Free Republic

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...

FOUR months to six months. Only a year or two ago, that was how long start-up companies generally had to cajole, fret and act nonchalant while waiting for venture capitalists to part with money - if they proved willing to write a check at all. Even during robust times, the period between a first pitch meeting with a venture capitalist and financing typically spans three months. So imagine the surprise of those behind a start-up called XenSource when they started shopping for cash this summer on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Calif. - the venture capital equivalent of Wall...