East-West Digital News 9 Mar 2012
Among US business angels, Esther Dyson is probably the one who has invested the most to date in Russia. Her portfolio includes no fewer than 15 Russian startups as well as Yandex, the search giant which she advises as a member of its board of directors.
In this exchange with East-West Digital News, Esther Dyson speaks openly about her business successes and failures. She also reveals why she considers Russia her “second country,” and why she thinks that information technologies could bring a better future to Russia by “reducing the cost of being honest.”
You speak commendable Russian, you have invested in a range of Russian companies, you often visit Russia and even went through cosmonaut training here. How does your personal Russian story start? What role does Russia play in your life?
In some strange way, Russia is my second country, even though I have no Russian roots. I learned Russian in high school, because my father before me had learned it in England as a student at Cambridge, where most of his math and science professors were Russian. And then he was involved in the US space program, which cooperated well with the Russian space program. So in our family we liked the Russian people, even though we did not like the Soviet government.