It’s My Life

I promised to tell you the story of how I became who I am today, and now it’s time to deliver on that promise.

I was born into a German family in one of the coldest and remotest parts of Russia. In the 1980s, life in the Tyumen region seemed hopelessly predetermined for many years to come. As a child from a family of former exiles with limited opportunities, my prospects didn’t look good. However, when I was fifteen, my parents decided to move to Germany.

It turned out that my German was not the German they spoke in Berlin at my new school, and it was just not good enough for Germany. I didn’t understand what my teachers said, and nobody understood me. It looked like a complete disaster, but I decided not to give up without a fight. While my peers were hanging out after school, I learnt thirty new words every day, memorised pages in my textbook, and gritting my teeth. I promised myself that I would never give up. I didn’t try to evaluate my chances or analyse any barriers in my way: I just kept fighting and moving forward. I only allowed myself to look back and think about how difficult it had been when I finally graduated from school and got accepted to study economics at the legendary Humboldt University.

The breakneck pace that I had set for myself during my school years didn’t allow me to relax at university either. The brilliant theorists’ lectures were interesting, but what excited my imagination the most were the practitioners. These people built multibillion-dollar corporations before leading masterclasses for us students.

“Carpe diem!” and keep moving forward! That was the main lesson I learnt from these titans of industry. Simultaneously, I started working on promoting startups, writing concepts, developing business plans, and planning how to make them profitable. So my economics degree didn’t change much because I was already completely immersed in the world of financial technology, evaluating and trying out every progressive business model.

At some point, tearing myself away from the next business plan, I discovered that I had been into the circle of professional business investors. My experience was in demand, and there was a waiting list for my consultations. I realised that I had accumulated knowledge that helped and methods that worked. I wanted to share them because the knowledge, like money, should not lie idle. However, we’ll talk about that next time.