Opinions & Interviews

IT investor from USA: Belarus is an amazing place

Matthew Wise

Invitation for IT specialists to work in a company from Silicon Valley is similar to an invitation for actors to star in a Hollywood movie. This means prestige, recognition of professional achievements and new opportunities for further growth. As information about Belarus and its IT specialists gradually spread around the world, the interest of Silicon Valley residents is also on the rise. Just over a month ago, BelTA interviewed Alex Newman, an American businessman from San Francisco. Matthew Wise, the head and co-founder of Archipelo, another IT company from San Francisco, has recently come to Minsk. His company specializes in artificial intelligence. Earlier, Matthew Wise took part in the launch of the Cisco cloud platform, was a resident entrepreneur at Bionic, a venture capital strategy and investment firm, and advised on new product development for a Fortune 500 company, including Microsoft. He has founded several startups in biotechnology, digital media and data infrastructure.

- Matthew, how did you know about Belarus?

I have developed relationships with some Belarusian IT entrepreneurs who visited San Francisco. We became friends and I learned a little bit more about Belarus from them. This is my second time here.

- What is the purpose of your current visit?

To look for specialists for my new startup Archipelo. People describe it as Google Page Rank for source code. Our company is building an AI powered search engine for developers to help them find the most relevant useful code to use in applications. In my view, software developers are one of the most important class of humans on the planet. Almost every technical innovation we take for granted, for example a mobile phone, is enabled thanks to them.

To find an effective code a developer does some 50 plus searches a day on average. I know it as I saw this problem before. It's both exciting and rewarding to work on a technology that helps software developers.

- Why did you choose Belarus to search for specialists?

People from Eastern Europe have very high levels of mathematics. Lots of grand chess masters are Russian or from this part of the world. There is a very good educational system in this part of the world, including Belarus. Specifically with Belarus, it has a great technical university, very intelligent IT people. The high level of mathematics makes Belarusian engineers able to understand what we're doing and contribute.

You can do it anywhere. You don't have to be in Silicon Valley and in fact it can be an advantage if you are able to recruit teams in different parts of the world. So, in Silicon Valley, you know, people from all over the world come there. It's kind of  Hollywood; actors from everywhere go there. Well, if you work in IT, everyone goes to Silicon Valley. There are a lot of Americans, like me, there. There are also a lot of people from India, Russia, some Belarusians that I know. Because there's so much competition, it means that, if you have a company, you have to figure out how to differentiate yourself and make it compelling and exciting for the top talent to work for you.

As for Belarus, there are tax advantages for IT companies. The cost of living is different, and it is also an advantage. We can find great talent and pay them really well. But it's still more affordable than in San Francisco. It makes sense exactly for all those reasons.

We do not have a large startup yet. We are recruiting specialists in Minsk to work remotely. As soon as we grow up, we will think about opening an office. Hopefully, this will be next year.

- Do you plan to become a resident of the Hi-Tech Park?

Yes, I would like to. I have been to the Hi-Tech Park and I have spoken to people who work there. Everyone said they liked being part of the HTP community. I think it's a great initiative of Belarus to attract foreign IT companies, to create conditions for investment.

- Could you give some advice on how to make Belarus more attractive to investments from IT companies?

It's like one of those things in business: you have a product or service, but if the branding and marketing is not good, no one knows about it. In my opinion, Belarus needs to work on improving its marketing.

Before I came to Belarus, to be honest, I didn't know what to expect. I was a little nervous. My perceptions or assumptions were not as high. But then when I got here I was like “Oh my god, this place is amazing”. So that’s why I am back.

I was surprised by how beautiful it is, how clean it is, how hospitable the people are. I’ve traveled to 60 countries and people I meet here are very kind, very polite, considerate, very intelligent and hardworking.

You know Americans oversell things. We embellish things. We exaggerate a little bit. It is in our nature. I think Belarusians do less of that. When engineers, I am working with, say “I can do this”, they can really do it. If they can't do it, they say “I can't do it today, but I can learn”.  This means less miscommunication because of such work ethic of Belarusians.

In Belarus, IT is kind of a new industry. Most of the companies here are more services companies where they're doing outsourced services. That's kind of a natural evolution to get a tech or IT economy to grow. At first it is kind of mimicking and doing outsourced services. Then you get some organic homegrown product companies. That will create an ecosystem of more successful IT entrepreneurs who have more money. 

- It sounds so easy in words but it's not easy to attract investors in practice

People in IT are often focused on interfacing with machines, programming, writing code. Meanwhile, it is very important to constantly improve your communication skills. In the end, this will be one of the main factors of long-term success.

In my experience the ability to crystallize your idea and communicate it in the simplest, most direct way is the easiest way to work productively with your colleagues and also to solve problems and also to build great products.

How has it helped me? For example, raising capital from investors. It's very difficult to do that but not impossible. It all comes down to how well you communicate your story.

In college I was doing research for two professors at the university of California San Diego. They created a novel technology and I convinced them to start a company. I had no idea what I was doing. I just had an inspiration, an idea to do it and the professors were very encouraging. I created business plans and found investors, raised the money, recruited a team. That was my first experience as an entrepreneur, and it turned to be a success.

BelTA

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