Dmitry Kotov
Friends.energy · Investor overview

Where a Russian-speaking city actually finds each other

Work, housing, services, and events for Russian-speaking communities across US cities — in one searchable place instead of a dozen chats where a listing disappears in an hour.

Friends.energy
Coverage
Miami · New York · LA · SF · Chicago
Audience
Russian-speaking communities in the US
Distribution
Web plus per-city Telegram channels

Founder — Dmitry Kotov. Status: Production.

A community that exists, but has nowhere to look things up

Someone who arrives in Miami or Chicago needs work, a room, a plumber who speaks their language, and to know what is happening this weekend. That information exists — it lives in group chats, where it scrolls past in an hour and cannot be searched, filtered, or trusted.

The businesses on the other side have the mirror problem. A contractor, a clinic, or a driving instructor serving that community has no address to be found at, so they pay for reach again every single month.

What the platform does

The unit is the city, not the country. Everything a person sees is filtered to where they actually live.

Listings that stay findable

Jobs, housing, services, and cars posted with photos and prices, filed under a city and a category — so a search still finds them next week rather than dissolving into chat history.

Local events and news

What is on this weekend and what changed in the city, scoped to the reader's location instead of a national feed they have to sift through.

A moderated business directory

Companies apply, get reviewed, and then have a permanent place to be found — which is what makes the directory worth reading and worth being listed in.

Telegram as the distribution layer

Per-city channels carry the platform's content to where the community already is, instead of asking people to change habits first and get value second.

How it earns without charging the community

The audience side stays free — a paywall on a classifieds board kills the liquidity that makes it useful. Revenue comes from the side that gets commercial value.

Business listings

Companies pay to hold a reviewed, permanent place in the directory rather than renting attention in a chat every month.

Promoted posts

Listings can be surfaced above the feed — priced per placement, on inventory the platform already owns.

Partner offers

Relevant commercial inventory, such as camper relocation deals, is surfaced natively and monetised through partner links.

One platform, many cities

A new city is configuration and content, not a new product — the cost of expansion is close to the cost of moderation.

Why the city is the right unit

Diaspora media has historically been national: one publication for a whole country, useful to nobody in particular. But the questions people actually have — who fixes a boiler here, which school, what is on this Saturday — are local, and the answers do not transfer between Miami and San Francisco.

Building per-city means the same platform serves an unlimited number of communities without rewriting anything, and each one feels like it was made for that city because, in the only sense that matters to the reader, it was.

JobsHousingServicesCarsEventsCity newsBusiness directory

Talk to the founder

For investors, partners, and operators who want the detail behind the summary — unit economics, architecture, and where the platform is going next.