Valley whirl

It's midday in New Zealand, but in Silicon Valley it’s late afternoon the previous day, and the startup company Alex Dunayev is working for is 13 hours away from perhaps the biggest launch of its young life.

Dunayev, a 27-year-old Kiwi-Russian entrepreneur, is on his last US experience: a three-month stint with Silicon Valley startup DotNetNuke Corp. And he’s working with the technology that helped propel his first company, software consulting firm Axi Web Solutions, into the Auckland market five years earlier.

DotNetNuke is an open source development framework for building and managing websites and applications. Dunayev has been working with the company’s founders on commercialising the software, producing and marketing a professional version for sale.

The announcement of DotNetNuke’s professional version went out as scheduled. Whether it delivers is yet to be seen, but Dunayev’s experience with a startup backed by two of Silicon Valley’s largest venture capital firms, Sierra Ventures and August Capital, will almost certainly pay dividends.

“It gives me more exposure and experience, learning from the founders how they raised capital, how they came up with the way they structured the company, and how they’ve built a strategy to move forward.”

Dunayev hit the New Zealand headlines two years ago, after winning a US$100,000 Fulbright-Platinum Triangle scholarship in entrepreneurship. With double degrees in commerce and computer science from Auckland University, and a merger on the cards for his thriving computer software firm, Dunayev packed his bags and moved to California to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB).

Dunayev chose Stanford because of its proximity to Silicon Valley and the opportunities it offered to network with successful people with similar interests. “In starting new companies and growing them, it’s very important to know the right people in the right industries that can help you.”

With the crème de la crème of North America’s tech sector on his doorstep, Dunayev says there were many opportunities to get to know people at Stanford. One of the DotNetNuke founders was a former GSB graduate, so he used his old connections to invite a new graduate into the business.

“I had my reservations in the beginning, but then I realised they are generally happy to help,” says Dunayev. “That’s the biggest similarity with the New Zealand entrepreneurship ecosystem, that interest in giving back. It’s been very humbling.”

As for the differences, US companies focus on raising capital early, says Dunayev, but in New Zealand it’s about doing as much as you can on your own before putting your hand out. It’s not that one way is better than the other; they are just different, he says.

Dunayev references Ernest Rutherford in summing up the advantages of New Zealand’s system.

“We didn’t have much money, so we had to think … That summarises New Zealand entrepreneurship for me. While we weren’t able to grow as fast as startups in Silicon Valley, we had the opportunity to learn a lot and do a lot on our own.”

Dunayev says he was lucky to be around at the beginning of the entrepreneurship revolution in New Zealand — the establishment of the country’s incubators, government backing for the venture capital industry, and the initiation of university entrepreneurial competitions.

But it’s still people who make the difference, he says, naming GSB lecturer Joel Peterson as one inspirational example. “Peterson emphasised the importance of maintaining personal integrity in business, looking after the people that are working for you and helping them to achieve their goals, so you all succeed.”

Dunayev was also inspired by his Stanford classmates, many of whom came from not-for-profit, charity or micro-finance organisations.

“It gave me a much richer appreciation of what can be done to make an impact on the world. And it gave me inspiration that some of the smartest and most driven people I now know are dedicating their time and effort to socially significant ventures.”