A teenager's do-it-yourself language trip became a company, three YouTube channels and a seat across from Silicon Valley's builders. Marina Mogilko keeps asking the same practical question: how does someone on the outside get in?
Dmitrii Pistolyako is the co-founder and CEO of LinguaTrip, a San Francisco-based booking platform for language courses and study-abroad programs that has served more than 100,000 students from over 100 countries. A math-and-economics graduate from Saint Petersburg, he turned a free study-abroad consulting side hustle into a venture-backed company, surviving more than 50 investor rejections before becoming the only Russian startup in his 500 Startups batch. He also leads Fluent.Express and shares his playbook for building a company in the US through his Russian-language YouTube channel and online courses.