Silicon Valley Girl: AI, Tech and Career Growth - How to build a Unicorn outside the US with AI | Arsen Tomsky, Founder InDrive

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

In this episode of Silicon Valley Girl, Marina Mogilko sits down with Arsen Tomsky, founder and CEO of inDrive - a $1B+ ride-sharing platform with 60 million active users that he built from Yakutsk, one of the coldest cities on Earth.Arsen shares his wild journey from a stuttering software engineer to global entrepreneur, revealing how he turned a taxi price protest on social media into a billion-dollar company that's taking on monopolies worldwide. He breaks down how to scale a global business on a shoestring budget, why childhood struggles can become your superpower, and the philosophy that completely transformed his life and company.They also get into what it's like competing against tech giants like Uber, how to fly under the radar while growing fast, and why mission-driven companies are going to dominate in the AI era.More from the Silicon Valley Girl: Newsletter:⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconValleyGirl⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko⁠⁠⁠⁠

Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium

and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at AKA.m.m.S. slash college PC. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari.

In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all.

Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. What would be your advice? First, to be people focused, oriented, the same time, AI native now.

Mix it. Second. Arsintomsky is the founder and CEO of MDrive, a company that now spans 900 cities across 48 countries with over 360 million downloads. What started as a student protest against taxi cartels in Yakutsk, Siberia, has grown into the world's second most downloaded right-hailing app, trailing-only Uber, and ranks as the fifth most downloaded travel app globally. Start to start when I was four years old, step by step, I realized it's not a

not paying it's a gift for me. Three of largest failures in my life, they led to these successes without those failures, I would not sit here. Now leading remote team of 3,000 plus and building an AI-first super app, Tombsky is redefining fairness in the gig economy and challenges and challenging how technology should serve people. And since the start, we intensively use AI in this and we use the... So how to build global companies use AI as leverage and compete with the big players from anywhere in the world without access to Silicon Valley networks.

Arson, welcome to Silicon Valley Girl. Thank you. You've built a $1 million plus company out of Yakutsk, which is one of the coldest cities in the world. Can you talk about building a global company being from somewhere different from Silicon Valley? Sure. I can share a few tips how to build really large successful companies with minimal resources. Also, I will tell you why I love the monopolies and how to be happy while you work is crazy. Also, I think I should tell you this story how we start, and this is not very typical story, so I hope it will be really fascinating for people. Thank you. Let's dab into it. Before we start, so what came earlier? Your company?

I started my entrepreneurial career 29 years ago, so I have built a few successful companies and non-profit initiatives. And my current company in Drive, we began 12 years ago. But at the time I know that I should choose some philosophical way, more psychological way, how to build companies. And I had a goal to build a global company. Before I didn't have, because I was typical tech nerd software engineer, and I didn't have such goal. But when we tried to create something like local silicon in my hometown with support of local government and local university, and we failed it because I did what I should have done, they're not.

So it was like very disappointing for me. So since the time, the time I decided not to be dependent on someone in the future. And I decided to gain all necessary resources by myself. And I set a goal to create something big. So it was like 15 years ago. Talk to me about the initial idea. Was it your personal problem or was it something you found because you realized there's a gap in the market?

Imagine you are resident of Yakovsk. It's officially a coldest city in the old. Some days we have my... minus 75 degrees. Crazy. Yeah. And you, some day, January 312, you wake up to minus 45.

And you start... Celsius? Very much. Similar. Very close. Mm-hmm. 45 Celsius. I think it's about 48,

300 height. Yeah. Yeah. Cold. It's cold. Yeah. In both systems. Yeah.

And then you suddenly realize that all taxi companies in the town, they have colluded the cartel agreement. And they overnight doubled fares. And you had to take your child to school, like in three miles away. And you went together, walked, and each cell of your body feels that cold. Yes. Stint from that cold. also feels this sharp sense of injustice

and that outrage sparked social media phenomenon. People started to agree about rights on social media. There was special profile and 50,000 people ensured that joined it and they began to agree about rights. But at the time I was found in the third and the largest tech company in the town. And I saw this was clear social phenomenon. I decided to launch a startup using the same peer-to-peer biddens. And we developed a mobile lab. Then we moved that social media profile to a new mobile lab. And it took off. And then we launched in nine

new cities. And we launched with very simple app with small and experience and that experience team, the 90K for all the nine cities and two of them took off. And that time I saw, well, we can't build something lush. So that app was basically connecting customers directly to taxi drivers, right? Yeah, you go to the system. Point A and then B and then you can offer your fair and And then you can initiate transparent and free the model. And a lot of people, they absolutely love it. Not all people, of course.

Especially in places where people have an opportunity to choose, and also they are more price sensitive. When did you realize you could take this outside your country? Because I realize it's working in like cold cities, right? Okay, it's working for that market. But when did you think about making it global? We began real geo expansion in 2018. We launched first cities in Trelata to Mexico.

And it immediately went well. And we saw that this technology is good for people on the very opposite side of the globe. So it was very clear. So we can in short time build a very large network. But you were basically competing with Uber and other local companies. With them too. With local taxis companies too. But main computers, of course, this large tech giants for us because they have like unlimited resources.

And they have advanced technologies, big teams. They are smart. But what is good for us? Why I love that monopolies? Because they greet. If they achieve large. in local market, they start to squeeze the lemon, what I call squeeze the lemon. They start to raise fires.

They start to charge very high-tech grid commissions. And this grid is some kind of fuel for us. And we especially look for places where they start to do that and we launch there. And this allowed us to build this large global platform without access. to external support. Long time, we didn't have any access to external funding, network, work class,

tech talent pool, etc. And we had to find some alternative way to build this. So this was a way, the way how we did it. We built the entire story on fighting injustice.

Now this is official mission of the company, of the team. But had you ever had thoughts about Uber just copying the model? It didn't make sense for us because in this case we would hit them and we would lose because we had much less resource, much, much less resource. It doesn't make sense for underdog companies like we to replicate it and then start to compete

with these large companies. No, it's better to find distinct business. some model and then find some inspiring idea. And this idea will attract the best people to you. And you will have very aggressive and inspiring. This is very, very important. And you too. For Salon who's starting a global company outside Silicon Valley, who's an immigrant and who's building in a market where there are a lot of big players, what would be your advice? First, to be people focused, oriented, same. time AI native now. Mixed. Yeah. And via this also, as I said, find some distinctive business

model which causes organic growth when people switch to you and also actively invite their social circles to switch. Second, I would recommend launch in developing countries. Where software regulation, a lower cost, people, value of freedom, fairness, and you also understand them. Harvard graduates don't understand them. You can. Because you're an immigrant. You're from that country or that society, right?

Yeah, of course. And third, I think to expand with high pace, to rapidly expand and stay above the radar. do it in that way, that competitors can't understand what is going on until it's too late. This is my three main suggestions. Thank you. But how do you identify that exact problem? So you stumbled upon it because you were actually experiencing it.

Is there any advice on how you identify the problem that could become a global business? I think you can start some ideation. you can brainstorm and make like dozens of potential ideas where you can bring people real life value like freedom, fairness, life, self, realization and so on so forth. And then you can cycle by cycle, step by step, test all these ideas creating some simple and cheap MVP's and see where people start to stick to it. And where they start to invite their families and that friends. That's the signal.

Yeah, signal, yeah. And where you have good retention. And this could tell you that this is something here and you can start deep dive. Yeah, I also like how you not only experience the problem yourself, but you also saw people on social media being outraged by the problem, so you knew there is. This is a good way to, yeah. to make some additional research and see what people don't like.

Yeah. When you're starting out, do you think you should have a business plan or you should just rely on your passion? Because with my business, for example, when we started, no business plan. I just loved the study abroad market. I went in it. After we went into it, we realized there were like 200 agencies in our city alone. It's like competition's crazy. What would you recommend to those who are just starting out?

I would use both to mix some. pragmatic approach with some love, some real passion. And in this case, you will have a chance to build a company with realistic way, with profitable and reasonable growth, same time you will love it. And if you love what you do, it's one of the main criteria of the main source of to be happy in life right now, not in some day in the future. Yeah, I love that. Do you think that if you want to start a business, let's say not today, but in like five to ten years,

would you still need university degree? Or maybe even now you don't need it anymore with AI? In some fields, for some jobs, you have to have this. For example, for health care. So people will go and get this. degree. Or there are some very cool schools. For example, this year we launched our non-profit at university where we're going to raise leaders of new type. We are starting from Almaty City, Kazakhstan. Then in 20 years I'm going to build like six

campus, and this is absolutely free for students. I will pay for it. The idea that we should find those kids, future students, who have leadership potential, and then give them strong life values and also teach them how to use what I call impact scalers. Art, technology, making those systems where even one individual can make significant change in the world. And then we are going to support them in their future career. And I hope in like next 25, 40 years they will make tremendous. change in the world. But this is bad for long time. So I'm sure people should continue to apply for such schools. For the rest of course I think the AI will fully change it in like 10, 20 years.

Sometimes I think the AI like a giant meteor which came and hit and we see some very large explosion, very far and all things still be the same, yeah. But we know soon this shockwave will, yeah, that gets us. And one of first fields which will be impacted is education. So if you are going to apply, please choose those schools where we pay attention to AI. What are the top, so you mentioned you're going to be teaching people, art, technology, You're doing so many things, so many projects. You're building your company.

Was there ever a moment when you were thinking of giving up and thinking maybe it's a lot, like too much for you? Never. I had really harsh childhood and I become assured for the entire life. Second, most of my businesses, I had and still have some strong purpose. when you have it, it gives you very huge amount of internal strength. Inner drag, you see? My inner drive be a few.

Yeah. And you never give up. You can fail, but then you stand up and still move. I know you're one of the top founders who actually stutter. Can you talk about this a little bit? and how has it been on your journey? Yeah, I started to start when I was four years old and started all my life,

and now it's a very important thing for me. I know a lot of people who did start in the past, but now they stop at it. But from people who still suffer, I think probably I am. And for me, it's like large source of internal strength because I want to show people who stutter and about 100 million people in their world stutter. So inspiring example how you can achieve any hate in your life while you stutter.

I saw people who sit at home and they don't go. It could fully ruin their life. For example, I met a 70-year-old man and he told me he didn't have a good job, he didn't create it, he doesn't have kids. It's so dumb, such a big pain. And so I have a good chance to help people, not just by this inspiring example, But also, in the future, I'm going to find some radical solution using AI or some science, biotech or something else I will do it when I will have more time. Has it always been like that, that you saw it as strength or at first you were like, oh, I'm not going to do anything. I'm not going to talk to people. Talk to me about that emotional journey.

Of course, when you're a kid in the school and you're standing in front of your class and you can't tell, it's a big pain for you. all class, laughing on you. Yeah, kids are particularly meeting. So it was pain for me, a long time. And then step by step, I realized it's not pain.

It's a gift for me. Do you remember a moment when you were like? I think it was when I was like 30 years old. If that time, I would score myself by that communication skill. I would set, I don't know, one point of frame from 10 point scale.

So if you are a CEO, if you're a founder, you have to have stronger skills. of course. And I started to develop this. For example, I went to shopping malls and to footcours when I stood up on chairs and started to sink in front of people. Or you went to some public places and talked with people.

And sorry, could you give me your clinic card? What? And nobody did it. And then you step by step, you found way, like one, two, out of ten people started to get. give you as a cardicard and this move your skill like it was one point of weapon same day it became two point yeah you see and for your entire life it's so cool and now i think i have about seven probably yeah so soon i'm going to become real extrovert wow that is amazing that you're working on did you have a coach or how did you come up with a system or is it like something that

exists so i didn't have coach it was my work and i something I found in books, something in some special anti-starter centers, etc. Then I think we need to create some special methodology for people who start. And if I will do it, I think people will trust it because I'm sure. It's coming for us. Effective. By the way, like three years ago, I also initiated a startup. help you people in this. Yeah. We use the fact when people who start, they start to sing, or say, start, whism, start, start. It becomes less. And when you have, for example, Zoom call, you can sing, and this technology can change it into your speech without singing. We spent two and a half years for this. I invested like a million dollars to it, but we realized then that people,

first starters, they would not use this. Because some psychological barrier, you can't sink if you make some serious call. It's very hard. So it was like typical startup for test and then negative results, but it was okay. In the future, I will continue this for, and we will find some, as I said, radical solution for it. I love it. Thank you for doing. Thank you.

Is there a particular moment in your time? childhood that keeps you moving. I met with some violence in my family. Also, when I was 12 years, my mother got mental illness. It was a big shock for me. And I was in school with the culture of violence. And I was more like the nurse. It was hard to me.

So all this was hard, but I became as a steel inside. This is good for me. So a long time I thought I had bit for childhood. But since some day I realized I had a very cool child, very good. For some hate, I had so much love, sun, worms. And I had very good friends, etc. And that hate and pain what I had was accessory for me to become that individual what I know is now. So I had very good childhood.

And if you don't know hate, you can't fight it in the future. So you should know it. So it's okay. And now one of the most important initiative for us to reduce domestic violence. because again, this is one of kind of injustice too. Can you say something to someone who's watching, who's going through a heart period in their life? What is something that they should tell them

in order to use that particular moment to drive them forward and build that steel inside to help them move ahead? Many situations, what you are experiencing and what you feel is a matter of your choice, of your interpretation. So sometimes we can choose to feel joy, not to suffer. But we have also really hard situations. And in this situation, people have to have choice, fair choice.

And if they don't have it, it's clear that in dresses, and we set the goal to give that inferior choice. choices to at least one billion people by 2030 via business and through this non-profit initiatives. Is that the domestic violence thing? Is that where you're talking about? Yes, it's one of targets. In justice, where we are going to give people choices. I love the phrase like, yeah, you can control what you feel, but sometimes emotions are so strong. Well, is there something that you tell yourself in that moment? How do you redirect your feelings to productive energy.

It requires significant internal work, you know. I know, yeah, but it's hard for me. Sometimes I tell myself, this will pass, but sometimes I'm like, it's a line. Look, you have internal child first, and you have an adult and you have internal parent, yeah? And you should understand who is now talking with you. And usually if you feel some strong internal child, and you should move to a position

of an adult. It's not easy sometimes. Yeah. But you can learn how to do it. Also, sometimes you can think that you need to go through it to change, to use it as some developing point. Because without failure, without pain, it's very hard to grow. Yeah, and to appreciate good things, right?

Yeah. But this pain should be not too high. If it's too high, it's not good. And in this situation, we want to give people choices. Yeah. Challenges and justice, we don't have the right to change people's life without their consent. But we have a right to give them choices. Yeah, we love it.

Is that what you just mentioned, like internal child, internal parent, is that what you use, to use this method when you're encountering failures or obstacles in business? Look, I met so failures in my life, in my professional career, so treat them in very confident way. Because I know this is essential part of life. And you should use them, as I said, to grow. By the way, the three of the largest failures in my life, they led to the successes. Without those failures, I would not sit here. Can you give a relatable example, if someone is experienced something similar? I gave you one of them.

When we failed with creating a local tech ecosystem in my hometown, it was a big failure. But it led my goal to create global company, first time in my life, you see? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. Let's talk about another initiative that you're doing. You're also supporting women, because there are stats that women receive as little as 2% of venture contracts. That's for the UK. What inspired you to do this and what are you doing to help women?

Supporting women, including supporting female tech entrepreneurs or doing some women's economic empowerment or reducing domestic violence. One of the best ways to challenge that injustice because it's clear that injustice. So we intentionally do it because we are those who are those who are. fight injustice, and we systematically run these initiatives. For example, we, third year, we run annual Aurora Tech Award, where we identify and award most outstanding female tech founders. This year, we got 3,400 applications from more than 1,300.

It looks like we're going to get the largest female entrepreneurship contest in the world. And the idea that we should identify those of them who have realistic potential to impact lives or number of peoples. So potential is that now one of the main criteria. And we are supporting them, funding, networking, the expertise, the media, etc. To access to in drives users. Today we have about 60 million active users. This is a very large asset.

And we can effectively support them. And in the future, they can grow their impact world to their communities. So we use this again as an impact scale, you see? We supporting them and they change. Yeah. This is the main idea. It's like win, win, win. Love it. Thank you for doing that.

Thank you. Let's talk about AI. We can not talk about AI in 2025. Talk to me about how you decide which parts of your company you're going to automate with AI and which parts stay human. Company ground. And contrast with pure digital companies, we are not in such extent impacted by this technology. No, not you, but, yeah.

By the self-driving, we can talk about. Yeah. But today we have to be AIA that native. Probably not AIA first, but definitely we should be that have to be AIA native. And we use it in those things which is repetitive. For example, customer support or anti-fraud, very effective, because AI can effectively see some repetitive patterns. Second, we use it to grow effectiveness of internal processes, reducing user insurance or more effective advertising, faster internal processes, etc. Super-effective, too.

And then we are going and we started to use it for building AI-native super. And since the start, we intensively use AI in this, and we use the fact that AI allows you to build a highly personalized solution, highly personalized platform, super effective too. In the future, I hope we will use AI in this large-scale non-profit initiative, for example, in Vision EU, in this educational process. regarding this, we developed internal strategy and we saw, we see that this technology will fully change the business, but in developing countries it will take more time. It will start to see that make some impact, I think, in seven, ten years. And fully change it like in just 20 and 35 years.

So we have some time and we decided not to be rushed. Because in this case, you can lose a lot of resources. And we are in. We are super effective. Capital effective team. But we should be ready. And we are going to make first AVM tests, yeah, in pilot tests in some cities. To get first experience and get first data.

So what do you think by 2035 we will mostly be riding self-driven cars? In the U.S. experts are expected by. 2050, about half of the rights will be done with just half. You say EV electric vehicles or robot taxis? Robotaxis. Okay. Half the drive 2050. Do you think my kids are going to learn how to drive or if they're six and four or they wouldn't need that skill? I think you should give them choice to. Fair choice. They should choose. If everything

is driving by itself, the choice is obvious, right? But who knows, in some days, you probably will need this. You're still think. Yeah. Okay. What about, if we're talking about 2035, okay, half of the fleet is robot taxis. What about the developers? What about the office workers?

How, what it would look like for your company, for example? It's clear that this development, rapid development of AI will lead to massive elimination of jobs. Even if the ones people will lose their jobs. Yeah. But it's very hard to predict what we will do with this. In general with this AI development, it's very hard to say what we will get in more than two years. Even like a couple months, right? Things change very rapidly.

So I hope we will find good solution for it. But what I know is exactly, that the world needs not more for one more large tech company without soul. So, the world needs to companies with purpose. In this case, people will not suffer too much. Because if these sales of large companies who have extremely large impact on the world, they will have just dollars in their retirement. It's not good for people. And any, when you experience this, when you realize, okay, I have this person.

But I also know how this AI tool that does it as efficiently as that person. What do you do as an entrepreneur? Not a social organization. We use this less materialistic idea, philosophy, to pragmatically build very successful and large company. But if we have such idea of challenging injustice, we never will create some injustice. For example, if we see that drivers are going to lost jobs,

we will do our best to provide them with some new jobs. For example, we can make them like fleets to owners. They will buy a car and send this card to make revenue for them, or to retich them for some new jobs, etc. I hope a lot of entrepreneurs follow your way of thinking, because I have no doubts in you, but we also have the rest of the world. We've shown that this less matristic approach is effective. companies who have less resources to allow them, allow them effectively compete with these giant tech companies. I believe many in companies repeated. But at that time, we should develop some

system and share it. So when you look back at 2025 so far, what's been your biggest win and what's your hardest setback? First, we first time in like last seven years, we are going to become net profitable. Oh, congratulations. This is a great achievement for us, important. And second, I think we started to go to new fields, using this new super app. Yeah. And first steps in the FinTech and FoodTech looks super good and very excited and looking

forward to the next stage of the company's story. And we are going to build this super app and the idea of reducing. that injustice again and a lot of injustice in many different fields. So we have space for work like for 10 years of. Yeah. Yeah. So if we talk about the main challenge, probably this was, we moved to new tech platform because we had the old outdated monolith tech platform and it took three years for us to move. And it was super hard by the way. And this year, it was last year when we did it. And it was, I think, the most challenging thing in this year. Can you give advice for someone who's 20 years old, who's watching now, and who wants to learn

either one mindset hack or lesson from you? If it's just one thing, what would it be? To become what I call developist. It's not existing work. Developist? Developist. Yeah. This means that you should non-stop develop yourself, and also, develop what is important for you in external environment. And do it on systematic base. For example, in your personal development, you have to set some goals each year, like five goals, and then systematically fulfill it. And in just five years, you will fully change. It's so cool, by the thing. Five goals every year. Every year. And step by step, you will fully change. In this case,

you can build something large. Because it's very hard to do. develop world if you underdevelop it yourself. Clear. This is my main suggestion. How long have you been doing this? Oh, I started to do it like last 20 years, I think. Can you share any goals for this year? I still continue to develop my communication skills.

It's still the weakest skill for me. For example, I'm here because this is one of ways, not just to share with people what I know. also to develop this my skill, too. Or started to do a new sport, like weights, yeah. Yeah. So, so, so, so, it's a good sport. It's powerful me too.

I just started this year and it's a game changer. I can see my muscles now. Wow. For a change. Good for you, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And maybe for someone who statters,

because you mentioned you know people who stutter and they decided to not have a family, not go out. For someone who stutters and who feels that this is their main insecurity, what would you say? I would say it not just for people who stutter. To us have some internal weaknesses. And let's use it to become strong. Turn your weakness, your strengths. How?

What do you tell yourself? It's like to participate in running competition and win with some additional on your feet, yeah. And find way to win, not stop. Try. And then you will win. In some things, you will win. And then you will start to feel yourself more self-confident.

And step by step, you can realize this is not weakness. It's some unique future. And it will give you a great internal, the motivation to do more, to achieve more and more. So this is my suggestion. I love it. It's all wins. Arsend, thank you so much. It was such a powerful conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much to inviting me. Thank you.