Acknowledgments

First of all, thanks to my wife, Anastasia Volkhovskaya, for her love, support, patience, and help in making this book a reality.

Also, big thanks to my parents, as I was brought up being taught that anything is possible if you work hard enough at it. And in reality, it is. Love you both; thanks for giving me all the opportunities in the world.

Thanks to Ekaterina Sizova and Paul Jesemann. Without their support this project would not have been made.

Thanks to all the founders that I interviewed for sharing their stories, knowledge, and time. I learned immensely from their experiences and liked to talk to them all. I was pleasantly surprised at how “down to earth” and friendly all of them were.

Thanks to Saul Klein for writing the foreword for the book and to Peter Cohan for his quote and sharing his experience on publishing books.

Thanks to Nuno Morgadinho, Ana Aires, and James Page for brainstorming with me about which founders were best to interview.

Thanks to Jeff Olson and Jeffrey Pepper for believing in the value of this book and their willingness to publish it. Also big thanks to all the team at Apress that helped me turn this book into reality. Special thanks to Jessica Belanger for “holding my hand” all the way through the new world of publishing.

Thanks to Ekaterina Zhilina for chasing down founders for me to interview. Even when they proved to be quite hard to track down, she found a way to do so.

Thanks to everyone that helped with introductions: Clément Cazalot, Sylvain Theveniaud, Carlos Silva, Pedro Rocha Vieira, Robin Klein, Ricardo Sousa, Michael Jackson, Melissa Darker, and Samuel Mensah.

Thanks to everyone at Beta-i and Startup Weekend for their amazing energy and commitment to bring entrepreneurship to the world. This book would not exist without them. I’m also thankful for the lessons I learned while in contact with these two great NGOs.