Not a meetup - a distribution channel, built as a product.
- Distribution before product
I built the audience and the channel before there was anything to sell.
- A repeatable city-launch playbook
The same move in every location - the audience compounded instead of starting cold each time.
- The people who came back
Success looked like a room that filled again next Sunday, not a one-time crowd.
- Local-partner offer design
I scaled by finding a network lead in each city and designing their reason to co-run it.
- Zero-budget GTM
Word of mouth and cross-posting into other communities. No paid acquisition, ever.
This is the same muscle as taking a product from 0 to 1 and scaling it.
No grand plan. It grew city by city as a way of life.
- Walk every local startup and IT conference. Meet people, find speakers.
- Find a venue. The first one was the second floor of a café - about thirty people, packed.
- Spin up a Telegram chat. Announce the first speaker.
- Keep showing up at other communities and inviting people in.
- Cross-post into other community chats. The audience compounds.
Format: everyone pitches and gets feedback, a speaker talks, then dinner. Sundays, because the room was free and the city was quiet.
A community-first startup network - and a bridge for founders from post-Soviet countries and beyond (Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Georgia, and more) onto the global market.
Not an accelerator, not a fund, not an agency. Bilingual, English and Russian. Cities so far: Yerevan, Tbilisi, Batumi, Istanbul, Valencia, Barcelona, Belgrade, Dubai, Bali.
Yan Nerovny - AI-native Technical Product Lead. Nine years in tech, from web development to product. Worked on live products at scale at Tinkoff and EPAM, owning product decisions and leading feature and platform teams; CPO 0→1 at an early-stage startup. Based in Yerevan, open to Europe and remote.
Open to a Head of Product / Technical Product Lead role in Europe, and I also take on fractional product and AI advising.
Want to come to an event or join the community? unicornembassy.com →
Is Unicorn Embassy an accelerator or a fund?
No. It is a community-first startup network - a bridge for founders from post-Soviet countries and beyond onto the global market. No program, no equity, no fees. Founders come for peers, operators, and investors who share their context.
How did it grow with zero paid acquisition?
By treating distribution as the product. I walked local conferences to find speakers, spun up Telegram chats, cross-posted into other communities, and ran a weekly rhythm people came back to. Growth was word of mouth and a repeatable city-launch playbook, not ads.
Where can I join Unicorn Embassy?
At unicornembassy.com - city chats, events, and the schedule live there. It runs across 9 cities in 7 countries, from Yerevan and Tbilisi to Istanbul, Belgrade, Dubai, and Bali.