Page 226 - Entrepreneur - USA (January - February 2020)

Finding → UNSEEN VALUE
Dorozhkina with
a beloved doll;
Creation in below, with her two
older brothers, in
clothing that would
someday become
Limitations
doll outfits.

by KATYA DOROZHKINA, cofounder and CEO,
VentureBox, and managing partner, 13 Ventures

grew up in the Soviet Union, during a time of political and
economic turmoil. My parents didn’t have much money,
and so my childhood was one of hand-me-downs. I’d
inherited my older brothers’ books, clothes, pants, and
even their tights—the footed kind to keep you warm in the
bitter cold of winter. I had a few cherished dolls of my own,
though we couldn’t afford to buy them shiny new dresses.
I So I put my brothers’ old clothes to a different use: I cut off
parts of them and fashioned the fabric into doll clothes.
It would take me years to understand what I’d really done
there. I wasn’t just dressing a doll. I was teaching myself how to
find potential in overlooked things.
I left Russia about a decade ago, determined to do more than
just get married—the cultural expectation from my old world.
Instead, I wanted to continue unlocking potential. I studied
economics and marketing in college, moved to New York for a
job on Wall Street, left it to start my own marketing and adver-
tising agency, and then sold the agency a few years later. That
earned me enough money to become an investor, and I decided
it was time to unlock other people’s potential as well. In 2015,
I launched a VC firm and accelerator called Starta Ventures to
specifically help foreign founders. Then I founded the Immigrant
Entrepreneurship Foundation to bring awareness to the chal-
lenges faced by foreign founders, as well as a new fintech busi-
ness, VentureBox, to provide growth capital and other resources
to help even more entrepreneurs like myself scale profitably.
A couple of years ago, I traveled back to Russia to visit family.
My young daughter came with me, and she found my dolls—still
adorned in those dresses made from old pants and tights. My
daughter couldn’t believe her eyes. So I explained the outfits to
her, and told her about how resourceful I had to be as a child.
These were the moments, unglamorous as they may have seemed,
that ultimately developed my entrepreneurial muscles. Seeing
it all, and hearing my story, gave her a new perspective, too: She
saw that she can create anything she wants. PHOTOGR APHS COURTESY OF K AT YA DOROZHKINA

WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
Tell us about a story, person, object, or something else that pushes you forward, and we may include it in a future issue. And we may make you
photograph or illustrate it, too. Email INSPIRE@ENTREPRENEUR.COM with the subject line “WHAT INSPIRES ME.”

224 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / January-February 2020