Despite what young lads on Youtube will tell you in their ads, there is no set formula to building a successful business. Every business is unique. Each is founded and run by different people, each with unique knowledge and experience. There’s variation in industry, market conditions, demographics, countries of operation, economies, and then there’s luck. In this article, I will tell you my story and focus on the entrepreneurial experience that led me to co-founding StackAdapt, and share lessons that I learned along the way.
Age 16
I grew up in Russia where it is not customary for teenagers to work. Even then, we all still have that teenage urge for some pocket money to spend on whatever teenagers spend their money on. Tired of asking our parents for money, my two high school friends and I decided to find some ways to earn a quick buck (or shall I say, ruble).
The music festivals of the early 2000s were different from those in the 2010s. They were less mainstream and the production was less over-the-top. But, thankfully for us, the demand was just as high. Mayday was one of the biggest electronic music events in Saint-Petersburg at the time. We knew how hard it was to get your hands on those tickets. This is where our “best” idea came into play. Our plan was to buy dozens of tickets, months in advance, and sell them at door with a markup. It worked! We couldn’t believe our luck when we were counting our returns. It was exhilarating and we wanted more. There were no other music events of a similar size in the near term, so we decided to try our luck with reselling tickets for soccer games. Zenit, Saint-Petersburg’s soccer team, not unlike many other Russian (or European, for that matter) teams had a big following of die-hard fans. These die-hard fans, or one might call hooligans, did not take it so lightly that we tried to make a profit off their team. Pretty quickly we were stopped by a big group of not-so-friendly folks who demanded we surrender all our tickets. We had poured all the money we had into these tickets. We had dozens of them. With our teenage livelihood at stake, we refused and were promptly searched. Our pockets were turned inside out. Thankfully, the fans found nothing and they left after, in no uncertain terms telling us to never be seen there again. Not believing our luck, we quickly made our way to a metro station to go home with our tails between our legs. Dozens of tickets were tucked into our socks never to be sold.
In this first hilarious attempt at making money, I learned that there are no shortcuts to building a business. Everything that seems too good to be true, usually is. There are no easy businesses and I would question the motivation of people who tell you otherwise.
Age 17
When I was 14, my best friend and I, not unlike many other teenagers, were searching for our identity. In need of inspiration, we went to a music store and asked the clerk, bluntly, “What’s cool these days?”
“Rap is cool”, he responded with a genuine desire to be helpful.
He was dressed the part, and we took his word for what was cool. We walked away with a CD each. My friend bought a Dr. Dre’s album and I got Ja Rule’s. Even today I’m still an avid fan of rap and hip-hop, though I admit I may be a decade or two behind what’s considered cool today.
Several years later, in the early 2000s, rap was just gaining momentum in Russia. Being among the first to really get into it, we figured the trend was there to stay. We predicted that more people would listen to rap and hip-hop, and that the music and culture would become more popular. So, at the age of 17, we decided to form a rap group. We weren’t concerned that we didn’t have any musical background. We had the vision that we’d become a rap sensation in Russia. We even recorded two tracks in a studio, but unfortunately, my rap career came to an end when my family moved to Canada and soon became more occupied with making new friends and not failing in university.
This was the first time I thought about the future and asked myself what I should be doing to capitalize on a future trend. At 17, I wasn’t wrong. Hip-hop culture became huge in Russia, and if I never moved to Canada, perhaps, I’d still be rapping today.
Age 19
One day, during my first semester of university, my friends and I were talking about the upcoming FIFA World Cup in South Africa. At the time, my friend had a giant stylized world map on his wall. One of us must have looked at the map, because it hit us that, as unbelievable as it looks on the map, the journey from the southernmost tip of Argentina to South Africa could be completed almost entirely by land (crossing Bering Strait is not reflected on the map below). We lit up and decided that this was an opportunity of a lifetime. We were going to drop out and complete a two-year journey, starting from the southern part of Argentina and arriving for the opening ceremony of the World Cup in South Africa. ATSA, Argentina-to-South-Africa, was what we named our project. We couldn’t waste any time — we only had two years! My friend put together a business plan and we approached brands and media companies for sponsorships and endorsements. I distinctly remember sending a pitch deck, with stars in my eyes, to some generic email address of Coca-Cola, genuinely expecting not just a reply but also a cheque.
Weeks later, we evaluated our non-existent traction with sponsors and critically thought about the composition of our team, made up of 18- and 19-year olds with zero experience executing projects of this scale. We decided to throw in the towel.
Pegging your success on the help from the outside is the surest way to failure. In doing so, you surrender control. What I learned from this experience is that if you truly want to make an idea happen you need to just go for it. For us, this means we would have to quit university, fly to Argentina, rent a car, and start filming. At that time, I don’t think any of us were ready for that.
Age 20
It must have been one of my business classes at the university that inspired me to sit down and run the math behind operating a hot dog stand. I built my first Excel model and learned that running a hot dog stand, even if you hire someone to operate it, was potentially quite a profitable business (for a university student). After a few days of research into different models of hotdog stands, I realized that you’ve got to pursue things you are passionate about and on problems worth solving. Hot dogs were neither of those for me.
Age 23
When I graduated university, entrepreneurship was the last thing on my mind. Graduating with a degree in finance, I chased banking jobs in Toronto. Three weeks after I moved into a city I had a job, but not in finance. I joined a young startup (a story for another time). The two founders were in their early/mid-twenties. They met during an internship at a large company, one even dropped out of school to build their company. Their startup's success, and their story, inspired me to think that I could do it too. Once the company was acquired, I threw myself into my first project: luxury leather camera straps. My university friend and I tried to work in the evening while keeping our full-time jobs. The project dragged on for months. After our second batch of samples from China came in defective I knew the answer to making it work was to double down. We both, or at least I, need to move to China and get the product to the level we wanted it. Faced with this hard decision we were forced to think hard about whether we are ready to double down. At that crossroad, our company failed because we weren’t ready to make that painful decision and fully commit to the new company.
In that experience, I learned that it’s impossible to build a successful company part-time. I still remember what my future co-founder, Ildar, (I hadn’t met him at that point yet) told me when we were launching StackAdapt: failure is not an option. We went all-in on it then, and we have been pouring our hearts into the business ever since.
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Thanks for reading! Part 2 will follow soon-ish.