In February of 2012, Gulnara Mirzakarimova returned to her home country, Uzbekistan, for the first time since moving with her family to the United States six and a half years before at age 19. Although she spent her first nineteen years there, in returning she experienced dramatic culture shock.
“When I went back to Uzbekistan,” Gulnara says today, “I realized that you get used to the good things very fast, and you forget about the bad things.” According to Gulnara, the cultural differences weren’t just customs, the language, or the standard of living. “The country is very bureaucratic, and the pace of work is slow. Here in the United States, we move so fast,” she affirms.
When Gulnara was preparing to move to the United States as a young woman, a friend warned her not to become a workaholic. Seven years later, it’s clear that Gulnara’s fierce work ethic, intellectual ability, and ambition make her more than well-suited for the fast-paced entrepreneurial environment of the United States. In fact, sometimes the U.S. finds itself trying to keep up with her.
Gulnara’s particular talent for math helped fuel her to a 3.94 GPA at George Mason University, where she had enrolled upon arriving in the U.S. Graduating with a degree in finance in 2009, and with summa cum laude honors, she was invited to a leadership training program by Ernst and Young and guaranteed a full-time job offer upon completion. Despite the attractiveness of the offer, however, Gulnara hesitated. “Sitting in this giant conference room,” she says, “and knowing that I would be offered a position, I was comically terrified.” She wasn’t worried the position would be too challenging. On the contrary, she was put off by the limits she would face on her own ability to influence the company as a whole. “The system seemed broken to me, and I knew I wouldn’t be in a position with enough authority to fix it,” she recalls. “At such an early stage in my career, I wanted to have my hands in the nitty gritty as soon as possible.” That’s why, when another offer came from First Virginia Community Bank, only a year old at the time, in which Gulnara would start working with clients in risk management from day one, she was sold.
Although she found the work challenging and rewarding, there was an important aspect that was missing. “For me, it’s very important to be gratified in my work,” Gulnara says. “In finance, I can’t show you how good I am. My bank and my clients are private.” More than having a hand deep in the workings of a company, she wanted something of her own. “I think it’s human nature,” Gulnara says, “that we need gratification from the things we invest our time and energy into. We see a flame, and that’s what we want to follow. It’s not just money; it’s something else that makes us get up in the morning and come to work.”
Gulnara knew she wouldn’t be satisfied without that extra spark. That’s why, two years later, she launched a side project, called Two-Side Brain, which would highlight Washington, D.C. technology start-ups. One chilly November night, a few months before her trip back to Uzbekistan, she was up late trying to develop the project, as working full time as a business analyst for First Virginia Community Bank didn’t afford her many daylight hours to make much headway.
If New York is the city that never sleeps, Washington is the city with a bed time. When even Starbucks closes at 8:30 pm on a weeknight, where was Gulnara meant to interview DC’s rising tech entrepreneurs for Two-Side Brain? She was frustrated at first, but soon, Gulnara realized she could turn this challenge into an opportunity. “I realized I couldn’t bring all of these people to my home,” Gulnara explains, “or go to theirs. So I started a group called 24 Hour Tech City.”
In exploring the tech start-up scene in DC, Gulnara had seen that starting a business from scratch can take every ounce of energy a young entrepreneur can muster, especially when one must also work a full-time job to pay the bills. In developing her own project, Gulnara experienced that at night, one’s own home can be the enemy to getting things done and staying on target. “First of all, there’s your bed right there,” she laughs. “The temptation of sleep is hard to ignore.” In the City that Goes to Sleep, what Gulnara and other start-ups needed was space that was open late, where they could get things done away from the tempting comforts of an early bed time.
Within a couple days of starting 24 Hour Tech City, Gulnara was approached by Andrew Conklin, the founder of DC Nightowls, an organization less than one year old that was attempting the same mission. With her focus already split between her day job and Two-Side Brain, Gulnara was eager to join a team developing this resource for DC entrepreneurs.
When she first came on as a co-organizer, DC Nightowls would organize once a month co-working sessions in office space around DC and Northern Virginia, from 8:30 pm to midnight. All DC Nightowls members could come use the space and Wifi. But Gulnara didn’t think this was enough. “My first idea was to change the format to once a week, and then to twice a week,” she says. “And instead of ending at midnight, sessions would end between 2:00 and 3:00 AM.”
Over the course of the next year, DC Nightowls grew from 100 members to over 600, and as membership grew, new facets of the co-working sessions emerged organically. “Not everybody has a garage to build their company in,” Gulnara says. “But it’s more than just having a space in which to build something. When you put several entrepreneurs in a space together, they start reaching out to each other. They reach out for feedback, and they reach out for new team members, mentors, and customers. It creates an energy and end product that’s more vibrant and more robust than if the entrepreneur works in isolation.” According to Gulnara, this was not initially a stated goal of DC Nightowls. “We were blown away when we realized what was happening,” she avows. “It’s really amazing to me to see, and it’s what drives me to stay there until 2:00 to 3:00 AM, even when I know I have to wake up at 6:00 AM.”
This November, DC Nightowls celebrated their one-year anniversary. 100 members showed up to a space that was provided free of charge because the host is paid through exposure—another benefit that emerged naturally. In looking toward the future, Gulnara has plans to expand the number of co-working sessions per night, and to hold private demo and pitch practice nights.
One of the greatest things about leading the force that is DC Nightowls is the fact that Gulnara’s own ambitions and dreams are free to flourish through the services she provides for members. Indeed, her exposure to the DC Nightowls community has only emboldened Gulnara’s entrepreneurial flame. In February of this year, she became a contributing writer for Tech Cocktail, writing about tech start-ups, entrepreneurs, and venture capital. Next year, she plans to leave the financial industry altogether to pursue an old passion. “Back in middle school and high school, I wanted to be a designer,” she reveals. “No matter how much I push that away, it always comes back. It’s tugging on me and pulling on me. I want to create things—beautiful things for people to see and use. Something I can point to and say, look, I made this.” Paying homage to her philosophy that it is human nature to yearn to feel gratified through one’s work, she plans to go back to school to learn design and coding. “When I deliver a web application or some other product of my design, I will see the client appreciate that right there on the spot, and that’s something that will be immensely rewarding for me,” she affirms.
Gulnara cannot credit her family enough for her success. Her sisters helped support her as she made her way through college, and now, Gulnara and one of her sisters take care of their parents and support the other sister in her pursuit of a master’s degree. Their unwavering commitment to supporting one another stems from the example set by her parents and grandparents. Growing up as young girls in Uzbekistan, the Mirzakarimova sisters knew that the dedication of their family members was the thin line that separated them from hardship and destitution. “My grandmother survived World War II, hunger, and all the other hardships you can imagine,” Gulnara says. “She passed away at 90 years old a couple years ago. My mother, too, inspires me. When I was ten years old and our family struggled, my mother and her strong character shouldered the many difficulties, financial and otherwise, we had to face.” Gulnara also credits her mother with instilling in her the values that have driven her success. “She raised me to put everything into the things I do,” Gulnara avows. “She told me that if you did everything you could in a task, and it didn’t work, then it’s not a failure. If you give something your all, you can walk away from it in good conscience in the end, regardless of the outcome.”
Today, Gulnara’s mother tells her to enjoy every single day, and to get enough sleep. But Gulnara feels driven by a lesson she came to herself. “The biggest thing I learned,” she says, “is to live like there is no tomorrow.” In advising young people entering the working world today, she would also urge the flexibility and open mindedness that she herself employed to navigate life when her direction changed drastically, as it did at some points. “Sometimes people make plans far into the future, and it doesn’t work out that way,” she says. “I had to learn that the hard way. I love to learn, and because I’m always learning, sometimes I realize that I don’t have to take the same route. My life was flipped upside down several times, sometimes drastically and painfully. I try to learn everything from every single day and every person, and I hope that young people will listen to their hearts and passions—to that flame that will give them true gratification—as they set out on their professional journeys.”
Beyond the passion she feels for her own career, Gulnara feels driven to help the less fortunate she feels a connection to. In her own neighborhood in Dupont Circle, she has plans to support a kitchen that feeds the homeless in the area. “Giving money is important,” Gulnara says, “and I support St. Jude’s hospital. But I believe too in the importance of physically doing things with your own hands. As it gets colder, that’s where I’d like to help.”
As for Two-Side Brain? Maybe a new dramatic turn is just ahead. “We will see where it goes,” Gulnara says. “I have learned a lot from it, and perhaps it’s time for me to leave it altogether. Or, maybe I should take a step forward and transform it. We’ll see.” One thing is for certain—wherever she goes from here, Gulnara will be following that flame that’s led her all along.
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