham, and Brad Feld, so thanks to them.

While Chris and Peter are here in Kazan we’ve been talking about everything and it was very exciting to see Chris Schultz on the CNN:

It’s good to have you all here!

I’ve been having a great time over here with Oleg, Alex, Timur and the whole Flatsourcing Kazan team. We’re working really hard building some great plans for growth and from time to time we’re stopping to eat.

Congratulations to the whole Flatsourcing team in Kazan. Two weeks ago they spent the weekend moving tables, chairs computers and furniture to set up in expanded office space in our building in Kazan.

We’ve been growing fast this year, and the new space is going to give us continued capacity to grow. This is an exciting time for everyone involved.

It’s been a great team effort over the last couple months as we’ve integrated new clients and worked through internal growth (like new office space) while while maintaining our high standards for client service. It’s been stressful but exciting.

Congrats to the whole Flatsourcing - RU team on the new offices. RoR development ninjas looking for a great job in Kazan should contact us. We’re hiring.

PS: Check out the cool office layouts that our lead designer Alex did. These are the actual office layouts.