Computer science, applied to US immigration — Saveliy Vasilev's story in Tukki

In entrepreneurship, the way co-founders find each other sets the stage for the venture’s success, not only its inception. Saveliy Vasilev's path to founding Tukki is a testament to this.

With a background rooted in computer science and academia, Saveliy transitioned to management consulting at McKinsey, seeking real-world business acumen, and it was here that he met Ramiro Roballos, a fellow consultant with a unique background in music.

Their shared values and complementary skills forged a strong partnership, laying the foundation for what would become Tukki. This pivotal encounter underscores the importance of finding the right collaborator, as their combined expertise and vision are propelling them to create the premium US immigration experience.

Q: What were you doing before Tukki — thinking about starting a business?

A: I was thinking about starting a business even while I was doing my undergrad. In fact, even before that: when choosing what to study I thought about doing an undergrad in economics or business administration. But I finally opted for Computer science instead, and for a while I lived a mainly academic life: I had the opportunity to work in a lab, helping in what I could, and began growing closer to the faculty team who’d become my M.Sc. and PhD lecturers later.

While I was in my first undergrad year, I attended a lecture given by Julian Mestre about Approximation Algorithms. At that time, I didn’t understand much but found it very interesting. So a few years later, when finishing my undergrad I wrote to Julian, and asked him to be my Ph.D. advisor. It ended up being Julian Mestre (an Argentinean living in Australia), Min Chih Lin (a Taiwanese professor living in Argentina) advising myself (a Russian living in Argentina) — as international as it gets! We made it work and I spent 5 years researching problems and publishing articles on my chosen fascination.

Moving the needle: Academia or entrepreneurship?

After years in academia, by the time I was doing my PhD the idea of starting a business had cemented in my mind. I felt like I was on an intellectually exciting journey but I wanted to be able to say, “I gave something tangible to these specific people”, and for that something to be more than interesting publications. I recall thinking: the probability of me moving the needle in someone’s life doing science is much lower than doing so through the private enterprise.

With that thought in mind towards the end of my doctoral program, I read a ton of books about the economy, history, business people, finance, etc. While that helped me build my own frameworks to think about life in general, the learning was still too conceptual and theoretical. So, equipped with a coordinate system that worked well for me, I decided that I had to get some real-life business skills before considering starting a venture by myself.

“What’s next after the dissertation?” I asked myself.

Accelerated learning

Moving from theory into action, I set out to find the best practical business experience I had within reach. I wrote to different people I knew had business experience to explore what options might be available to me. Among others, I was introduced to a director from Accenture, and while doing my homework before our meeting I got interested in consulting — not tech consulting but rather in management consulting: “at the end the day, these guys help senior folks through their toughest decisions, where else would I learn as fast?” I thought.

Q: Where did you decide to boost your business acumen?

A: Well, I Googled “what are the top management consulting firms,” and according to the search engine the answer was MBB, which stands for McKinsey, Bain and BCG. So I applied to McKinsey after a contact introduced me to a recruiter of theirs. They made me an offer and the learning journey began. The people, management and communication skills I learned there were invaluable to a nerd like me! During the consulting career one switches projects quite often and the teams one works with change as well. This allows one to develop a taste for management styles and ways of working.

While with McKinsey I also met my now-co-founder of Tukki, Ramiro Roballos. He also has a non-traditional background compared to most consultants, with his career as an orchestra director and owner of a small music school. We clicked. We worked side-by-side for a client and we became close friends after many late hours at the clients offices. During our careers the growth we had as people and professionals was unmeasurable.

The right person for the right venture

Since those early days of our McKinsey careers, Ramiro and I spoke many times about doing something together. We shared key values including integrity, zero dishonesty tolerance, transparency, meritocracy; and that cascaded into our shared views on leadership style, what kind of organization we would like to be part of, and so on. I honestly cannot think of anyone better as a co-founder. And it’s just as well — now we spend more time working on Tukki than with our families.

Q: What convinced you to improve the immigration experience?

A: As you can imagine we discussed many ideas before landing on immigration. One lesson I learned the hard way, before starting Tukki, is that building a business based on a “nice-to-have” idea is incredibly difficult: if you need to spend a lot of time convincing people to buy, however valuable your service or product is, then you’re facing an uphill climb. Then came Ramiro, sharing his painful experience of obtaining his green card. Added to that, my recollections about my two immigration experiences weren’t particularly fun either.

So, as well-trained former consultants, we researched what the current state of affairs was and how to make it at least one order of magnitude better.

An industry in dire need of an update

The antiquated form in which people apply for visas is not only slow, US immigration processes leverages neither technology nor time-tested operational practices. Ramiro and I knew a thing or two about these topics, so we set out to make a dent in this field.

Q: What’s a vision of yours that you’re applying in Tukki?

A: I realized that each time I add value to someone’s life my happiness level increases. So doing that with people I enjoy working with and being able to sustain that in the long run is something I want for my life.

Since we already had been in the trenches and had a lot of fun, I thought that jumping into some other trenches with Ramiro would be just as great. So we began to work on Tukki and take it as far as we can.

At the time we said, if it’s not the right route, we’ll do something else. But the further we get into this venture, the more certain I am that we’re changing the status-quo of how immigrants navigate the visa application — you know, there’s something beautiful when you see that smile on a clients’ face as a life-changing event happens: “It’s approved”, and the journey bringing them there was pleasant.

We have a 100% success rate for visa acceptance — the relief and joy that applicants share with us when their visa is approved is incomparable. And no, we haven’t served thousands of clients yet so that 100% might not last forever — but I’ll take pride in that nice round number while I can!

Enjoy this? Connect with Saveliy on LinkedIn to see his story continue to unfold!