A basement in central Moscow, behind a yellow door. We turned it into one of the city’s first coworking spaces for founders - brick walls, borrowed art, one long table and a coffee machine everyone ended up standing around. It ran from 2011 until covid.
“Have you ever worked in an office cubicle? Yellow Door is the opposite. Open, fresh, free. In a word: soul. And the people who come here are just like you.”
Dan plays jazz for three crowds that rarely meet - listeners, students and the people who book him. We gave each of them their own way in.
“Dan sends me one link. Five minutes later I know if he fits my Thursday.”
Birch sap from Belarus, tapped for a few weeks every spring. We took their 1-litre bottle and remade it for the US - smaller, in English, with the organic seal and a case to ship it in. It ended up in Whole Foods and on Amazon.
“Honestly? We thought the 1-litre bottle would do. It wouldn’t have. The half-litre with the English label got us into 40-odd stores in Northern California that first year, and our buyer at Whole Foods pinned a photo of the case above her desk.”
Dan’s trio gets its own site. Jazz, Brazilian music and, yes, a flying saucer.
“I booked them off the website without hearing a note live. Full room, 120 people, on a Tuesday.”
The same room, online. Fifteen years of stories, and a door into every programme that started there.
“I send the link and that’s it. Nobody asks me “so what is the Yellow Door, exactly?” anymore.”
Twelve founders at one table, every Thursday morning since 2016. Watch the chairs set themselves out when the page loads.
“Half my best intros this year happened on a Thursday before 10:30. I’m not exaggerating, I counted: 7 out of 13.”
Looking for your Wozniak? Evenings on Strastnoi, an online room in between, and one card that works in both.
“One card, one evening, one co-founder. Eight months in and we haven’t killed each other yet.”
What happens at the Yellow Door after dark - home concerts, exhibitions, theatre, readings. It’s one long page, and it’s meant to be wandered.
“Proposals went from maybe two a month to a dozen. And they’re good ones.”
Courses and programmes for founders, investors and companies getting ready to go global.
“Our board finally got which of the three we were hiring. That used to take a whole deck.”
Six studios - sales, ops, fundraising, PR, design and tech. Each has its own page, so you can walk straight in.
“We came for PR and stayed for sales. We’re still here.”
The fund. It backs founders from underrated tech scenes and helps them land in Silicon Valley.
“I read maybe 30 fund sites a year, and most of them say nothing in a lot of words. This one tells you who they back, where, and why them, before you’ve scrolled once. I asked for the data room that afternoon.”
Five minutes to pitch, fifteen for the room to answer back. We made it loud - black, yellow and red, like a gig poster.
“We had a stack of decks waiting before the autumn season even started. Last year I was begging people for them on Telegram.”
Win the Russian round, fly to the final in San Francisco. That’s the whole idea, so that’s the whole page.
“Why did we apply? Because the page showed the whole road, Moscow to San Francisco, on one screen. We sent ours in that same evening.”
Four cities, Moscow to Kazan, one site. The Pitch Battle bracket draws itself as you scroll.
“Kazan, Novosibirsk, Piter, Moscow. Finally one site instead of four Telegram channels nobody could find.”
Pitch on Friday, demo on Sunday. A red line moves along the 54 hours, so you always know where you are.
“My favourite bit is the red line that moves with the weekend. People screenshot it in the middle of Saturday night to see how long they’ve got left, which is exactly what it’s for.”
Seven weeks of the English tech teams actually use - sales calls, customer chats, investor questions. The phrasebook types itself.
“I teach grammar for a living and I still couldn’t find a sentence to fix. And the phrasebook that types itself? Three of my students asked if they could steal it for their pitch decks.”
A private club for Yellow Door alumni. There’s no sign-up button - you need an introduction. The wax seal stamps itself as the page opens.
“It feels like a letter somebody handed you in person. Which is how you get in, so.”
Stuck? Two people read your notes and introduce you to someone who’s been stuck in the same place before.
“I didn’t expect anyone to actually read my kit. Two people did, properly, and one of the three guides they sent had been stuck on the exact same customs problem a year before me.”
Your records, labs and watch data, turned into one short morning note. It had to feel trustworthy first and clever second.
“I’ve got years of blood tests in a shoebox. First thing that ever made me want to type them in.”
Small-business websites at a fixed price. You see the full cost up front and approve drafts from your phone.
“$1,990. That was the number on day one and the number on the invoice. I approved the last draft from the parking lot between two patients, and we got 9 new bookings through the site in the first month - for a two-person practice, that’s a lot.”
How makers join us. One page, one long application, no shortcuts.
“It took me a whole evening to fill in. Worth it.”
A studio that turns good ingredients into products and takes them to new markets. The site looks like a field notebook.
“They told us to cut half our story. Half! We did, and the Amazon listing converted about twice as well as the old one.”
A travelling funk band that plays in the crowd, not on a stage. The site’s just as noisy, UFO included.
“The website is completely ridiculous. So is the band. I mean that as the highest compliment - we booked them for two nights.”
How business works, country by country - who decides, what a long pause means, what to send first. There’s a globe you can spin.
“I read the Japan page on the shinkansen, so I didn’t hand over my card with one hand. Small thing - and we closed a $60K contract.”
Monthly talks in Moscow with scientists, investors and engineers. Every evening gets its own page and goes straight into your calendar.
“It just goes into my calendar. That’s it, that’s the review. Haven’t missed one since.”
A contest for university labs across Russia and the CIS. The rules, scoring and paperwork are all in one place.
“Rules, scoring, the NDA - all on one page, in Russian and English. Four of my postgrads applied without asking me a single question. That has never happened before.”
Some quotes are illustrative until our clients’ own words arrive.
