In 2013, Tatyana Marynich and Anastasiya Khamiankova opened the doors to Imaguru, a startup hub in Minsk, Belarus that would go on to launch some of Eastern Europe’s most prominent tech success stories. A decade later, they’ve been sentenced ‘in absentia’ to a combined 23 years in prison by Belarusian authorities. Their property has been seized. Their work was declared “extremist.” Marynich’s passport has expired and revoked, leaving her stranded and stateless in Spain.
Their crime? Building an independent, pro-entrepreneurial future the Lukashenko regime deemed dangerous for its championing of entrepreneurship in a country normally dominated by state-owned industries.
“What began as an attempt to silence innovation has evolved into the full criminalization of independent business,” Marynich told TechCrunch over a call.
Imaguru wasn’t just Belarus’s first startup hub. It became the gravitational center of the country’s tech ecosystem. The accelerator and co-working space helped create over 300 startups and raise more than $100 million in investment for the companies emerging from its programs. Successes like MSQRD (acquired by Facebook) and Prisma (reportedly acquired by Snapchat) can trace their roots to Imaguru’s early hackathons attended by eager young people, hoping for a better future.
“They were the main focal point of the venture community in Belarus,” said Max Gurvits, General Partner at Vitosha Venture Partners in Bulgaria, and an early mentor at Imaguru. “They brought together talent, investors, angels, ran the most significant programs—it was always a pleasure to go there.”
Another VC, US-based Marvin Liao of Rolling Fund Diaspora.vc, agrees. “They were super professional and really passionate,” he told TechCrunch. “Imaguru was the first central place where startup founders and aspiring tech entrepreneurs came together in Belarus. Tanya and Nastia were community builders in the truest sense.”
Their impact wasn’t just economic. Marynich’s late husband, Michael Marynich, had paid a high price for his own defiance years earlier.
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