Today, the 23-year old—who said he has always had a strong work ethic—runs four, all part of Sunnyvale's All Digital Printing and Graphics on S. Mary Avenue. And in an era of failing businesses, Golomb's business has survived thanks to hard work, careful management and ties to the Russian community.

"It might just be my own personality trait, Golomb said. "But I'd like to attribute it to my parents."

His parents brought their family to the United States in 1990 after trying for almost 15 years. The Jewish family first began attempts to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1977 to escape anti-Semitism.

With a background in graphic design, Golomb and his father Mark opened All Digital Printing and Graphics, and it has since branched out to include Sputnik Designs, a small-business marketing firm, Tinball Networks, for web hosting, and Sharkprint.com, specializing in entertainment industry printing.

A year ago, the elder Golomb sold his share of the ownership to another family from the Soviet Union, Dmitriy Pokras and his wife Milana, but Golomb's son still owns half of the store.

Pokras and his wife immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan five years go after winning a green card in a U.S. sponsored lottery.

Dmitriy bought out the elder Golomb's share of the business, but ended up staying at his old job as a hardware engineer, leaving Milana to take over as Golomb's partner, handling human resources, managing production and accounting needs.

Pokras found Golomb through Russian connections, another common occurrence within the Russian community. When Pokras and Golomb refer to Russians, they are referring more to the group countries formerly united in the Soviet Union, speaking Russian as a common language.

While there is not a particularly dense population of Russians in the South Bay, both Golomb and Pokras said the community is quick to help other immigrants from the former Soviet Union, whether they need help with printing needs, finding work or furniture for a new apartment.

"Russians definitely help people get work," Pokras said. "Usually if someone helps you find work, you try to help others."

Like Golomb, Pokras likens immigration to owning and running a business.

"It involves a lot of risk, and you have to learn something completely new, same as when you come to a new country," Pokras said.

All three said the experience of moving across the globe helped prepare him for starting his own businesses, because it taught them how to put yourself at risk and prepare for unforeseen troubles down the line.

"If you're used to taking risks, it can help you prepare when you take another risk and start your own business," Golomb said. "There is no luck in business, you have to plan ahead for everything or it will fail."

Although she grew up in Uzbekistan, a Muslim country bordering Afghanistan, Pokras' first language was Russian, as was standard in the U.S.S.R. She is fluent in English, and say she understands Uzbek, but has not mastered it.

Because Golomb, Pokras and several of their employees speak Russian, they have attracted and retained a high number of Russian clients.

"At first, I don't think they come in because we're Russian, but later on they do, because it becomes more comfortable for them," Pokras said.

Golomb said that sharing a common language helps the shop better serve all their customers. He said, by allowing Russian customers to speak in their native tongue, less of their plan is lost in translation, something that can happen easily when speaking a second or third language.

"A lot of these folks are very technical, and there is a language barrier," Golomb said. "They may talk with an accent, but they don't think with one."

In addition to a language barrier, the partners' backgrounds allow them to bridge a generation gap between the old-school hard work of the USSR and the new-school marketing and style of his generation that grew after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Mark Golomb's background is in mechanical design and engineering, and he worked at several Silicon Valley firms before deciding to set out on his own in 1996. He gambled on printing—which he saw as an emerging field—and after three years, All Digital began turning a profit. It was slow though, because he was not able to take full advantage of marketing strategies to advertise his business without his son's help.

"There was no marketing or sales in the Soviet Union, because there were the government regulations," Mark Golomb said, reflecting on the different environments he and his son grew up in. "We learned very differently. Marketing is so important when there is business competition, so I let the young people do that."

In today's high-speed, advertising-heavy market, Vitaly Golomb said marketing is as important to selling a product as quality. It's this lesson he said he teaches many older Russian customers who come in, because they understand making a quality product but marketing is outside their education.

"Even if you don't have an A-class product, if you have A-class marketing, you're going to have better sales," Golomb said.

Part of that marketing comes from establishing the right image for his companies, and to do so, he draws on the same heritage that gave him his work ethic. Sputnik Designs took its name from Russia's—and the world's—first artificial satellite that orbited the globe in 1957. Tinball comes from Sputnik as well, because the 183-pound device was—as Golomb put it—"a big tin ball."

But when asked about the origin of Sharkprint, Vitaly Golomb just laughs.

"We had a customer come in and he had a Sharks hat on, that was it," he said.