The code.
Five tenets. We mean them. A fencing salle runs on the same principle: the rules are few, the salute is not optional, and nobody hits an opponent whose mask is off.
A society, in the old sense - the kind with a password and a bar.
A KYC'd, invite-only community of founders & investors - alumni of The Yellow Door - connecting tech-rich but hard-to-reach markets with global ones. We build value & trust before any money moves, invest money & time together, then support & scale what we back. There is no general partner upstairs: every member votes on every deal, or politely abstains. Members earn the old-fashioned way: deal-lead carry and standardised advisor equity. Value flows to those who create it.
Founders come to fence. We test, refine, run the drills and break things politely - for months before a single cheque is written. This is the fencing. And the jousting.
Rounds combine capital with mentoring, community services & support. Members invest funds, skills or hours - time earns equity too.
Deal leads earn carry, advisors earn standardised equity, and the society's own share pays for the next generation's lessons. Then someone presses the button.
How the society is built.
A venture operating platform - network on top, capital at the bottom, intelligence throughout.
Where the Brothers Durov kept their fencing club.
In 2011 we opened one of Moscow's first co-working spaces for founders, in the building where the Durov brothers once ran their salle. A tight group of mentors - world-class operators, every one - started testing and refining startups there. For nothing. For years. Founders came to be run through, politely, so the market wouldn't do it first. Hence the name. The Yellow Door became legend; the mentors became the Society.
“May the tradition of building the people of the future - strong and agile - live on.”
Four ways in. Nobody needs introducing twice.
A company can start with any of the four and go on through all of them. Each passes it to the next under contract, not as a favour. (We've watched the favour version. It doesn't scale.)
Trust built in the open - events, intensives, the long hello.
Deal Leaders take point; operators run diligence; carry follows contribution.
A 10-21-day residency in Palo Alto that produces a scored diligence appendix, then a signed 90-day Landing Plan with a named operator. A diligence mechanism, not accommodation.
It follows on where the first three have already made the case.
Since 2012, Startup Embassy in Palo Alto has hosted founders from ~90 countries whose companies include Konfio, Matternet, Labelbox, Aragon and Mashgin - hosted at idea stage, before our investment model existed.
Public philosophy. Private machinery.
Everything above is yours to read; we're not precious about it. The interface where the Society actually lives - deal memos, portfolio dashboards, the secondary board, the rooms - is behind the password. Naturally.
You'll know some of the faces. You won't be told all of them.
Founders who've exited, partners at funds you've heard of, and an operator or two who'd rather not be named. You can't buy your way in. Someone holds the door for you, or they don't.
Every evening ends the same way.
At some point, someone remembers the champagne. The fun gets serious. (No deck has ever captured this. We've tried.)
There is a secret password.
You don't find the Society; it finds you. If you have the key, you know what to do - and if you have to ask, not yet.
No word? Then a name.
If someone sent you without the password, tell us who. We'll set up half an hour on Zoom with a few of us - and the person who recommended you comes too. (It's their reputation as much as yours.)