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tech flow · the founder

new city.
no network.

I moved to Miami from Russia with a career behind me and three problems in front of me: no connections here, no credibility here, and English that wasn’t ready for the room. Tech Flow is what I built to fix all three — for myself first.

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nameNikolai Strakh
fromRussia
based inMiami
first meetup2023
meetups since43
cities14
who’s asking
Nikolai Strakh

I didn’t start a community because I love events. I started one because I needed the room, and it didn’t exist yet.

— Nikolai Strakh, founder

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the problem

The résumé travels. The network doesn’t.

Nobody warns you about this part of moving. You arrive with years of work behind you and not one person here who can vouch for it. Every introduction starts from zero. Every question that used to take one phone call — is this offer normal, who do I talk to about this, how does this actually work here — now takes months of guessing, in a language you’re still learning.

I had three problems at once: no connections, no credibility, and English that wasn’t there yet. I couldn’t find a room that fixed them. So I made one.

the first night

The first one was about eighty people.

In 2023 I put together a night in Miami called Founders Monday. Vitaly Korobko, who runs inDrive’s developed-countries region, took the mic, and around eighty people showed up. Most of them had the same three problems I did.

So I did it again — around Miami first, then Denver, Tampa, Orlando, Austin, and wherever else someone local said “do one here.” 43 meetups later, the format below is the part that survived every room.

what the rooms taught me

43 meetups later, four rules.

01
Everyone introduces themselves

Thirty seconds each, on a clock, the whole room. It’s the one thing that makes strangers find each other instead of standing with whoever they came with.

02
One operator, not a panel

A keynote or a workshop from someone who has actually done the thing in the US market. Our speakers are mentors to the room — they explain the differences in culture, business and corporate structure that nobody puts in writing.

03
The party gets hours, not minutes

Food, drinks, a photographer. The talk is the reason to come; the conversation after it is the reason to come back.

04
A nonprofit gets the mic

At every meetup a local nonprofit takes the stage, and a donation counted off the turnout goes to them. A room this size should leave something behind in the city that hosts it.

where it is now

One room became a network of rooms.

Since that first night, Tech Flow has hosted 43 meetups in 14 US cities — anchored in South Florida, with chapters that opened wherever a local organizer stepped up. More than a thousand Russian-speaking entrepreneurs and professionals are members.

The goal hasn’t changed since 2023: help people who arrived with a career and no network rebuild the second thing — the introductions, the referrals, the honest answer about how things work here.

1,000+members
43meetups since 2023
14us cities
in the press

  • Refresh Miami named Tech Flow one of five communities at the heart of Miami’s tech scene

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the youngest in the room
Alex, the founder’s son, at a Tech Flow meetup

My son Alex helps me run the meetups. He wears the same name tag as everyone else. His says Alexander.

— Nikolai Strakh

More about Alex →
come say hi
Find me at the next one.I’m at every South Florida meetup and most of the others. New chapters open as local organizers step up — if that’s you, come to an event and tell me.
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