The office is unremarkable in the way the best ones often are: nine floors above a Soviet-era courtyard, three rooms, a single conference table covered in laptops. What is unusual is the team. Average age, 26. Average years of experience at a global tech company, four.
They did not start here. The founder spent his twenties in San Francisco, then Singapore, then back to Almaty for what he describes, without irony, as the easier market. "The hard part is not technical," he says. "The hard part is being legible to people who have never visited."
Alibek Tursynov
- Born
- Almaty, 1996
- Education
- NU Astana, Stanford
- Previous
- Stripe, ex-Google
Tursynov was the first hire on the early payments team at a regional super-app before leaving in 2023 to start his own company. He raised in three days.
The company
An $80m extension closed two months later.
"The hard part is not technical. The hard part is being legible to people who have never visited."
That is the bet, in one sentence. And as of last week, with the announcement of an extension round, the bet is paying off.
