Part 5: Back to Ashkelon

Some eight months later, I got up on the flight to Israel, this time with a plan to found a startup.

I was accompanied by my Moscow friend, rich in ideas and dreams of leaving Russia like mine. We were travelling to meet the startup accelerator board to present our idea. The accelerator was located in Ashdod, another southern city on the shore of the Mediterranean. We were aiming to get on board the accelerator focusing on helping olim entrepreneurs like me, and I was full of energy and hoped to pull off another sharp turn. This is Aliyah's story, so I will not share many details about the business side here.

The plan was simple: get accepted, become exposed to the Israeli startup scene, and hope the idea and its execution would be good enough to attract funding. My other ventures were looking solid at the time: the web development project went fine and stopped being all-consuming, and the gadget repair business was still a thing and produced some steady income. I wanted to move my family to Israel once more and try to juggle the needs of my family, our startup, and my ongoing business.

Looking back at this decision, I recognise many shortcomings, and I am still unsure if I would like to do something like this had I known the consequences. In short, I burned out, lost much money and had to deal with anxiety and depression for the next two years. If there could be a positive side, it's that I learned a lot about myself, Israel and life in general. But all of it is in the future! Back then, I was optimistic and tried to play my role as close to perfection as possible.

Our presentation went well: we got accepted and started to plan the move. I began to look for a spacious flat to rent. My partner planned to join and live with us for most of the accelerator program. I tried to find something in Ashdod on the budget, but for some reason, I had terrible luck: apartments were available everywhere but not in Ashdod. I found options to live near Tel Aviv in Holon or Rishon LeZion; another option was Ashkelon again.

After several consultations with my wife, we decided to go the easy way and stay close to my wife's family and my new accelerator. I signed a lease in Ashkelon, but this time, it was a much better apartment in a much better neighbourhood.

Again, it was a wrong decision: staying close to Tel Aviv would've helped my networking and provided a sense of the business side of Israel. Staying in Ashkelon or Ashdod without a car made networking practically impossible, given my tight schedule. But most importantly, it prevented Olga or me from knowing the country and having a chance to make new friends, as we found out that even in this new neighbourhood, it proved impossible to meet someone we could befriend. Writing this some years later and being blessed to live among like-minded families, I can't emphasise this more: people matter.

A few weeks after we started the program, my partner's plan to stay in Israel changed, and he had to return to Moscow; the acceleration appeared to be quite demanding and required me to visit the office three times a week for the whole day. Every day there required some preparation, so it was like a full-time job that did not pay any money. The program was meant for the group of cofounders so that one is attending the workshop or a meeting and others are working on the product. For me, it was a nightmare: I struggled to meet the demands of the accelerator and not drop the ball on my other businesses, as well as trying to help out Olga with Mark, as they shortly followed me.

It required around two months to understand that it couldn't continue like this, and without my co-founder's help on the ground, I would not be able to reach the goal: MVP development and some advancements with financing. At this point, I had to readjust the goals and to shift gears. It became apparent to me and the accelerator's management that we were not progressing on the product, and I had to stay for some long meetings explaining myself. I am not sure that I did a good job explaining, as I was angry toward my co-founder, who practically abandoned me and the accelerator management, who appeared to be not very understanding. My dream was falling apart, and I was frustrated and tired. My usual workday was about 12 hours long, the tension in the family grew, and I was desperate.

One goal I set up before signing up for the accelerator I managed to achieve: the program provided me with some valuable knowledge about Israeli business and high-tech culture.

English is not enough.

Everybody speaks decent English, and most of the documentation is written in English, and you can be employed as a software developer knowing only English. But running a business, especially a startup that requires funding, is different. The primary language of Israeli commerce is still Hebrew. The business is conducted in Hebrew; all the small talk happens in Hebrew. It was not particularly helpful with my Hebrew, which was akin to the level of a 4-year-old. My partner, who spent about two weeks in the accelerator, knew no Hebrew at all, so even though we had a lot of exposure to like-minded people, we were a bit too isolated. It affected our ability to engage in the free flow of idea exchange that happened there.

We had to prove ourselves from the ground up.

This may seem obvious, but it was not so much to me. One of the essential things I learned on my immigration path is that there's a constant stream of Eastern immigration to the West. It's like that from the Roman times! East and West are not always the same: it could be Chinese immigration to North America, Russian Jewry moving to Israel, or Turkish people moving to Germany. Most of the experience and achievements of the easterner should be revalidated and reapproved by the West. Whenever I talked to someone from the business field, I felt it: why do you think you can make things here? That question was never asked up front, but I felt it constantly.

Use positive stereotypes, as there may be no other choice.

It was pretty funny: I never meant to present myself as a 'high-tech' person before entering the accelerator. Most of my businesses involved some part where I wrote code, developed websites or dealt with SEO, but I treated it as a tool, like a screwdriver or a flashlight. Having a flashlight in your pocket is good when it's dark, but you can do much more than just lighting the way.

So, talking to the Israeli startup mentors, I found that they were pretty sure that we could build any product that required writing code or overcoming any technical difficulty, as we're Russians, and everybody in Israel knows that an immigrant from Russia could be a great engineer, medical doctor, or musician. But they were less sure about our ability to steer something more complex than a moving services business or a grocery.

There are a lot of stereotypes related to immigration in Israel and to Russian immigration in particular. In general, it does not affect the lives of immigrants, but it's not like that when something is at stake.

Leaving Israel again

It's not like I decided to leave: the decision was made based on the lack of alternatives: the accelerator demanded either to progress with MVP (while attending all the meetings and workshops) or leave. So, I left and appeared again in Ashkelon with my family. It was summer, and I remember spending many evenings together on the beach and having some enjoyable moments. Our friends and family from Moscow visited us often. Still, there was nothing else to do: I was dealing with the ongoing business and trying to overcome the experience of being rejected. Somewhere early in the autumn, we packed our bags, handed back the apartment and left for Moscow.