Today we will get acquainted with the biography of an entrepreneur who has become an idol of many Russians, including those who are not directly related to business. The fact is that Maxim Nogotkov is a rare example of a person who realized himself “from scratch”, without having “connections and acquaintances” at the level of the highest echelons of power and without having access to oil wells. He started out selling pirated software, continued his business in selling electronics, and then went into banking. Having become a significant figure in society, he began to realize himself as a leader of socially significant initiatives, as a participant in the political process. Marigold, importantly, is a follower of His personality - a combination of experience, success and constructive principles.
Enterprising good guy
Nogotkov Maxim Yurievich - Muscovite, born in 1977. His first type of income was selling copies of programs for the BK-0010 computer. At that time, the future businessman was in the ninth grade and quite successfully - with fours and fives. The proceeds from sales of the programs were small, but allowed Maxim to significantly increase his well-being compared to his peers.
In general, Nogotkov was a fan of computer technology: he programmed and attended youth computer science courses at the House of Pioneers. After graduating from school (in 1993), Nogotkov entered the Moscow State Technical University. Bauman. He completed two courses there and decided to leave without taking the last remaining exam. At first, Maxim planned to return to study in six months, but he was attracted by the prospects of opening his own business.
First steps in business
In 1995, Maxim decides to leave the university, preferring entrepreneurial activity to student life. He began selling phones with Caller ID, opening the Maxus company. The company's turnover reached 10 thousand dollars a month, and Nogotkov earned his first million dollars in 1997, when he was 20 years old. The same year he goes to study at the Moscow Business School MIRBIS. In 2004, Nogotkov transformed Maxus into a group of companies under a new brand - Svyaznoy, and became its president.
Maxim associates his new business with the sale of mobile phones, since the demand for stationary devices, according to the entrepreneur, has fallen. The Svyaznoy brand was no longer new to the market by that time: Maxim Nogotkov opened the first salons with that name back in 2002. The new business was designed to compete with Euroset, which had been working in the mobile phone sales segment for several years.
Expanding horizons
In 2008, Maxim began cooperation with KIT Finance Bank. The plans included the deployment of a supermarket chain to provide financial services, but the plan was not realized due to the onset of the economic crisis. However, the businessman decided to react to the situation “asymmetrically” by personally engaging in banking activities. In 2010, Promtorgbank became part of the Svyaznoy group of companies. In 2011, Nogotkov created a new trading business - an online store of consumer electronics under the Enter brand.
It is noteworthy that the entrepreneur achieved the right to sell goods under the Apple brand without using intermediary channels. Nogotkov also has a “non-core” business - the Pandora chain of jewelry stores. Despite the large number of projects related to entrepreneurship, Maxim in various interviews repeatedly noted the low importance of the money factor for himself personally: having earned that same million by the age of 20, he had the opportunity to buy everything in accordance with an adequate level of consumption.
Business is not without politics
Maxim Nogotkov’s biography includes social and political activities. During the presidential elections in Russia in 2012, the businessman worked in Mikhail Prokhorov’s team as a confidant. Nogotkov also took part in public life, opening the Nikola-Lenivets art park in the village of the same name. The entrepreneur met people from there in 2007, and then visited this place many times. Subsequently, he began to support the “Archstoyanie” art festival, on the basis of which it is planned to create the “ArchPolis” site. Maxim’s personal competence includes the strategic development of this project. The businessman sees enormous potential in Russian architects, artists and designers. The entrepreneur plans to create projects related to the development of the institution of electronic democracy. In 2012, he invested $1 million in the Yopolis project (your police), a website where citizens can raise issues of concern to them regarding the development of the city, send ideas to the authorities, and propose improvements to the work of administrative structures.
At the top peaks
In 2008, the entrepreneur joined the top management group of KIT Finance and took the position of chief managing director. He was in charge of control over the retail activities of the Bank. Now this structure is key in the development strategy of KIT Finance, which is due to the rapid growth of this market segment. In his current position, Maxim Nogotkov is creating a network related to the sale of financial services. Among the most important tasks are expanding the line of banking products and improving sales channels.
Priority will be given to the development of programs for interaction with partners, which will allow for a more dynamic expansion of the network. An agreement on a project in the lending segment was signed between the Svyaznoy group of companies and KIT Finance. A new one has appeared on the market, including the sale of plastic cards, the issuance of consumer loans and other services. As part of this project, investments of $80 million are planned.
Having achieved a lot
Having occupied undeniably high positions in the business and management structures of large corporations, such an active person as Maxim Nogotkov could not rest on this. The biography of the entrepreneur, in addition to the fact that at 20 he became a dollar millionaire, includes a number of other remarkable information. In 2006, he was included in the list of 33 most successful men under 33 years of age (according to the business magazine “Finance”). At the time of compiling this rating, Maxim’s fortune was estimated at $500 million. In 2010, Nogotkov won the “Entrepreneur of the Year” competition, which was organized by the largest audit corporation Ernst & Young. In 2013, the businessman’s fortune was estimated at $1.3 billion (according to the Forbes.ru portal). A lot of media materials have been created about Maxim Nogotkov and the success of his business, including various videos.
Family man
Maxim Nogotkov comes from a simple family. His father works as an engineer, his mother is a doctor. My sister works in a “family” company - Svyaznoy. The entrepreneur is married to Maria Hayward, who lived in England for a long time and owned a tourism-related business. Maxim Nogotkov’s wife opened the Oldich Dress&Drink store in 2012. It sells interior decoration and other things. This one is very different from those owned by Maxim Nogotkov. Photos of goods unusual for Russia attract visitors from the shop windows.
The main idea of this establishment is to abandon the theme of the retro style of Soviet times. Maria likes to emphasize that the store promotes the English style and, in principle, should not be similar to anything Russian. The business woman sees the target audience of her clients as expats - citizens of foreign countries who live and work in Moscow. The main language of communication with store guests, including online correspondence, is English. Maxim and Maria have three sons. The businessman dreams that his children will not emigrate outside of Russia.
Principal rival
In the Russian business environment, there was an unspoken confrontation between the leading trading brands in the mobile device segment - Svyaznoy and Euroset. Experts note a big difference in the business philosophy of the founders of both companies - Maxim Nogotkov and the first, for example, was a supporter of good relations with suppliers of mobile devices, the second was famous for a different approach, which is why manufacturers often refused to enter into contracts with Euroset.
A number of vendors rejoiced at the emergence of Svyaznoy as a competitor to the Chichvarkin brand. Nogotkov never violated the contract, and Euroset’s financial discipline was not of a high level. According to many market players, Maxim was noticeably more polite than Evgeniy and could speak English fluently. Chichvarkin called his competitors “accommodating,” while he preferred to determine the pricing and assortment policy himself when communicating with vendors.
Through the mouth of a hero
Nogotkov’s business philosophy is a storehouse of useful instructions for young entrepreneurs. Maxim believes, for example, that the secret of success is to find people with the right motivation and give them work in the right places. The ability to interact, according to Nogotkov, with people is more important than any technology. There is no category of mistakes in the businessman's philosophy. He believes that there is only a problem of choice and a certain development of events. Maxim Nogotkov is confident that he has not made a single mistake in business.
At the same time, the businessman likes to emphasize that most of his projects arose by chance as a result of individual meetings and conversations. Each person, according to Nogotkov, has strengths and weaknesses. Trying to find someone who is good in all respects, the entrepreneur believes, is impossible. He selects people for his team with the expectation that two different people can compensate for each other's shortcomings.
He is currently undergoing personal bankruptcy proceedings in Russia. IN interview The entrepreneur told The Bell founder Elizaveta Osetinskaya how his business was crippled by too rapid growth and the annexation of Crimea, what lessons he learned from his collapse and why he would not vote for Navalny. Below are the main quotes from Mr. Nogotkov.
“When we started the banking business in 2010, the risks were at the level of 12%, and then they gradually increased significantly. People took out a lot of loans in the expectation that their salaries would continue to grow, but at some point they stopped and even began to fall. At this moment, all the banks that were engaged in consumer lending felt very bad.”
The personal bankruptcy process of Maxim Nogotkov in Russia, which was initiated against him by one of the companies of the Svyaznoy group, will most likely end with a settlement agreement in the next 6-9 months, he believes. He acted as a personal guarantor for all the group's debts.
Now “Svyaznoy” gives him mixed feelings, admits Nogotkov. When he was still doing business in Russia, he was interested to see how the companies he founded would work without him:
I'm curious. I'm wondering, if you turn everything upside down in the companies that I did, the company continues to develop, what will happen to it? How will a company live where all I have left is the name? The corporate culture, attitude towards people, decision-making principles, and strategy have changed. We developed everything related to income. Now the cycle is different and there is more emphasis on costs and everything related to their efficiency.
From the bank's point of view, there were mistakes in growing the loan portfolio too quickly. “We probably should have waited a year or two for statistics. We turned around too quickly. The same mistake happened in the Enter project - its model began to scale too quickly, and both of these businesses required significantly more money than I initially expected. I planned to invest $80 million in the bank, and about $100 million in Enter. As a result, both projects required about $700 million. To attract this money, I pledged the group’s shares. Once the black swan called Crimea happened in Russian economics and politics, it hit me pretty hard.”
Nogotkov feels involved in the decisions that were made regarding Crimea and Donbass. His great-grandfathers are buried in Mariupol, and relatives lived in Kramatorsk and Slavyansk during the war. “For me, this is simply a military aggression that Russia unleashed against a friendly country, and for me it is emotionally very difficult, because I voluntarily or unwittingly took part in it. I treat this (Crimea) as something stolen, and I don’t want to be involved in it. This also influenced the decision to leave.”
About business lessons in Russia
Business can grow in any situation, Mr. Nogotkov believes. Another question is that when the economic situation worsens, banks suddenly experience defaults: for corporate clients they can reach up to 10-15%, and this is the entire capital of the bank. “We have been greatly affected by non-returns from the population. Every third person to whom we lent money in Russia did not return it to us.”
Probably in 2008 I treated companies as my children, they were even more important to me. I spent more time on them, was more involved in them, was very attached to them. I think this played a cruel joke: if you get too attached to something, they will definitely take it away from you,” said Maxim Nogotkov.
He learned three lessons from his business collapse in Russia. The first is not to get attached. The second is to do everything together. Previously, the entrepreneur made all decisions alone and considered himself the 100% author of his life, and did not pay attention to external, more powerful forces. Now Nogotkov has changed his attitude: there is a part of life that he can decide and accept himself, but there is a part that is not controlled by him.
Lesson three: be careful. “It’s better to live in a debt to EBITDA format of 1-1, rather than one to five. The large debt burden does not correspond to the country's level. Taking on a large debt leverage in Russia is dangerous, because the country is swinging from side to side, it is very dependent on oil and gas and the decisions of one person.”
Nogotkov arrived in California in 2015 with less than $1 million, and believes that his quality of life here is higher than in Moscow: “Nature, weather, everything related to the ocean is important to me. The atmosphere is very important, clean air - here it is three times cleaner than in Moscow. The mood of the people I meet and communicate with is important - it is much better here than in Moscow. There I spent maybe 10 times more, but the quality of life was worse.” According to him, the restructuring took about nine months.
About the elections
“Elections are won today with a lot of money, among other things. To seriously compete with Putin, you need to have billions of dollars. Today, neither Boris Titov, nor Ksenia Sobchak, nor other candidates have this money, and without it it is impossible to win elections. The entrepreneur admitted that he has a feeling of a fixed match: Ksenia Sobchak has boundaries of what is permitted, but it is important that she conveys her point of view.
The processes that are taking place in Russia, including generally positive ones, says Nogotkov. In Russia, the fight against corruption is underway, the process of gradually bringing life into line with certain rules is underway, the entrepreneur is sure:
The creative class, like an average of 45% of Russian citizens, believes that it is possible not to pay taxes or pay them somehow incorrectly, and despite this, they have the right to criticize the authorities for bribes and corruption. I believe that the process of bringing Russian life into line with the law will affect not only people working in power, but also the creative class, including Kirill Serebrennikov, who is a very talented and very important person for Russia.
Elizaveta Osetinskaya noted that this comment would receive a lot of negative feedback.
Why Nogotkov would not vote for Navalny
“I am very suspicious of people who have been fighting against something for a long time. Mostly I try to support people who are fighting for something.”
“If people fight against something for too long and then come to power, then Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and others arise.”
“Fiery revolutionaries 80% of the time make the situation worse than those who came before them.”
The situation in Russia may change, and much will depend on Putin's successor. The best of state managers is German Gref, head of Sberbank, Nogotkov believes.
New business
Maxim Nogotkov is currently working on a new project in the USA, and in the future he will start collecting money for it. If he fails to do it in America, but succeeds in Russia, then he will return.
Now Maxim Nogotkov makes a living by consulting Russian entrepreneurs. He studies a lot and makes educational programs based on the knowledge he has acquired in a couple of years, and in the near future he wants to found a non-profit organization that deals with human development.
Hello, dear readers! Nogotkov Maxim Yurievich was included in the list of the richest and most successful people according to Forbes magazine. And it’s not for nothing that, already at the age of twenty, he was considered a dollar millionaire. Let's find out more about the story of his success.
Childhood and studies
He was born on February 15, 1977 in an ordinary Moscow intelligent family. His father worked as an engineer, and his mother as a doctor. His parents raised him in strictness; the word “impossible” awaited our hero at every step. As Maxim himself later admitted, the desire to overcome each of the prohibitions formed in him a sense of purpose and a desire to achieve his goal, no matter the cost.
The family did not have a special level of income, so he began to earn money on his own very early, feeling responsible for his life and desires, as well as independence. He started by collecting waste paper and later sold pirated programs.
At first it was embarrassing and embarrassing, but when he finally received the stamp collection he had dreamed of, he realized that it was worth it. Over time, he stopped stopping himself, turning into a real businessman, of whom there were not many in Russia at that time.
He studied well, as befits a Soviet schoolchild, additionally attending computer science courses at the House of Pioneers. He loved mathematics, which came easily to him. Already from the age of 12, he wrote his own programs, on a completely, according to current characteristics, “antediluvian” computer, without a color monitor and limited memory of 64 kilobytes.
First entrepreneurial experience
As a 14-year-old teenager, instead of kicking a ball with friends in the yard, Maxim worked in the radio market. He repaired and bought old phones, assembling new ones from parts. It all started when at one point a resourceful entrepreneur noticed an important nuance - you can “make” money from practically nothing.
Let’s say if you buy a large number of phones with caller ID, damaged or not, for example, for the amount of almost 4 thousand rubles, then, having put them in order, over time you could resell each one at a price of 4,500 rubles. But where to get the initial capital for the venture? His parents categorically refused to help him in his development, considering the idea “not tenable.”
But our hero is not used to retreating from difficulties; he helped his friend sell his telephone device in exchange for a favor. He lent him the necessary amount for two weeks, which Maxim was able to use “wisely.” Since during this time I was able to make such a turn that I could repay the debt and continue the business I had started, which was going very well. So much so that we had to hire workers to assemble parts of new phones.
Through joint efforts we managed to sell about 30 pieces a month, but then the demand for them fell and we had to switch to calculators.
Study and business
Maxim Yuryevich studied in regular educational institutions in Moscow. After ninth grade I went to school at Bauman Moscow State Technical University. There, in principle, he later entered the Faculty of Computer Science. Which was not surprising given his abilities. But, having completed only two courses, Nogotkov took an academic leave. And completely unexpectedly for himself, this idea dawned on him by accident, while taking exams.
The fact is that the rapidly expanding business took a lot of effort, and also brought in income that most students could not even dream of - about ten thousand dollars a month. And this is for an 18-year-old guy in the capital of Russia at a time when a huge part of the population did not even hold these dollars in their hands.
Therefore, he decided not to take one exam after all, but to take a year and a half break to try himself in business. And, preferring to be frank with himself, Nogotkov realized that the desire to become a programmer was no longer as great as before.
By the way, over time and with experience, he realized that education is a very important component, at least in his life. Experience in the radio market did not give a complete picture of understanding all the nuances of entrepreneurship, which is why in 1997 he went to study at Mirbis REA named after. G.V. Plekhanov, starting to study marketing. This helped broaden my horizons and gain the missing knowledge.
Business
Maxus
Maxim admitted to journalists that he didn’t even have experience creating a resume, since he always knew what he liked and what he wanted to do, which is why there was no need to look for hired work at all. Just like the wording “find a job” itself.
In 1995, together with friends who also left their studies, he created the Maxus company. Their first office turned out to be a small room in a factory with an area of 20 square meters. And the “point of sale” was the car of one of my friends at the radio market, which looked completely ridiculous against the backdrop of the trucks from which trade was usually carried out there.
They sold mainly phones and audio players. The turnover of their small company soon amounted to about $100 thousand. But the economic crisis in Russia in 1998 could not but affect Maxus. People began to spend money only on essential items. Buying an audio player, for example, was an unforgivable luxury at that time. Therefore, it is not surprising, but sales have fallen completely.
Our hero managed to save his business, unsuccessfully coping with the current circumstances for several months, when warehouses were full of goods that no one needed. One day he gathered his employees and announced that he could no longer afford to pay them full salaries. As a compromise, he offered only half the amount they were accustomed to.
No one left the company. And for good reason, because the digital phones that entered the market helped to improve the situation a little and survive these difficult times. And already in 2000, a completely new niche appeared with a claim to mass consumption - mobile phones.
Mobile phone business
The company managed to sign agreements with all manufacturers of these products, except for the Nokia brand, which was popular in those years. But because in their eyes, Maxus seemed an insignificant partner who would soon be swallowed up by big business. But by 2003, they managed to win the recognition of Nokia, and our hero’s company finally received the coveted agreement to distribute the products of a world-famous corporation.
Selling mobile phones turned out to be not so simple and easy, since the price for them was constantly falling, causing losses in the first deliveries to amount to approximately $50 thousand. Over time, they were able to compensate and achieve a turnover of $100 million. In 2001, Nogotkov decided to slightly expand the scope of services and engage in retail sales, which in the future became the main focus of his work.
Svyaznoy
This step was quite risky, since everything in wholesale was established and clear, but retail did not bring much income, and Maxim himself did not seem worth his attention. Despite doubts, in 2002 a new brand, Svyaznoy, was created. In Moscow, his retail outlets spread like mushrooms, surpassing the number of such competitors as Euroset and Tekhmaret (they had no more than 70 salons, while Nogotkov had 81).
And in the first year of operation, Svyaznoy managed to bypass its most powerful competitor, Techmarket, which initially considered it an unworthy rival. Three years later, they managed to open another 450 stores, although 400 were planned. In 2007, an innovation was introduced that attracted even more customers - a loyalty program began operating, which was called “Svyaznoy Club”. Now each client had the right to exchange accumulated bonuses for very real goods.
Since 2009, an online store was launched, which today brings in approximately 10% of total income.
Nogotkov has always believed that the financial services sector in Russia is underdeveloped. Let’s say people withdraw money from their salary card in order to top up their mobile account through the terminal. He wanted to make changes and improve this process, simplify it.
In 2010, a decision was made jointly with Promtorgbank to create Svyaznoy Bank. Today it serves approximately 3 thousand legal entities and is one of the largest in the country. But in 2012, Maxim Yuryevich voluntarily resigned from the board of directors due to the fact that he categorically disagreed with changes in the approach to bank management.
New projects
In the same year, 2010, he opened the famous Pandora jewelry store, beloved by many fashionistas.
In 2011, a new project was launched - the Enter retail chain. Where you could purchase any non-food product in absolutely any convenient way, even order it over the Internet or by phone. For the year, the turnover amounted to $100 million. The employees themselves conduct training and educational courses for their colleagues, and, unlike other enterprises, attendance is voluntary, no one obliges anyone to develop or relax together.
Maxim has a lot of ideas and interest, in addition to his main “brainchildren”, in 2011 he created a beautiful land park “Nikola Lenivets”, in 2012 he organized the social project “Yopolis”, which helped the ordinary population to conduct a dialogue with the authorities, and since 2008 He holds the position of Executive Director at KIT-Finance.
Character and personal life
The wife gave birth to three sons for our hero, but at the same time retained her beauty and charm. Maria is a smart woman, and he prefers to spend all his free time in her company. They often travel as a family to different countries, discover new hobbies and interests, and enjoy communicating with each other.
Perhaps the secret of Nogotkov’s success is that he never tried to buy anything. The only thing I couldn’t resist as a child were stamps. And so he was always only interested in development and promotion. Money turned out to be a pleasant side effect. Our hero is always open to something new, he is ready to take risks and use innovative technologies.
There are no strict rules and conditions for employees, believing that the choice of place of work lies with each of us. If someone values his position, he will do everything to stay there. Maxim Yuryevich is not mercantile, claiming that, having woken up one day and feeling like a millionaire, he realized that nothing had changed in his head because of this fact. I just reached my goal, so there was a need to form a new one.
At one time he was interested in boxing, even won prizes, but he realized that fierce competition was simply not his way to achieve what he wanted. He is not registered on social networks, believing that it is a waste of time that he would better spend on achievements and family.
He is a rare guest of restaurants and all kinds of parties, as he really does not like chic and manifestations of glamor. He drives absolutely calmly, both in a yellow Maserati and on public transport. He is interested in photography, tennis and likes to watch good movies in his spare time.
Conclusion
As you can see from the biography of Maxim Yuryevich Nogotkov, the main thing is to understand what exactly you want to do and strive for your dreams and goals, not forgetting about development. After all, this is what helped him earn a fortune that is estimated at more than $1 billion. Good luck and inspiration to you!
The material was prepared by Alina Zhuravina.
I worked for 2 years in this company, in an office in Moscow.
Provided evidence in December
In SB about predator. (modified by moderator) nala.
They asked me to resign, promising to sort everything out.
Well, these guys are still working. here's Svyaznoy.
Review of Svyaznoy from the site Rabotyaga.Ru
from 01/29/2011 at 16:29
Maxim Nogotkov wife.
Maria Vadimovna Hayward is wife of Maxim Nogotkov.
The surname, of course, was invented ten to fifteen years ago to ward off your prying eyes.
Information here:
http://www.forbes.ru/-slideshow/52010-leto-leto/slide/4
http://22.klg.msudrf.ru/modules.php?name=info_pages&id=160
http://marker.ru/news/523383
President of the Svyaznoy group of companies Maxim Nogotkov with his wife
at the XVI Silver Galosh Award Ceremony in Moscow.
Author of the photo: Valery Levitin
Photo date: 06/18/2012 20:45:00
Maxim Yuryevich Nogotkov. Or divorced?
Nogotkov Maxim Yurievich. Acquaintance.
My acquaintance with Maxim Yuryevich Nogotkov started long before working at Svyaznoy. I was studying in my final years at an institute (not MEPhI) when a friend of mine decided to buy a mobile phone. In Svyaznoy, unknown to me. Previously, I only knew Euroset (from the advertisement “The prices are just crazy”) and Alt-Telecom, located not far from my home.*****
In my fourth year at university, I first found myself in a Svyaznoy communications salon. I was topping up my phone account, but I made a mistake when dialing the number; the money went to another subscriber. Only half an hour later I realized this and, of course, I was upset. But the calmness of the communication store salesperson surprised me. Without fuss, with a clear understanding of what was happening, the employee carried out the necessary actions and the money ended up in the right account.Svyaznoy was different from the mobile, energetic Euroset. Near the Nagatinskaya metro station, the pavilions of these retailers were located nearby. I visited both.
*****
Employer Nogotkov Maxim Yurievich.
In January 2008, I started thinking about Nogotkov’s company as a possible employer. I wrote down only one word “Svyaznoy” in my diary. At that moment, rapid growth was expected in the market.
The messenger came into my life in August 2008. No doubt it was interesting. The office described in the note “First Interview” in 2008 resembled a communications salon. Except that there was no dress code in the form of blue shirts, black pants and black and yellow pioneer ties.
The atmosphere in the company is calm, friendly, and you can feel it right away, making it a pleasure to work. I have always been convinced that this is the merit of senior management. Even Serova and Co. did not interfere with the positive perception of Svyaznoy.
When the office was located on the street. Ibragimova, Maxim Yurievich Nogotkov did not visit the programming department. Arriving at the company, I asked my colleagues about Maxim Yuryevich. But only K.A. came. Khachiyan. The owner of the company was present at the New Year's holidays, but I did not go to them.
The first time I saw this outstanding man (what else could he be called if he managed to earn a lot of money so quickly?) was at Svyaznoy’s birthday party at the Paradise club.
Although I remember this event for other events. My colleagues, most likely retail employees, stole my camera.
(I hope whoever was going to choke on this outdated device has already choked on it. The camera was dear to me as a memory, as my wife’s first gift for my birthday. Stealing is wrong, so if a thief is reading my magazine now, let his ears turn red and his nose itchy . Which I do not have the good fortune to break for him. At my request, the theft was reported on Intra, but, of course, the camera was not returned, although I, as usual, hoped to resolve the situation in an amicable way. And it took me only three weeks to contact the police later, which I regret. At the Yakimanka police department they assured me that the video recording of our company’s event had already been destroyed, since in the Paradise club, with which the employees of this police department regularly work, recordings from video surveillance systems are not stored for more than three weeks.)In the office on Leninskaya Sloboda Maxim Yurievich Nogotkov I associated with Elena Nogotkova, who oversees charity programs and public events.
*****
In October 2009, I read a book about how to make a career in American companies - “Career Wars” by D. D. Alessandra.
Here's one piece of advice for readers: you need to do something that executives will notice. Something new. In one of the sections of the internal website intra.ru I found a question Maxima Nogotkova. He was interested in how, in the opinion of employees, the process of accepting payments could be speeded up.
Under the pretext of answering this question, I wrote a letter to the owner of the company. Got an answer.
A week later he proposed a development plan for Svyaznoy Bank. A letter with the plan is provided.
Maxim Yuryevich recommended contacting the directors of Svyaznoy Bank, to whom he had previously forwarded my concepts. I liked this idea. One of the goals of communicating with Maxim Nogotkov was to move from the IT department of Evgeniy Sizov and Karen Khachiyan to other departments of the company. My proposal was unusual. Maxim Nogotkov remembered me. Perhaps this somehow influenced the fact that on Monday morning Evgeniy Sizov went to Maxim Nogotkov’s office.
The last time I saw Maxim Yuryevich was a few weeks before my dismissal. He walked along the first floor of the Omega Plaza office building and said hello to Sergei Pascal.
The last letter from Maxim Nogotkov.
After writing my resignation letter, I wondered whether Dennis Ludkowski had read my letter. Who could I find out from? At Molokanova's? Sizova? Karen Khachiyan's? I think if they had hidden this document from the General Director, they certainly would not have told me about it. I received an answer to a question that concerns me from Maxim Nogotkov.The founder of the retailer and group of companies Svyaznoy, Maxim Nogotkov, was included in the list of the thirty youngest billionaires in the world in 2012. In addition to the largest retail network of mobile equipment stores in Russia by revenue, his business empire included the bank of the same name, the Pandora chain of jewelry stores, the Enter online store, Nogotkov invested in non-profit projects to change the urban environment - Yopolis and ArchPolis, art -village and others. But in 2014, Nogotkov’s company failed to repay a $120 million loan from Mikhail Prokhorov’s ONEXIM, as a result of which Nogotkov lost the company and left with his family for California. Nogotkov’s assets came under the control of Oleg Malis and his investment and consulting company Solvers, whose structures continue to sue Nogotkov over previously taken loans. Nogotkov considers the loss of his business an important lesson, and his path as “the best possible,” no matter how difficult or strange it may seem from the outside. Nogotkov has been living in California for two years and is now interested in the development of human potential, corporate cultures of companies and mentoring entrepreneurs. He does not intend to return to Russia: he is much more comfortable in California, and there are more opportunities in his area of interest. In the Business Code for Inc. Nogotkov told why corporate culture is the most important thing in any company, how to identify business trends and why, when taking on a truly serious challenge, you need to be prepared for failure.
About lessons in business
Business for me is a game. An interesting, team, creative and creative game. I was always interested in doing it because I learned a lot of new things for myself: new people, new industries, I understood how large systems work - companies and the state - and how relationships between people work. I love the feeling of growth, contribution and importance.
All I do in life is climb some higher and higher mountains and sometimes roll down from them. This is an opportunity to learn and develop, and business in this sense for me is a tool for my own development.
Any truly serious challenge should have at least a 50% chance of failure. The loss of “Svyaznoy” was an important and useful experience for me personally. Thanks to a rather funny coincidence, I ended up in California. And I’m very happy about it.
In a crisis, a business must turn on creativity and look for new opportunities and markets instead of old ones. When a three- to four-fold devaluation occurred in 1998, we found ourselves with a stock of audio players and for a year we were selling “2 players for the price of one.” But we brought Siemens DECT radiotelephones to the market, which brought us success. In 2007, we were presented with tax claims amounting to more than 3 billion rubles, the banks closed all credit lines for us within a year, and the 2008 crisis arrived. Then only because of tax claims, Tekhnosila and Eldorado changed owners. We managed to survive due to the fact that we took on the development of mono-brand MTS stores and agreed on unprecedented prepayments for connecting contracts from mobile operators.
It is important for an entrepreneur to be an optimist, but it is also worth keeping in mind what Nassim Taleb calls “black swans” (difficult to predict events that have significant consequences - Inc.). Since I had experience working during crises, in 2014 I still believed that I could predict the future and that the situation in Russia would only develop in a positive direction.
In Russia 2013-2014 three key factors coincided that led to my loss of business. In 2012-2013, people’s salaries stopped growing the way they had been growing before, and debt loads arose in the segment of unsecured loans - people continued to take out loans at the same rate, but they had no money to pay them off. The second is Crimea, after which all our foreign partners froze negotiations on investments. And the third event was the fall in oil prices in the fall of 2014, which led to a devaluation of the ruble by 2.5 times and a drop in demand.
I used to think that all the businesses we start must be successful, - we immediately invested a lot of money in them and too quickly began to scale projects such as Svyaznoy Bank and Enter. I did not understand macroeconomics deeply enough, and this led to a year delay in tightening the risk policy at the bank. For the same reason, some startups lived inside us longer than they should have, and we immediately built large teams.
In the Valley, I reconsidered my approach to creating startups: a business must first have an MVP - a minimum product that needs to be tested and developed iteratively: listen to users, be ready to close startups, without fearing, as in the corporate world, for your reputation.
The venture approach to the development of startups is tougher than the corporate approach, but more effective. In the beginning, investors easily write a lot of small checks, but for big money there is serious competition, many companies simply do not survive to the later stages. In the Valley, out of several thousand investments per year, money is returned at the expense of 10-15 stars, more than half of the investments are written off, and the remaining 50% give only a mediocre return on capital. I started all the startups with control and installed my own managing manager, giving him shares. Now it seems to me that it is more efficient for corporations to have a small stake in startups in the early stages - to observe what entrepreneurs are doing, and already at the stage when the business model begins to work and scale, buy them.
Business should always be based on the customer's needs. Quite often, entrepreneurs do something based on their own idea of beauty, without fully understanding who needs it, who will be willing to pay for it. This seems to be the main reason why startups fail.
Listening to the client is not enough. We need to hear him and offer him new creative solutions. The client can sometimes formulate a problem, but very rarely a solution.
What happened to the assets of Maxim Nogotkov
After the parent company of all Nogotkov’s assets is the Trellas group
Unable to repay the loan to ONEXIM in the amount of $120 million, the latter assigned the debt to Oleg Malis' Solvers group, which now controls all assets. The Svyaznoy group included the Svyaznoy chain of salons, Svyaznoy Bank, the online retailer Enter, the Pandora chain of jewelry stores and other assets of Nogotkov. In February 2016, Malis filed a lawsuit in a London court to collect a debt from Nogotkov with interest in the amount of $135 million.
In December 2016, the Central Bank revoked the license of Svyaznoy Bank. In the year since the default of the Svyaznoy group of companies, the volume of deposits in the bank decreased by 4 times - from 43.2 billion rubles to 12.7 billion rubles.
The Pandora jewelry chain is now owned by Sberbank. The bank bought 35% of the network in May 2014, at the same time issued a development loan in the amount of 13.6 billion rubles, and after the loan was overdue in the spring of 2015, it became the mortgagee of the remaining 65% of the network.
The online store Enter's problems began as a result of a conflict between shareholders, after which for two years Malis's managers tried to reduce Enter's debts by first closing offline stores, and then their own points of delivery of goods and reducing the number of employees from 2 thousand to 100. But in In January 2017, the court declared the company bankrupt. Six months earlier, the company’s debts were estimated at 1.5 billion rubles.
There is a big problem in Russia, a disease - widespread theft and kickbacks, including within companies. We recorded more than a hundred episodes of robbery and theft in 3 thousand salons in the country every year, and many cases of commercial bribery in management. Law enforcement would fare much worse without the support of our internal security services.
If you want to live comfortably and not take risks, you shouldn’t take out loans, run your own business and develop. I don’t really understand how you can do business in Russia without loans: banks are the main sources of financing in the Russian market, and the shareholder and venture capital markets, in comparison with the American one, for example, are practically undeveloped. If you want to do something serious, you will have to take out loans, taking into account all the risks.
About employees and corporate culture
In business, there is nothing more important than corporate culture. Companies are the energy of people and their motivation, values, level of trust among themselves - question number one. Jeff Bezos said in an interview that everything he does is about corporate culture. I deeply share this approach.
The ideal corporate culture can vary and depends on the stage of development of the company and the external environment.
Google's corporate culture may be most effective in a Silicon Valley environment, but in a state of war it could easily lose out to the corporate culture of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Employees don't owe anyone anything. But it is possible to create conditions in which everyone wants to prove themselves as an entrepreneur. In America and Russia, 85% of people are not satisfied with their work, with what they do. The US GDP is losing $0.5 trillion a year because of this. Corporate culture should help people realize themselves and develop, have a purpose and meaning for their activities.
In Svyaznoy we described what is important to us in terms of values: curiosity, desire to develop, openness and trust, responsibility. The people we have had success with have aligned with these values. They wanted to develop, be open and reliable. When you interview a person, you intuitively feel whether there is a resonance or not - this is an energetic thing.
About how to start your own business
I believe in random coincidences and individual crazy people who do something in business. Elon Musk wanted to fly to Mars, he is building rockets for this - and now rocket science is developing in the USA. State planning, which identifies promising innovative areas and begins to invest in them, is, in my opinion, much less effective.
A person must create a business in an area that he is willing to engage in 24 hours a day and that interests him. In this case, he will be able to create both a new trend and a new industry. If you try to follow trends and follow an already beaten path, you will end up with the 85% of people who do a job they don’t like.
There is no universal answer to the question of when to start a business. There is a specific person, what he feels and what he wants. Some people want to learn, while others want to do something right away. Some people have their own idea that they are passionate about, while others like to be on the team of a person who has a vision.
I started doing business at the age of 12 because I wanted independence and independence from my parents. And then I got involved and started to like it. There is more communication with people in business than in programming, which was another hobby of mine at the time.
In the first year, business rarely goes as you plan, and there are usually a lot of disappointments. You need to be willing to change course and have persistence.
Doing business with friends is undoubtedly more pleasant than doing business with people with whom you have nothing in common. But the mission or task for which we have gathered is more important than our friendship. If I decide to climb Everest, and my friend wants to stay at the camp, I will sacrifice friendship, but continue to go towards my goal.
The main rule of business is very simple: what’s inside you is outside you. I need to monitor my internal state - it affects the decisions I make in business and helps me hear my intuition better.
You need to treat your business like a car; it is a whole organism. If your car has a luxurious leather interior, but three wheels, you won't go far with it. And if you have four wheels, but a tattered interior or the gearbox doesn’t work, no one will need it either. If you only have PR, but no product, nothing will work, and if you have a good product, but bad PR, people are unlikely to be interested in it. In retail especially, it is important to pay great attention to detail and create a harmonious, cohesive product.
I have respect for people who have created businesses from scratch that have grown to become the world's largest companies. I like it when people strive not only to increase capitalization, but also invest their efforts in the development of society. In the world, these are the founders of the largest technology companies on the West Coast of the United States. There are also many active and caring people in Russia. I like what Arkady Volozh, Igor Rybakov, Sergey Solonin, Oscar Hartmann and many others are doing.
About business and government
The Russian state is ready to help, and this does not require any underground agreements. The support we received in Russia for the Nikola-Lenivets project and the Archstoyanie festival from the Kaluga region and the Ministry of Tourism (road construction, electricity, water, gas), by Californian standards, is simply unthinkable.
The state, like business, has its own interests. The Moscow City Hall needed a controlled, not an independent history - so instead of our “Yopolis” project, they decided to develop their own, “Active Citizen”. If I had set the goal of maintaining power, I would probably have done the same. There was also a lot of politics in the telecommunications industry: cellular operators Megafon and Beeline, after purchasing Euroset and building their own mono-brand networks, at some point stopped working with Svyaznoy.
In the situation with Otkritie, the state took absolutely the right actions. Given the current public distrust of the economy and financial institutions, the fall of one of the key banks would be similar to the effect of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in the United States.
In 2007, Maxim Nogotkov began supporting the Archstoyanie festival in the village of Nikolo-Lenivets, Kaluga region, and in 2010 he bought the land,
where the festival was held, and in 2011 created the company “ArchPolis”, which was supposed to manage the park and work as a platform for the development of creative initiatives around it. But at the beginning of 2015, due to Nogotkov’s loss of control over the assets, the organization ceased to exist. The entire infrastructure and a significant part of the park’s land (about 600 hectares) belongs to Nogotkov’s company Ugorskie Meadows LLC, which is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. The organization of the festival in Nikola-Lenivets is carried out by the company of directors of the art part of the project, LLC KB Nikola-Lenivets.
About personal
I am not very interested in technologies related in their pure form to IT. I look at them as a way to implement other projects. My greatest interest now is in people - consciousness, culture, physiology.
The first time I came to California, I had the idea of starting a startup and was looking for investment. In 2015, I had the energy to continue to implement the ideas contained in the platform for civil activists “Yopolis”. At the beginning of 2016, I decided that this was not the most effective and exciting way for me to change the world for the better.
It would be hundreds of times easier for me to make money in Russia by doing retail trade. This industry is very developed in America, it works well, and it has its own cultural characteristics. Apart from barriers in the form of higher competition, all my business contacts are in Russia, where I did business from 12 to 38 years old. Here this path would have to be taken from scratch.
I am interested in everything related to trust and the development of human potential,- psychology, religion, corporate culture, leadership development programs, mentoring, coaching. I mentor several projects - these are several Russian entrepreneurs, including through the Igor Rybakov Foundation - and spend 10-20% of my time on this. For now, I share more professional knowledge - work with strategy, planning, marketing, HR, corporate culture, sometimes we go into values and character. Over time, I plan to focus more on personal qualities. In order to do this work efficiently, I still study a lot myself.
I do not plan to return to Russia; it is preferable for me to live and work in California. There are many more people here from whom I can learn what interests me and develop. I would like to apply everything that I am currently studying in Russia through the creation of a system for the development and training of leaders.
I don't like unnecessary possessions - they distract me and take up some of my attention. In California, I continue to rent an apartment and have no plans to build a family home. I have a lot of ideas and a large field of uncertainty ahead - this is good, because it allows me to be in the flow of new events and people and be flexible and easy-going.
I didn’t have any discomfort communicating with my family when I was doing business. The question is not how much time you spend with your family, but in what condition. You can spend five minutes with your son in a state of energy, joy, love - and it will be more useful than three hours in a state of fatigue, melancholy and dissatisfaction. But I was able to spend more time with my fourth son, who was born two years ago, and he taught me a lot.
People develop exclusively through crises, and therefore, apparently, they appear periodically in my life. I identified myself with what I do [in business] for quite a long time, and it took me some time to readjust, to realize that I am more than my achievements and my business.
The state of loss is pleasant because it is easy to start from it - there are more degrees of freedom and open paths. It's worth going back to school age again and trying a lot of new activities. For example, at school I was always trying something besides the compulsory program - acting in the theater, and burning, and playing chess, and was a clown in the circus, and a boxer, and a mathematician, and a historian, and a biologist, and a programmer, and entrepreneur. For me, loss is a time to find new hobbies.
illustrations: Evgeniy Tonkonogiy
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