From Siberia to New York: An Interview with Aryuna Mardygheeva

In October 2021, a free acceleration program for IT companies from Kazakhstan, “SCALERATOR,” was launched in an online format. The program will help startups adapt their projects to new markets, find partners in America, Europe, and the near abroad, and increase sales.

The Tech interviewed one of the accelerator’s experts to get to know Signum.AI, learn about its mentors and advisors, and discover what strategy should be followed to enter the US market.

Aryuna Mardygeeva is the co-founder and COO of Signum.AI, a mentor at the New York-based fund and accelerator Starta Ventures, and an expert in sales, fundraising, and networking. Aryuna has experience in finance, building operational processes, and corporate sales in the US, Europe, and Asia, where she managed deals with Fortune 500 accounts. She also served as the Director of Partnerships at the New York-based fund and accelerator Starta Ventures.

The Evolution of Signum.ai

• At Signum.AI, everything has always revolved around automating work with external data providers, where the key users are marketers and data analysts. The first stage of the company’s development involved sending out trend reports—helping find ideas for creating viral marketing content (memes, challenges, interesting products). Although it was difficult to find the right approach with B2B companies, the margin on this service is very high. We hardly work on it anymore; it runs on its own and generates decent revenue.

• This led us to the idea of moving toward influencer aggregation, where AI determined the similarity between the content published by a company and that published by an influencer. What was the value of this service? It helped our clients reach an additional audience and, consequently, increase reach. We worked with clients such as Binance and Scentbird, received positive feedback, but encountered low LTV (editor’s note - customer lifetime value, LTV or CLV; total profit obtained from a customer).

• Next, we decided to expand audience aggregation for D2C clients using AI for targeting on Facebook.
• However, we received many requests from B2B companies, which prompted Signum.AI to create a separate lead generation direction, Signum Leads, which generates revenue of $50,000 to $70,000 per month. We collect and continue to collect information from external data vendors.
• This led us to a point where we received excellent market feedback—many companies need not just leads, but consolidated information from external vendors in one place. Currently, we are working on this process.

The Benefits of Signum.AI

• Throughout our history, we have worked in one way or another with external data vendors, aggregating data, analyzing it, and finding insights.
• The entire value lies in simplicity—automating work with various external data vendors through a single interface to ensure uninterrupted access to data for solving marketing, sales, analytics, and ML tasks.
• Currently, we are running pilots with Y Combinator alumni and venture-backed companies in the US market to launch fundraising soon. We focus on marketing and sales tasks, specifically increasing targeting accuracy and personalization in our clients’ marketing campaigns.

How Signum.AI Attracted Foreign Investments (Over $500,000)

• For venture funds investing in early-stage startups, this is always a story about the jockey, not the horse—that is, all bets are placed on the founder. In our case, my business partner and founder of Signum.AI, Artem Gladkikh, is a graduate of a technical university, groomed as a Product Owner by a top tech company, and a marketer with 10 years of experience. At 24, Artem sold an ML company specializing in recognizing similar images, and afterwards founded several offline businesses, which speaks not only of his technical competencies but also of his ability to build effective teams. Also, in 2018, Artem was accepted into the Starta Ventures accelerator in New York. A founder with good experience and background always attracts investors because there is trust in him. As a result, Artem attracted $500,000 last year.

About Mentors and Advisors

• I would make a clear distinction between the concepts of “mentor” and “advisor.” A startup mentor is a guide for the founders, a friend who can make an introduction or give general advice on business processes. Relationships with them are more like “parent-child” based on mutual sympathy, where neither party receives material benefit.
• Such mentors are needed. It is better to have several of them. In a dead-end situation, you can survey five of your mentors and take the average—then you definitely won’t go wrong. In general, it would be useful not only for startups but for all people in this world to have a mentor, but this is my personal view, not a dogma.
• As for advisors—they are professionals in your field, whether marketing or finance, who already have a solid, established network. They work a certain number of hours per week for a share in the company. They must clearly understand where the market is heading and have experience working with well-known brands—such as Amazon, Apple, or Facebook—and at the same time already be active in the startup world as advisors and opinion leaders.
• To find a mentor or advisor, you first need to conduct quality research on mentor/advisor contacts. Look at the industries of the companies they worked for, their positions, participation in industry events as speakers, etc. Next, you need to send properly written emails. I can help with the entire process, feel free to reach out.

Networking During the Pandemic

• I don’t use Facebook very often, but I am active on LinkedIn. At the beginning of the pandemic, people were very open to calls and responded quite quickly. Now it seems that everyone is so spammed with messages across all channels that you need to apply special methods to find something in common with a person before you write to them.
• In New York specifically, there are fewer open events and more closed ones. From a professional standpoint, I see more value in closed events because, at the very least, there are people who understand business processes, and after communicating with them, you don’t feel that time was wasted; instead, you get more thoughts to analyze.

Strategy for Entering the US Market (Step-by-Step)

1. Conduct research in your industry to roughly understand whether your product will be in demand in another market. For example, many startups approached me with solutions for Russian healthcare, which is completely irrelevant to the US healthcare system.
2. Analyze competitors and understand how your solution is better.
3. Definitely find a local person who can advise on how to communicate with people correctly. The mentality is still very different, and sometimes you may be misunderstood. Correct communication in the early stages is the key to success.
4. Find the right contacts, that is, those who might hypothetically buy your product. You need to conduct quality customer development. If you don’t have an established network in a specific industry, you need to go cold: using mass outreach 70% of the time and targeted personalization 30% of the time. In general, if anyone is interested in how to do this—feel free to reach out.

Advice for Startups When Raising Investments

• When raising investments in the US market, you need to build a good network and work on traction. Warm introductions, combined with numbers, are of great importance.
• Building a network is always about the right approach to writing your emails. Yes, British grammar according to Vereshchagina’s textbooks may be correct from a grammatical standpoint, but style and unwritten communication rules are only mastered after living in the US for a certain period. It is better to find the right person for your team, even if just for a few hours a week, who understands the specifics of communicating with Americans and knows English at least at an intermediate level. Someone who can join your calls so that you simply understand what the flow of conversation should be. It may seem like minor details. But it is precisely these minor details that indicate to people whether they want to work with you further or not.
• Always prioritize human communication over business. This is the main difference in approaches between the American market and the CIS market. Someone might say that it is all fake. But it is insincere only when you yourself create insincerity. Absolutely everything and everyone has something good that can be noticed and used to build a conversation in a positive key, which will bring great benefit to the business. And another important point—help first.

About the Scalerator Accelerator from Astana Hub

• An accelerator is a chance for startups to improve in many aspects, from product packaging to finding the right contacts. All mentors and speakers already have good experience in one of the industries, so it will definitely be useful for founders to listen to experts. The main thing is—do not expect that someone will do your work for you; be flexible, gather as much information as possible from different people, and derive that same quality average. And everything will work out for you.

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