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Conrad Egusa
Entrepreneur

Meet the Jewish MIT alum supporting immigrant founders

Semyon Dukach (image free for use on a commercial platform in accordance with copyright law, courtesy of One Way Ventures)

Semyon Dukach first rose to fame as a blackjack legend who fooled casinos out of millions of dollars counting cards with the MIT blackjack teams – as was later fictionalized by the hit movie 21. Today, he’s an international investor managing a $100M VC fund that espouses a unique thesis: immigrants make better founders than native-born entrepreneurs.

Semyon was born into a Jewish family in the USSR, fleeing at a young age and arriving in the US in 1979. After studying at Columbia and MIT, he founded a few startups, became an angel investor, and in 2017 founded One Way Ventures, which exclusively funds immigrants.

Here is a conversation with Semyon about his passion for supporting immigrants and his journey until now.

What experiences led you to found One Way Ventures?

You could say that my first “startup” was the MIT blackjack team that I led for several years, but I soon realized that I wasn’t getting any gratification from winning meaningless cash – I wanted to do something I could be proud of, that people would thank me for at the end of the day.

Over time, that drive led me to found several startups, and to seek a mission that would help forge a better society. 

That opportunity emerged when in 2017 I was sufficiently outraged by Trump’s “Muslim ban” that I envisioned a fund that sought to welcome, not scare off, immigrants. I strongly believe in the philosophical idea that all people are in fact created equal, even though historically we’ve always been judged on where we were born.

I wanted to lead a fund that supported immigrants not just because it’s an economically sound thesis, but because it’s the right thing to do. I believe that the United States should commit to treating all people equally, and I want this firm to be a positive influence towards that goal.

What attributes do you look for in entrepreneurs?

One of the first things we want to hear from a founder is their immigration story. You can tell a lot about a person and their ability to lead a team to success by what they’ve had to endure in order to build a life in a new country, and how they’ve overcome tough obstacles.

A common denominator among people who’ve migrated as adults is that they’ve really had to go through emotional, psychological and often physical hardship to achieve their goal of settling in a foreign country. They develop the kind of perseverance, ability to adapt to new circumstances and innate urge to not give up that in our view makes them more successful than any other cohort.

It’s not a small thing to be able to say: “I embarked on a one-way journey to a completely foreign land, leaving behind my family and support systems under duress, or to pursue lofty ambitions, and had to learn a new language and culture just to find my way. And I made it, and now I’m launching a world-changing company based on an idea I had.”

Of course, the product or service has to have unique value if the startup is going to be viable, but we’ve also seen promising startups fail because of a lack of strong leadership and perseverance, or a weak founding team. The one factor that correlates most closely with a successful outcome is the CEO.

Have you supported entrepreneurs from Israel?

We’ve invested in the Israeli startup Greeneye, a solution for smart, precision spraying of pesticides. It was founded by Nadav Bocher, Dr. Itzhak Khait and Alon Klein Orback, and their aim is to completely overturn how pesticides are used in agriculture in order to make the industry more sustainable and profitable for farmers. We participated in their seed round in 2018.

Most of our leadership team are Jewish entrepreneurs and investors.

How do you see today’s entrepreneurship landscape in the United States?

Trump’s presidency promises to create both challenges and opportunities for startups. His penchant for deregulation will likely help out a lot of cutting edge companies in AI and crypto, for example. But it also seems likely to tighten restrictions for immigrants. 

The outcome of Trump taking an iron fist to immigration can only be negative for society and the economy in the long term. But it will also make immigrants’ journeys even more testing – meaning those who choose to remain regardless will probably be even more hardened for the trials of entrepreneurship. We hope that the administration won’t close more doors to foreigners, but if they do, immigrants will only fight even harder to achieve their goals.

What advice would you give to the entrepreneurs of tomorrow?

Only launch a company if you’re motivated by more than cash to get it right. Maybe you have a chip on your shoulder because people tend to underestimate you, or you’ve created a new technology that people are naysaying.

People who are driven by money will be quicker to give up when cash is hard to come by, when cuts have to be made, when they have to take on roommates to extend their runway by another few months. They follow hypes because they think they can cash in quickly, and are left at the tail end with nothing to show for it.

Those who are driven by something bigger will push to see their vision through to the end.

About the Author
Conrad Egusa is a Global Mentor at 500 Startups, Founder Institute, Techstars, Cardinal Ventures of Stanford University, Oxford Entrepreneurs and more, and has contributed to TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Forbes and TheNextWeb. Conrad is also is an Advisory Board Member at SXSW Pitch, an Advisor at Microsoft Startup Growth Partners and Horasis, and is a Judge at Start-Up Chile and Parallel18.
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