Recreating Silicon Valley

tseitlin · Joined: 07 Apr 2011 Posts: 2 Location: Russia

My greatest failure is probably the way to my greatest success.
The Accidental Entrepreneur

My greatest failure was that, after having studied 11 years medicine I chose to be an entrepreneur.

In title of this post I used the name of my favorite article about venture capital and the birth of Silicon Valley written in 1994 by the founder of Intel - Gordon Moore. I love this article and recommend to my colleagues - classmates and entrepreneurs this reading.

I was raised in the Soviet Union in decent Jewish family in the city of Kuibyshev - about 1000 km south-east from Moscow. My parents are doctors and they always wanted me to become a doctor. After graduation school in 1980 I enrolled in medical institute and upon graduation continued to study in Moscow - specializing in orthopedics in the Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic (CITO)

In 1987 while studying in CITO, I began to work and prepare my doctoral thesis in the department of orthopedics, which was led by Professor Oganesyan - an outstanding worldwide known scientist, surgeon and inventor. My teacher Professor Oganesyan invented and patented the method of distraction arthroplasty - treatment of the joint diseases with external hinged fixation devices.

End of 80-s was a wonderful time in my professional doctor’s career - I traveled with Professor around the world, we operated, lectured in various countries, participated in the conferences, I received the best possible education in orthopaedic surgery.

But due to the difficult situation following the Soviet collapse, I couldn’t earn money to be a doctor. I had invitation to continue my work and education in New-York at Orthopaedic Institute of Beth Israel Medical Center but chose to stay in Russia, leave doctor’s career and become an entrepreneur.

From business perspective 90-s in Russia where the great opportunity and after couple of years I really made my first million dollars. Then I lost everything and made money again. I made a lot of mistakes and within last 20 years gained a lot of experience in entrepreneurship, technology and non-technology business, venture and non-venture investments.

About a year ago we meet with Dr. Nikolaj Wolfson from San Francisco (we knew each other since early 90-s) and decided to make start-up in medical devices and orthopaedic technology.

We found that 40 years old ideas of our teacher Professor Oganesyan in combination with modern achievement in stem cells and robotics can lead to very interesting technology and devices solving very large problem of the modern orthopaedic surgery.

Within last 12 month’s we are working with Nikolaj on new patents, evaluating market and competitive technologies. Hopefully we will complete soon business plan of our new star-up and will be able to present it to the best venture investors.

It’s my believe that my greatest failure is probably the way to my greatest success.
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Dmitry Tseitlin
Mob +79118311019
skype :tseitlin
E-mail : tseitlin@yahoo.com