Immigram CEO breaks silence on ‘devastating’ Slush controversy - co-founder Anastasia Mirolyubova

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5 • 6 Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Immigram CEO Anastasia Mirolyubova opens up for the first time about Slush’s controversial decision to award - then revoke - a €1m startup prize to her talent relocation company, following the outcry over Mirolyubova and her co-founder's Russian roots.

Mirolyubova co-founded Immigram in 2020 to assist IT and tech professionals with relocation across the world. The company is headquartered in London, where Mirolyubova has lived since 2016. In November 2022, Immigram scooped the top prize at the Slush 100 Pitching Competition. However, Slush faced fierce backlash for awarding the prize to a company founded by two Russian passport holders amid the country’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Mirolyubova talks about the physical and emotional toll the situation had on her, which resulted in her receiving death threats, losing 7kg in weight, and avoiding social media. Away from Slush, Mirolyubova reveals which tech roles are in-demand, the staggering gender divide in visa applications, and Immigram’s plans for 2023.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We are basically a window or a door for any technological person who wants to start their
0:11.2	career in the UK.
0:12.6	They have nothing to do with Ukrainian or Russian sanctions.
0:17.9	The backlash or folk happened with slush was huge and it was devastating, both for me and also for the company.
0:28.0	At the same time, the reaction of Ukrainian, Estonian and Polish communities totally
0:34.1	understandable that the war is happening and Russia is made in Ukraine
0:38.1	and at the same time the price is given to the founder of the Russia passport.
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1:29.6	Hello and welcome to the UKTN podcast, a weekly conversation with founders of some of the
1:35.3	UK's high growth tech companies.
1:37.5	Each episode, we talk through the founder's personal journey, their vision for their
1:41.2	business and their views of the wider tech industry.
1:45.4	I'm Jane Wakefield and I've been writing about tech for more than two decades and joining me today is Anastasia Miralu Bova,
1:52.1	the co-founder and CEO of Imagram. Hi Jane. Thank you for having me today.
1:57.5	Anastasia, thank you so much for joining me today. Can you tell me first a little bit about
2:02.9	how you became a founder? Was Imbagram your first company? And why did you choose to go into this
2:11.1	particular field? Ingram is actually my second company. The first one failed pretty fast when we
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