The most successful businessman: a success story and interesting facts. Notable Entrepreneurs

Do you know who is the most successful businessman in Russia? You will probably immediately name such names as Prokhorov, Abramovich, Usmanov, Fridman and others. The success story of "old school" businessmen dates back to the 80s and 90s. The chronology of earning billions from these people is of the same type and is known to everyone. The 21st century is now in the yard - the time of new discoveries and the furious development of the IT industry. Some have gloriously succeeded in this and become successful millionaires at a fairly young age. Your attention is presented a list of "The most successful businessmen in Russia under 40". Of course, the leader in this area is Pavel Durov, but there are several more people who managed to make their multi-million dollar fortune before the age of 40. This article is a story about how successful businessmen in Runet become.

31 years old, founder and owner of the popular messenger Telegram. Net Worth - $1 Billion

In 2014, the number of users of the unique Telegram messenger was about 35 million people, and a year later there were more than 60 million (active monthly statistics). The trend of registering new users has continued to this day. In May 2015, Pavel Durov stated that 220,000 new users connect to the Telegram cross-platform application every day. If we estimate the scale of development of this project, then today the number of users should exceed 100 million people. The uniqueness and popularity of this messenger is immediately determined by the fact that the application itself is free and available for instant download and use. Also, an exceptional feature of Telegram is its confidentiality - all users of this social network can be sure that their correspondence will always be private and inaccessible to interception.

Unprecedented success of Durov after the launch of the social network "VKontakte"

Pavel Durov is a truly successful businessman and entrepreneur. The source of his wealth and popularity originates in the social network VKontakte, which he launched in 2006. This project has gained incredible popularity among the Russian-speaking population. This startup began to rapidly grow in mass. Having hooked every inhabitant of the post-Soviet space into his social network, Pavel Durov very soon became a major millionaire, and the estimated value of VK exceeded $ 1.5 billion. For several years, Durov bought up shares on VKontakte. Pavel made millions of dollars doing it. In December 2014, Durov sold his last 12% of his own shares and ceased to be the owner of the most popular social network in Runet.

Pavel Durov's fortune

Little is known about Pavel's current life, because the billionaire does not like interviews and the press. In his Instagram, we can see photos from New York, then from San Francisco. Durov also often visits European capitals. It is known that Pavel is a true lover of picturesque nature. The young often visits the Finnish lakes, rests in Karelia and skis in Switzerland from time to time.

Today it has 1 billion dollars. He is the most successful young businessman in Russia. Pavel himself has repeatedly stated that the estimated value of Telegram varies from 3 to 4 billion dollars. He made these estimates based on what offers he received regarding the buyout of the Telegram messenger.

Ivan Tavrin: 39 years old, owner of YuTV Holding (USM Holdings). Net worth - $400 million

In 1996, while still a law student at MGIMO, together with his friend, he founded the Konstrakt advertising agency. In 2000, the agency's annual profits exceeded $10 million. In 2001, he founded a new company called Regional Media Group.

The area of ​​activity of RMG was still the same - the sale of media assets. In 2005, eight regional TV stations operated under the auspices of RMG. Tavrin's fortune at that time already totaled tens of millions of dollars, but the successful businessman went further. In 2010, Ivan Tavrin established the Media-1 holding, which was created to merge assets with AF Media Holding (which included well-known TV channels such as Muz-TV and 7TV), which was subsequently owned by the combined company became known as YuTV Holding. Thanks to this integration, Ivan Tavrin received a 50% stake from YuTV Holding.

To date, the state of Ivan Tavrin has about $ 400 million. In addition to owning shares in YuTV Holding, a successful businessman is a member of the board of directors of Kommersant, and also holds the post of CEO of Megafon.

Voinov brothers - Semyon and Efim, 33 years old: founders of Zeptolab. Net Worth - $250 million each

Successful modern Russian businessmen are even those who make mobile games. These representatives are the Voinov brothers - the creators and developers of the most popular game for mobile phones Cut The Rope. In 2015, the game reached a new promising level - the Indian company Nazara Games bought the franchise from Zeptolab. The prospect of this deal is designed to capture the Indian subcontinent.

The mobile game Cut The Rope was released in 2010 and over the 5 years of its existence has acquired an audience of 750 million users. Along with this, Semyon and Efim Voinovs became big millionaires. The popularity of the Cut The Rope game is so great that the main character Om Nom became crowded on the screen of a mobile device - a whole series was dedicated to him, and in 2016 a whole cartoon about Om Nom was released.

The Voinov brothers are truly successful businessmen in Russia. They made their fortune by creating exciting games for mobile devices. The success story of Yefim and Semyon is truly amazing.

Little is known about the brothers' personal lives. Warriors do not like to give interviews and remain in the shadows from television cameras and the press.

Petr Kutis: 38, founder of OneTwoTrip. Net Worth - $130 Million

Successful Russian businessmen have also succeeded in the air ticket sales market. One of these representatives is Petr Kutis, the founder of OneTwoTrip. In 2014, online sales of airline tickets (including hotel and hotel reservations) totaled $11.2 billion worldwide. The indicator is very impressive, but analysts predict that the market will continue to grow and increase by 20-25% every year.

Experts believe that Kutis' fortune is about $ 130 million, but the businessman himself does not cover or comment on his financial affairs. It is known that in 2012 OneTwoTrip was invested in 25 million dollars by companies such as Phenomen Ventures ($9 million) and Atomico ($9 million). By the way, Atomico belongs to Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom. information that funds from Goldman Sachs ($8 million) and Vostok New Ventures ($4 million) were invested in OneTwoTrip in 2015. However, successful businessman Petr Kutis refuses to comment and reveal all the secrets of transactions .

Alexander Agapitov: 31, founder of Xsolla and Slemma. Net Worth - $125 million

Not all successful businessmen in Russia were excellent students in educational institutions. A clear example is Alexander Agapitov, who was expelled from the institute for low attendance. Alexander at a certain point stopped going to pairs, because he was doing his own work - he wrote a unique algorithm for analytics of bookmakers' websites. His software product was so successful that it predicted the outcome of sporting events with an 80% probability. Soon Agapitov launched his own service for paying for games via the Internet. The first development of the future millionaire was not doomed to a major success, but new ideas and developments were born along with it. After a while, the improved product began to gain success, and soon the service developed into Xsolla, which is headquartered in California. More than 700 payment systems around the world operate on the basis of Xsolla software. The estimated value of the company varies from 1 to 1.5 billion dollars.

Conclusion

The stories of successful businessmen always surprise the masses. All these people differ from ordinary mortals in their strong-willed attitude and faith in their work. The new generation of businessmen is inversely different from the representatives of the old school. Successful modern businessmen are, first of all, people of the future. After all, all of them are somehow connected with the media space, the IT industry and the Internet, and all these areas are our future.

"Secret" presents the annual rating of the most successful young businessmen in Russia. All of its participants are under 40 yet, the average age is 34 years. Each hero built a business from scratch with his own or borrowed money. We did not include in the list of successful investors. The main criterion for determining the place is the value of the entrepreneur's share in the company (or several companies) he created. The leader of the rating is Pavel Durov. His Telegram reached 100 million users at the beginning of the year, and in recent months has taken several important steps towards turning from a communication tool into a full-fledged media platform. About how we estimated the cost of Telegram, which Durov, according to our data, owns entirely, read in a separate Durov and several more rating participants spend a lot of time abroad or live there permanently, but they are all citizens of Russia. Therefore, you will not find in the list, for example, Sergey Petrossov, the founder of JetSmarter. This "Uber for private jets" is just $1.5 billion, but the Petrossov family left Russia for the US when the future entrepreneur was four years old. In addition, the rating did not include entrepreneurs whose business size can only be estimated by indirect signs. For this reason, for example, there are no Zeptolab founders Semyon and Efim Voinov in it. The creators of the games Cut the Rope and King of Thieves have never been talkative, and recently they have finally gone into the shadows. On the other hand, we managed to evaluate the business of Anton Cherepennikov, the founder of ESforce - the same “e-sports holding”, in which Alisher Usmanov invested $100 million a year ago. We turned to databases (such as SPARK and Kommersant Kartoteka) and other open sources, entrepreneurs themselves, their partners, colleagues, competitors, as well as investors and independent experts for information. If a rating participant's company recently attracted investments, we evaluated it according to the parameters of the transaction. In other cases, we used multipliers for public or already valued by us companies. The data given in the rating is the result of expert and editorial assessments. This information is not "official".

Pavel Durov

In February, Pavel Durov said that 400 million people read Telegram channels, and since then the statistics should have grown significantly: the word “channel” itself no longer needs explanation (at least in Russia). In November, the company launched Telegra.ph, the easiest text publishing system that doesn't even require registration. In October, users got the opportunity to play games directly in the application. Telegram apolitical Durov has gained great popularity among politicians. Russian officials have long trusted their secrets to a messenger developed by the citizens of Saint Kitts and Nevis, but not only them. The magazine l'Express, for example, found out that Telegram is used by French politicians of various views - from members of the ruling party to Marine Le Pen's National Front. The reason is the fear of listening. When Putin congratulated the newly elected President of the United States on his victory in the government telegram (telegram), Durov tweeted: "Think what you want about this man, but he chose the right way to congratulate Trump." The ability to easily exchange encrypted messages is not only the main pride and marketing advantage of Telegram, but also Durov's uncompromising position. Throughout the year, he removed Islamic State channels from the platform (we have to remind you that his activities are banned in Russia) and at the same time defended his right - and the right of the industry - not to give governments separate preferential access to communication systems. "Never before in the history of mankind have the authorities had so much information, and still they complain that someone is 'going underground'," he told Fortune. In addition to the war with ISIS and the squabbling with the governments of the superpowers, Durov amuses himself with the fact that from time to time, with the help of retweets, he kicks the main competitor - WhatsApp. This is a rare weakness for this person, which he allows himself to show in the public field.

Alexander Agapitov

“Funds write once a week, there were no proposals from strategists this year, but after I graduated from executive programs at UCLA and Stanford, I firmly realized that I can’t imagine life without Xsolla,” Agapitov told Secret. - I will not be able to work with a partner or become part of, for example, Amazon. We recently moved to a new office and I signed a lease until 2026. I create a business for centuries and for myself, and not for sale or for financing. What I wish for everyone." 11 years ago, Alexander Agapitov from Perm was expelled from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Perm State National Research University - he skipped too much. The student wrote an algorithm for analyzing betting sites that makes winning bets, and launched a service for paying for games on the Internet. These projects took up most of my time. The first service did not shoot, and the second grew into Xsolla, which creates payment and billing tools for developers and publishers of video games. Xsolla supports about 700 payment systems, its products are used by such giants of the gaming industry as, for example, Valve. Xsolla is headquartered in California, where Agapitov moved with his family in 2009. One of the offices is still operating in Perm, another in Seoul, and a third in Nicosia, Cyprus. The Russian "Xsolla" in 2015 earned 4.79 billion rubles (in 2014 - 3.48 billion, in 2013 - 1.66 billion) - this is less than 20% of the global revenue of all Xsolla.

Edward Iloyan

Yellow, black and white

“Bring back Daddy's Daughters,” fans of endless sitcoms from Yellow, Black and White write to Eduard Iloyan on social networks. But the producer is clearly not up to it now: in Moscow, the shooting of the feature film “Kitchen. The Last Battle" based on the famous TV series "Kitchen". Iloyan calls this project a milestone for his studio. With each new season, the rating of "Kitchen" did not fall, as is often the case with long series, but, on the contrary, grew. The fifth, penultimate, is the most successful in the entire history of the project and in the very first week of the show became the first series in Moscow in the TNS rating (rating - 5.7%, share - 16%) and the second in Russia. The first feature of this project "Kitchen in Paris" was watched by more than 2 million viewers in cinemas, and the box office was about $ 14 million. So now Yellow, Black and White is preparing the second feature film for release, and in the fall it launched the series "Hotel" on the STS channel Eleon "" - spin-off "Kitchen". However, the life of the production company consists not only of the Kitchen project: in 2016, Yellow, Black and White, together with Disney in Russia, filmed the comedy fairy tale The Last Hero. The creators promise a premiere in October 2017 and hope that it will be watched all over the world. The budget of the film, announced by the producers, is about 345 million rubles. Russian Disney and Iloyan's studio divided the financing of the picture in half. At some point, it seemed that the times of sitcoms and sketch shows (“Give Youth”, “One for All”) for Iloyan passed and now Yellow, Black and White will deal mainly with full-length films. But in the summer of 2016, Iloyan promised to shoot 20 new series for different TV channels: “When there was a crisis, we preferred to go to the cinema. Now we see that the market is growing again,” the producer explained. Yellow, Black and White was founded in 2006 by former cavalry officers Eduard Iloyan, Vitaly Shlyappo and Alexey Trotsyuk. The name of the studio, according to the idea of ​​its creators, should symbolize the friendship of peoples - all three producers studied at RUDN University and played in KVN for his team.

Ilya Popov

The successful Smeshariki franchise appeared at the beginning of the 2000s. Prior to that, Ilya Popov, the main beneficiary of the Riki Group (it includes, in particular, the Riki Producer Center, Marmalade Media and the German company Smeshariki), was engaged in the production of computer games. Popov's company had already made several hundred games by the time the game about the magical world of the sweet tooth went into production. Over time, round creatures from the Land of Sweets became Smeshariki and conquered not only the Russian audience, but also the foreign one - only in Europe, the USA and China they are called Kikoriki. The brands "Smeshariki" and "Fixies" are successful, the turnover of products produced by licensees amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. Two full-length cartoons about Smeshariki have already been released - in 2011 and 2016. Next in line is another picture and a cartoon based on the Fixies. By the way, both feature films will be shown in US cinemas - in 2016 the film distributor Shout! Factory got the rights to distribute them. Popov says his company is constantly looking for new characters and new ideas to create other franchises. In October, he announced that he would soon present two new projects. The first is an animated series about the dinosaur Ricky, the second is the cartoon and series "Children's World", the main characters of which will be "toys known to the Russian audience."

Konstantin Kalinov

Aviasales is the #1 air ticket metasearch engine in Russia. It also works abroad - under the JetRadar brand. Now, probably, few people remember that this project grew out of the travel blog Kosyan.com, which the former St. Petersburg policeman Konstantin Kalinov led in the late 2000s (Kosyan is his school nickname). Since 2010, Aviasales has been headquartered in Phuket, Thailand, where 150 employees of the company work and its founder lives permanently. In 2014, Kalinov raised $10 million from iTech Capital - the fund received a minority stake in Aviasales. No one else invested in Kalinov's company. In a recent interview To Oleg Tinkov, the businessman valued Aviasales at $250 million. Competitors and independent experts interviewed by The Secret believe that in reality the company costs one and a half to two times less (even taking into account that the Chinese travel service Ctrip recently paid $1.7 for Skyscanner billion). Aviasales creates a huge number of newsbreaks, but they rarely have a direct bearing on the company's business. It's just that Kalinov is one of the most daring brawlers on the Runet. The main means of promotion of the company is situational marketing. One of the biggest scandals of this year is the public skirmish between Kalinov and Olga Strahovskaya, editor-in-chief of Wonderzine. It all started with a post in the Aviasales group, which was dedicated to the divorce of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The actor, on behalf of whom the post was written, complained that he would now have to visit the "extras" (as the adopted children of the couple were called) with grandmothers from all over the world. Kalinov responded to Strakhovskaya's indignation, which, however, was not quite correct, with abuse and sexist insults. However, it is impossible to say that Kalinov does not care at all about his image. He keeps an eye on his appearance, and last year his representatives asked The Secret to replace the photo of the entrepreneur in the rankings because he looked fat in it.

Anton Cherepennikov

"Citadel", ESforce

Anton Cherepennikov became interested in computer games 20 years ago and in the early 2000s he won a bronze medal at World Cyber ​​Games Russia. Since 2005, he has been in business: first he traded in Blackberry phones, then in telecommunications equipment. In 2010, an acquaintance from the esports team Virtus.pro contacted Cherepennikov. The team was in desperate need of funding, and Cherepennikov undertook to produce it. The more he spent, the more clearly he understood that in eSports they earn not on teams, but on tournaments. Over several years, Virtus.pro has grown into a structure that organizes international competitions and unites sites for 40 million gamers from all over the world. Cherepennikov had no doubt that he could build an international empire, but he needed investment. Through acquaintances, he contacted Alisher Usmanov's USM Holdings. After some negotiations, Usmanov's fund invested $100 million. Esports assets were united under the roof of the Cypriot company Esforce Holding: Virtus.pro club; 180 Internet resources covering 80% of esports viewers in Russia and the CIS (the main ones are Cybersport.ru, RuHub and Storm Studio); organizer of Epic Esports Events tournaments. $20 million was spent on strengthening the holding's position in the market, including the purchase of the media rights of the Na'Vi club, a 66% stake in the German club SK Gaming, and the construction of "Europe's largest esports arena" in Moscow. According to ESforce representative Nikita Bokarev, the holding already ranks second in the world in terms of capitalization. In first place is the German Electronic Sports League. Cherepennikov refused to be interviewed for this rating, but earlier he told Dengi magazine that in 2015 the company earned $3 million, and in 2017 he wants to grow to $40 million. Secret estimates ESforce's turnover this year at $20–25 mln. This estimate is confirmed by a source familiar with the structure of the holding. Market players estimate Cherepennikov's share at 50%.

Peter Kutis

OneTwoTrip allows you to book tickets for 800 airlines, including low-cost airlines, and rooms in 750,000 hotels around the world. The other day OneTwoTrip launched a service for organizing business trips in companies. Before OneTwoTrip, Peter Kutis developed another similar service - Anywayanyday. In the fall of 2015, the Swedish fund Vostok New Ventures invested $4 million in OneTwoTrip, and in the summer of 2016 invested another $2.5 million. Now the fund's portfolio contains about 8% of Kutis' company. In 2015, the businessman left the operational management of OneTwoTrip and began to come up with a new service, which he called FinalPrice. He already has a website that promises: "Here your searching ends and your savings begin." Probably, we are talking about a travel club, whose members, in exchange for contributions, will receive the most favorable offers for renting housing, transport, or the price of tickets while traveling. Kutis first talked about FinalPrice when he was having a drink with Aviasales founder Konstantin Kalinov - the event was broadcast on the Internet. "It's going to be a killer," Cutis promised. “It will be in the mouth of my feet,” Kalinov agreed.

Ruslan Fazlyev

A native of the Bashkir city of Oktyabrsky, Ruslan Fazlyev once went into business to match his fiancee, the daughter of a prominent Ulyanovsk businessman, and then brought one of the most successful online store designers for Facebook, Ecwid, to the market. Over the past five years, the company has raised $6.5 million in investments. According to Fazlyev, the business is growing by 50% every year. In 2016, the Ecwid user base will exceed 1 million people. Fazlyev also owns a stake in X-Cart, a more complex and advanced online store builder. The project, according to the businessman, is growing by 10% per year. The revenue of online stores created with its help is $2 billion a year. Another asset of Fazlyev is a small stake in Bufernaya Bay publishing house (Lifehacker.ru). Most of Fazlyev's clients are in the US, and he spends a lot of time in the company's California office. Life there is very different from Ulyanovsk, where Fazlyev started: before conferences and meetings with partners, he goes jogging to the ocean, but in his homeland he had to fight with spiders.

Maxim Belonogov and Oleg Shlepanov

"Maksim"

$45.6 million each

Kurgan taxi order service "Maxim" is widely known in the regions. his classmates Maxim Belonogov and Oleg Shlepanov back in 2003. Since then, the business has grown from a control room in Shadrinsk to 159 full-fledged branches, 21 of which are abroad. This year, the company changed its logo, updated the application, sold its first franchises and became the author of a unique record: Maxim completed the longest known real taxi ride in Russia - from Izobilny (Stavropol Territory) to Ussuriysk (Primorsky Territory). A driver with three passengers traveled 9,200 km in nine days and earned 120,000 rubles. Belonogov took part in the transarctic expedition in March. He tested the Burlak wheeled all-terrain vehicle in Baydaratskaya Bay, a vehicle designed to reach the geographic North Pole and return back to Eurasia without fuel or provisions. Burlak will embark on such an expedition in 2019.

Nikolay Evdokimov

SeoPult, AppInTop

Nikolai Evdokimov, a thermophysicist by education (MSTU named after Bauman), saw the prospects of the direction of SEO-optimization ten years ago. Then he, together with his friends - Igor Artemenko and Pavel Yushkevich - founded the company SeoPult. The market in those years was almost undeveloped: it was possible to bring a site to the first lines in Yandex or Google for only $50. Seopult captured 70% of the market, doubling revenue annually. Such success charmed investors: in 2012, the iTech Capital fund invested $10 million in the company and received a minority stake (the share was not disclosed). In 2014, the second round of investments took place: iTech Capital poured in another $10-30 million (according to market participants). But then, due to the depreciation of the ruble and the crisis, revenue growth slowed down - most of the company's clients are in Russia. Now the share of Nikolai Evdokimov in Seopult is, according to him, 20%. The company's revenue, taking into account the performance of previous years and investors' assurances of growth, is 1.5-2 billion rubles. Multipliers in this market are valued at odds of three to five. Accordingly, the average valuation of the company is about $120 million. SeoPult is not Evdokimov's only business. Three years ago, the entrepreneur began to actively engage in mobile marketing and develop a service for promoting mobile applications AppInTop. Evdokimov estimates his share in this company at 63%. Other small stakes are owned by Evdokimov's co-investors and the Run Capital fund, and one of its shareholders (and iTech Capital co-investor) Andrey Romanenko heads the board of directors of AppInTop. The deal with Run Capital was valued at $6 million.

Boris Batin and Alexander Dunaev

33 years old and 29 years old

For $37.5 million

The founders of the ID Finance holding (which develops the MoneyMan microfinance Internet service) Boris Batin and Alexander Dunaev met in the UK: Batin studied at Cambridge, and Dunaev studied at King's College London. They then worked for Deutsche Bank and Renaissance Capital. In 2015, MoneyMan was the 12th MFI in Russia in terms of portfolio size, and in 2016 Batin and Dunaev's service ranks eighth. From 2013 to 2015, Russian revenue increased from 71.79 million to 1.07 billion rubles. At the same time, the company also operates abroad - in Georgia, Spain, Kazakhstan and Poland, as well as in Brazil (since December this year). Founders estimate the global revenue of ID Finance at $20.8 million last year and $72 million this year. In the summer of 2015, ID Finance received $6 million from the venture capital fund Emery Capital and businessman Vadim Dymov. In total, ID Finance has already raised $12 million in investments. There were no deals this year, but Batin and Dunaev told The Secret that some "international private-equity funds" valued their business at $200 million. Dunaev's family lives in London. He visits his relatives every weekend, and divides his weekdays between Moscow and Barcelona. At least twice a month, he flies to countries where MoneyMan operates.

Fedor Ovchinnikov

"Dodo Pizza"

Fedor Ovchinnikov opened the first pizza delivery service in Syktyvkar in 2011, today the network already has 146 pizzerias (136 points are operated by franchisees), and plans to open 32 more by the end of the year. Last year, few believed that the Dodo Pizza network could help out 1 billion rubles, but she succeeded. The goal for this year is 3 billion rubles. Judging by the franchisee's reports, it will also be implemented. Ovchinnikov's franchisees operate in nine countries. Since 2016, Dodo Pizza has been in the USA. “You are cool guys, but what you are doing is pure madness,” one of the future competitors in America told Ovchinnikov. “You might as well take your money, go to the casino and bet it on zero.” However, a delivery service in Oxford, Mississippi, opened in March and went to zero in five months. In 2017, Ovchinnikov plans to open at least three outlets in America. In August, Dodo attracted Dmitry Sysoev, co-founder of 2GIS, as an investor. Little is known about the content of the deal. Ovchinnikov says he owns 61.86% of the shares. Sysoev, according to him, valued the company at $ 50 million. Direct competitors, with whom Ovchinnikov often dives in the public field, told The Secret on condition of anonymity that, according to them, Dodo Pizza cannot cost more than $ 35 million.

Evgeny Demin and Elena Belous

$20.5 million each

Husband and wife

“November 2000 turned out to be sunny and cool - I remember it well, because I went on foot to receive the seal of our newly formed company,” Evgeny Demin begins his next letter to Splat buyers. After 16 years, the company founded by him and his wife is the largest Russian manufacturer of toothpaste. In the Russian pharmacy market, the brand ranks third after Rocs and Lacalut products. However, this is not the main sales channel - supermarkets and convenience stores are in the first place. In total, Splat is sold in 50 countries (16 of them were added this year). Splat is not limited to one brand. Now Evgeny Demin and Elena Belous also produce BioMio household chemicals, Lallum Baby cosmetics for children and individual products for oral care Iney and Innova. This year they entered a new niche for the company - shampoos and hair balms under the Heya Luxury brand. Once upon a time, Evgeny Demin and Elena Belous thought they thought about dividing responsibilities: one is engaged in work, and the other is at home. But Whitebeard, in the role of a housewife, could not stand even a few days. After the birth of children, the issue of Belous leaving the business again became relevant, but was resolved with the help of authority - Yevgeny Demin went to Athos to the elder Janis, who recommended leaving everything as it is.

Today I want to tell you the stories of some of the richest people on our planet who were able to earn more than a billion dollars thanks to their brilliant ideas, hard work and desire to get rich. What is most interesting, all these people did not inherit a huge fortune and did not win the lottery, they all started their business from almost nothing. Very interesting, read on.

Li Ka-shing - $26.5 billion

Li Ka-shing was born and lived in China until he left the country in 1940 and moved to Hong Kong. Due to the death of his father, he had to leave school at the age of 14 and go to work. His first job was in a plastic products trading company and he had to spend 16 hours there.
The first ten years, plus thrift, led to the opportunity to open his own business, Cheung Kong Industries. Like Ka-shing's previous job, it was a plastics business, but over time, it has grown into Hong Kong's largest investment corporation. Li Ka-shing himself is considered one of the richest Chinese.

Sheldon Adelson - $26 billion

Sheldon Adelson, the son of a taxi driver from Boston, began his entrepreneurial career at the age of 12 by selling newspapers. After that, he was a court reporter, mortgage broker, investment advisor and financial advisor. There was a period when he tried to sell toiletries and charter tours.
But the organization of the computer exhibition-fair COMDEX in 1979 became a serious success. For the next 2 decades, it was the leading exhibition in the computer field in the United States.
And in 1988, together with partners, he acquires a casino and a hotel in Las Vegas (Sands Hotel & Casino), after which he quickly begins to get rich.

Sergey Brin - $24.9 billion

This is already a new wave of billionaires who began to earn money in the age of computerization and the Internet. Sergey Brin, a 40-year-old Google owner and former Russian, was born in Moscow and then moved to the United States with his family of mathematicians. Engaged in search engines (this is how Google.com itself is called correctly) began at Stanford with classmate Larry Page. The system was tested at the university, and then they began to look for investors. The name Google is a mispronunciation of gugol, a word spoken during one of the project's presentations.
Brin and Page were included in the list of billionaires in 2004, when they were 30 years old. Today, Brin is mainly engaged in the development of new projects and directions, such as augmented reality glasses and an unmanned vehicle.

Larry Page - $24.9 billion

The co-founder and co-owner of Google has been leading the company since 2011 and is actually responsible for its strategic development. In addition to Google, he is actively engaged in the development of the clean energy sector, in particular, together with Brin, he invested in Tesla Motors, which produces high-level electric cars (this is a normal car that is powered by batteries).

Roman Abramovich - $23.5 billion

A well-known personality in narrow circles, Roman Abramovich, a billionaire orphan, who was raised by his grandparents. He went into business while still a student, creating a cooperative for the production of toys and various polymers. After that, there were many other companies and cooperatives, both in production and in trade.
But, as some sharp tongues say, Abramovich's main talent is being able to be at the right time in the right place - thus he was able to gain control of Sibneft, which allowed him to become a billionaire.

Amancio Ortega - $20.2 billion

Until I read who it was, the name meant absolutely nothing to me - Amancio Ortega. If we say that this is the founder and owner of Zara, then a lot will fall into place.
He began sewing his first suits in his living room with the help of $25 and his wife. The first clothing store opened in 1975, and after a while became the owner of the popular clothing chain Zara. In addition to the Zara chain, he has chains of clothing stores for children, for young girls, lingerie stores, etc. In total, Ortega has more than 3,000 stores in 64 countries around the world.

Mark Zuckerberg - $19 billion

29-year-old Mark Zuckenberg is an icon of the modern world. Young, lazy, creative and rich. The creator of the largest social network Facebook, who created a system for his university - Harvard - but in the end could not finish it, because. there was no time left. Helped in the creation of Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskowitz, plus Eduardo Saverin. The first major investment came from Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal.
Now Facebook is a public company, which first lost a lot in price, and then (in 2013) began to rise in price. Zuckenberg now has a 17% stake, making him the youngest billionaire in history.

Kirk Kerkorian - $16 billion

The now elderly uncle of the age of 96 left school in the 8th grade for the sake of boxing. At that time, he achieved great success and even became the welterweight champion in the Pacific Amateur Boxing Championship. After the Second World War, he left the ring and went to the airfield and began to fly the plane, but in 1944 he ended up in Las Vegas, where he got stuck for 3 years. After losing a lot of money, he nevertheless said goodbye to gambling and bought the airline company Trans International Airlines for 60 thousand dollars. After some time, he was able to sell it for $ 104 million to Transamerica.
And since 1968, he took up Hollywood - he earned at MGM, United Artists, Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox.

Elon Musk - $6.7 billion

Elon Musk is one of those new rich people who capture the market with their brains, hands and business acumen. First big deal at age 12 - wrote a program that I sold for $500 (at that age I only spent pocket money on ice cream and buns). At the age of 25, together with his brother, he created a software company for news companies, and after 4 years he was able to sell it for a price of 307 million. He invested this money in the creation of PayPal, which, in turn, he sold to eBay for $1.5 billion.
Today he is engaged in the Space X space program and has contracts from NASA. Also engaged in the aforementioned Tesla Motors.

Dustin Moskowitz - $5.2 billion

You can also say about this young man, he was at the right time in the right place. Dustin Moskowitz is Mark Zuckenberg's roommate and helped him build Facebook. At the moment, he owns 5% of the shares and this is the basis of his fortune. Facebook is not his main project now - now he is working on the Asana project. This is a web application for efficient project collaboration. Of the interesting things, he rides a bicycle to work and participates in the Giving Pledge project (a philanthropic project from Bill Gates and Warren Buffett). The essence of the project is that half of the members' fortune goes to charity.

Ken Griffin - $4.4 billion

Billions are made not only on computers. Ken Griffin is the owner of Citadel hedge funds. He got his first positive experience of playing on the stock exchange at the age of 18 and has not stopped working since then. He became one of the most famous specialists in his field. After 2008, the funds lost half their price, but are now gradually recovering.

John Arnold - $2.8 billion

Another successful stock player, John Arnold, started at Enron, now deceased. At the age of 27, he earned $1 billion for the company and received his bonus of $8 million. It was this money that he used to invest for himself and leave the annoying company.
In 2012, he surprised the whole world by announcing that he was retiring from trading after 17 years of successful experience. He and his wife now have a $1.4 billion charitable foundation and are also part of the Giving Pledge project we mentioned above.

Oprah Winfrey - $2.5 billion

Oprah Winfrey is a whole layer of American culture. This is the Cinderella of our days, who did not drop her shoe on the stairs, but plowed like a horse and used all the possibilities. The beginning of life is harsh, you can’t say anything: a strict mother, she was first abused at the age of 9, at 14 she gave birth to a child who died in infancy. But when I was in school, I first got a job at a radio station. At the age of 19, she already hosted local news, then daytime talk shows. The next major achievement is to promote a completely unpopular show so as to become a celebrity, and then, with experience and a name, create your own production company.
At 32, Oprah became a millionaire, and her show is the property of the nation. Since 1994, it has become so popular that the check for the year exceeded 9 figures. Oprah Winfrey became the first African American woman to be featured on the Forbes list.
Today, once on the air with Oprah, you can become a celebrity in 1 day. For example, this was done with Robert Kiyosaki in 1997 (of course, we will not belittle the achievements of Robert himself).

Mikey Jagtiani - $2.5 billion

Mikey Jagtiani, a Middle Eastern representative on our list of billionaires, was going to be an accountant, but his studies didn't work out. living in London was too expensive, plus the exams were also not going smoothly. To survive, I had to work as a taxi driver and a cleaner.
At the age of 21, Mikey Jagtian ends up in Bahrain alone with 6 thousand dollars (that's all the family had) and opens a children's goods store with this money. And today it is a retail chain in the list of the most profitable in the Middle East.
A corporation called Landmark includes 280 stores throughout the Middle East and brings Mike Jagtiani up to 650 million in profit per year.

Michael Rubin - $2.3 billion

Another representative of today's billionaires is Michael Rubin, CEO of Kynetic. He began his career as an entrepreneur as a child and sold seeds to his neighbors. At the age of 10, he already hired 5 guys to remove snow from neighboring lawns for money. At the age of 14, this future billionaire had already opened the first store, persuading his father to sign a lease. At 23, he was already a director in a company with $50 million in sales.
But he saw his destiny in e-commerce, which was just beginning to develop. He invested about 80 million in his online store, but, despite increasing sales, he could not make this business sustainable. However, eBay came to the rescue, which bought the company from Rubin for 2.4 billion. The price is much higher than the real cost of this project, but eBay was behind in the race with Amazon, so they shelled out this money.
Today, Rubin is engaged in Fanatics clothing stores and websites of various kinds, in which he has already invested 500 million.

Eduardo Saverin - $2.2 billion

Another person who made a fortune on Facebook. Saverin is Zuckenberg's first investor and was the commercial director of the young project. But while Saverin was in New York on practice, Zuckenberg attracted new investors and artificially lowered his equity stake from 34% to 0.03%. Eduardo sued and got his share back up to 5%.
These 5% allowed him to get into the list of billionaires. In addition, the man turned out to be reasonable and, before Facebook filed for an IPO, he renounced US citizenship and became a citizen of Brazil, which allowed him not to pay US taxes. And although he has a Brazilian passport, he lives in Singapore and invests in online projects: an application that scans the barcode of a product and offers it at the lowest price on the Internet or online credit card payments using a webcam.

Sean Parker - $2 billion

Another co-owner of Facebook, Sean Parker, started out as a talented programmer and hacker. Already at the age of 16, he was arrested for hacking the websites of companies that were on the Forbes list. He also had a hand in creating the Napster Internet resource, through which it was possible to exchange music. It was a kind of breakthrough, albeit closed for "some" friction with the law. At 24, he meets Zuckenberg and is the president of Facebook. True, then he is removed, which, however, does not prevent him from keeping 3% of the shares and becoming a billionaire.
Today he is engaged in his startups.

Richard Desmond - $2 billion

The life of Richard Desmond also did not indulge at the beginning: his parents divorced, lived together in a small apartment, left school at the age of 14 to play drums and help his mother earn money.
His first real job was at the Thomson Newspaper, but by the age of 21 he owned two record stores. But the experience of the media also received its continuation - in 1974, Desmond became the publisher of the International Musician and Recording World magazine.

In contact with

According to recent research by news agencies, in Russia the youngest and most successful entrepreneurs are mainly participants in the digital environment and the Internet. To determine the popularity, several criteria were taken:

1. all participants are citizens of the Russian Federation;
2. age limit not exceeding 33 years;
3. the status of the owner of the business or participate in it, their shares;
4. annual revenue of $10 million.

The list of promising establishment includes 10 young leaders. The beginning of their activities dates back to the first half of the 2000s and does not affect the manufacturing sector. An interesting observation also concerns the fact that young businessmen do not look towards political activity or public administration as a way of further advancement and growth, but remain true to the course within the chosen market.

Top-10 is started by the youngest participant - Fear, Vsevolod. 28 years. Capitalization - $ 88 million. Moscow

The founder of the Russian retail chain Sotmarket earned his first ruble billion at the age of 24. The online store he created united only 15 employees, but in a couple of years the retail business climbed to 3rd place in terms of traffic, and revenue exceeded a billion.

At school, Fear developed his own website, where he sold telephone cables through a Chinese intermediary. Entering the Higher School of Economics, he rented an office in a residential building and hired the first workers. Studying literature on programming, he launched his own operating system for accounting for goods, and mobile accessories, gadgets, auto products and even garden tools were added to data cables. At the same time, the geography of distribution of goods increased, up to Kamchatka, and logistics was improved. Today Sotmarket LLC is 4 stars on Yandex. Market”, more than 200 call center employees and 40% of regular customers. The company is in liquidation, and a 51% stake has been sold to IQOne.

Back to index

Vishnevsky, Roman - 29 years old. Capitalization - $ 30 million. Moscow.

An ambitious trader made his first million dollars selling US securities while working for a Canadian company. With his own money, he founded the financial corporation UnitedTraders (UT), which trades in futures, stocks, and currencies. An innovative product of UT is considered to be algorithmic trading called Layering, which the company actively promotes as part of training programs for novice traders. Specializing in the American stock exchange, Vishnevsky and partners provide dealing rooms as a platform for the development of new strategies, taking into account market movements and professional assistance in Russia. Following the corporate mission, the KvadratBlack investment fund has been operating since 2013, providing money for management, risk control and sites with a high percentage return. Today, there are representative offices in Slovenia and Israel. UT plans to open an office in London and develop algorithmic robots.

Back to index

Sachkov, Ilya - 29 years old. Capitalization - $ 12 million. Moscow

Conceived at the University. N.E. Bauman, the idea of ​​combating cybercrime was realized 12 years later in the organization of the Group-IB detective agency. The company that investigates computer crimes and ensures the security of influential corporations, large banks, oil companies, is by far the largest in Russia. Highly qualified civilians and employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs form the core of the company, but also represent a huge risk for business. The company is dependent on its specialists, and even one expert is extremely difficult to replace if someone decides to leave Group-IB. Now the company is looking for investments, including foreign ones.

Back to index

Guzairov, Andrey - 30 years old. Capitalization - $ 20 million Kazan

The first Internet project CreditCardsOnline appeared as a result of the loss of a position in an American company in 2010, where Andrey spied on the idea of ​​credit card affiliate programs. The following year, he buys the FinamGlobal fund and launches the Platiza.ru business. The product of this activity is an online identification service that PhilipMorris Corporation actively uses to monitor the age of site visitors. Holding FederalFinanceGroup appeared as a result of the previous business of electronic passports. All projects are interdependent on each other, are successfully implemented and feel great among competitors. The further work of the holding is connected with attracting a larger number of partner banks, launching online services unique for Russia and expanding the range of financial services.

Back to index

Salikhov, Dmitry - 30 years old. Capitalization - $ 18.6 million Novosibirsk

The business activity of the young entrepreneur resulted in the company Iway, which is engaged in transfer transportation. The main motive for developing their own business was dismissal due to staff reduction and numerous contacts in the transport infrastructure. The company has its own corporate identity, and the service covers the scope of hospitable transportation from international airports to any locality and point in the city. Growing, Iway acquired offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Today, more than 65 branches are open in different countries of the world, and more than 95% of orders are provided by corporate clients. The entrepreneur plans to create his own fleet and move to increase capital.

Back to index

Pryakhin, Andrey - 30 years old. Capitalization - $ 19 million Volgograd

The creator of the design studio "Kefir" brought to the market the game project "Tyuryaga", which saved the businessman from bankruptcy. The game, which offers virtual reality according to the laws of the zone, turned out to be in demand by the public, and the criminal theme brought profit from the sale of game accessories and advertising. Operating under the motto: “We make games!”, The studio released the hit “In the trenches”, which attracted fans with the military theme of the 40s. The driver of modernity has become the new game format "OneLife" - not for life, but for death in the literal sense. The feature of the product is that the character does not have another chance. The death of a hero in game content ends up being deleted from the mobile device, where the second attempt no longer exists.

Back to index

Durov, Pavel - 31 years old. Capitalization $ 1 billion St. Petersburg

The dollar millionaire and former CEO of VKontakte owns the Telegram messenger product. As a student at St. Petersburg State University, he was thinking about more progressive ways of online communication. Against the backdrop of the success of Odnoklassniki and Facebook, the VKontakte project is being launched using money borrowed from relatives. In 2014, the free Telegram service appears, which has more than 100 million active audience per month.

The path of a young businessman is difficult, but exciting. It requires colossal efforts and the will to win. The stories of 10 Russian entrepreneurs who started their business from scratch and got results up to 35 years old showed that success can be achieved in any field. Creating mobile games and payment services, developing assistant robots, opening clothing stores, tailoring unique sweatshirts with inscriptions, and even manufacturing diesel generators - this can earn millions with the right approach to business.

 

Who are they, the young entrepreneurs of Russia - crazy geniuses, minions of fate, smart students or inveterate hard workers? Experience shows that everyone can succeed in business before the age of 35-40. However, you will have to put your soul into your business: go through a difficult path of ups and downs, sleepless nights and huge debts; overcome criticism and competition; start from scratch and reach the top.

Despite the assurances of skeptics that it is difficult to do business in Russia, every year the All-Russian Association of Young Entrepreneurs is replenished with dozens of new members. Their guiding star is the stories of young successful Russian businessmen.

Table 1. 10 young entrepreneurs in Russia who created their business from scratch

		Year of birth	Business area	Personal wealth in 2016, mln USD
	Alexander Agapitov		Payment service for games
	Nikolai Saganenko		Real estate layouts and e-book of complaints			Pizza preparation and delivery
	Andrey Pryakhin
	Ilya Sachkov		Fight against cybercrime
	Dmitry Khrapov		Sale of railway and air tickets, tours and hotel rooms online
	Andrey Medvedev		Manufacture of diesel generators and pumping units
	Anastasia Sartan		Sale of exclusive clothes, TV shows about fashion
	Semyon Kibalo		Making sweatshirts with inscriptions for students and athletes
	Oleg Krivokurtsev		Creation of assistant robots

Agapitov Alexander - the creator of the payment service for Xsolla games

In the early 2000s, Alexander was an ordinary student of the Mekhmat of Perm University. Youthful enthusiasm gave rise to one after another the idea of ​​an IT business, but the young entrepreneur did not have the funds to implement them.

“There were no investors who gave money to 20-year-old boys from Perm. Even if someone gave money, receiving a share in the company, it was implied that you were still borrowing it. ”

Finding start-up capital was difficult. Agapitov had only one thing left to do - to transfer the apartment in which they lived with their mother as a pledge to the Obereg consumer cooperative. The organization gave the young man a loan in the amount of 700,000 rubles. The deal was risky, but the funds went to the entrepreneur at a rate of 3.5%. Their entrepreneur alternately poured into three projects:

• the Betsee algorithm, which allowed calculating profitable bets at bookmakers;
• 2pay platform for the exchange of electronic currencies;
• payment service for Xsolla games.

Although the first two projects allowed the young businessman to return the debt to Obereg, it was the Xsolla payment service that brought him millions.

Reference. Alexander developed all IT products on his own with the support of friends from the university. The latter he had to quit in the third year due to lack of time to study.

Now it is built into more than 1200 games. The company's head office operates in Los Angeles, and its branches operate in Russia, South Korea, Brazil and Ukraine. 30% of the company's income comes from the Russian-speaking segment.

Nikolai Saganenko - from stickers with congratulations to an electronic book of complaints

Nikolai Saganenko from St. Petersburg created his first business at the age of 16, which brought him up to 50 thousand rubles. per month. The young entrepreneur did not stop there - projects started one after another:

• 2004 - production of stickers for flowers with congratulations;
• 2005 - creation and sale of luminous powder for car tires;
• 2006 - production of models of architectural structures from polymeric materials.

The third startup was a real breakthrough: in the first month alone, the businessman received 10 large orders worth 2 million rubles. The reason for such popularity is the virtual absence of competitors in the industry.

“In 2006, during my first year at university, I met a man who knew how to make models, but he had few clients. Then I took the Yellow Pages directory and started calling construction companies. A month later, the first orders and the first profit went. And six months later we had a workshop on 60 square meters and 5 people in the team”

Since 2010, in addition to the layout business, Saganenko has been developing the DASMS project. It is an electronic complaint book that any company can run to collect feedback on shortcomings in their work. Now the platform works in more than 1000 corporations in Russia and abroad.

Fedor Ovchinnikov - the resilient founder of Dodo Pizza

Fedor's story began in a very banal way - Syktyvkar University, a diploma in archeology, participation in the party of Eduard Limonov.

However, in 2006, the young man decided to try his hand at business and, using a loan received to renovate an apartment, he became a co-founder of the Book by Book chain of bookstores. The lack of agreement with a partner on a number of issues forced him to leave the business with a pile of debts.

Throughout the entire period of the existence of the business, the young entrepreneur kept an online diary in LiveJournal "The Power of the Mind". Thousands of subscribers learned about his failure in an instant.

The defeat in front of the public did not break Ovchinnikov: he gathered his will into a fist and went to St. Petersburg. Here for several months he worked as an ordinary worker in well-known fast food chains - Papa John's, McDonald's and Sbarro.

Having gained invaluable experience, Fedor returned to Syktyvkar, where he rented a small semi-basement room for the balance of funds from the first business (400 thousand rubles) and organized the first pizza production point in it. He covered this event in his blog, to which he received a lot of skeptical responses that:

• You can't make a lot of money selling pizza.
• In a small town with 20 pizzerias, a new fast food outlet will fail.

However, six months passed, and the pizzeria brought the young entrepreneur 1 million rubles. This was facilitated by a business organization system worked out to the smallest detail, a blog with thousands of subscribers and viral marketing.

Interesting fact. In 2014, Fedor offered his customers a unique service - delivery of pizza by air using a quadcopter. In this way, 50 pizzas were sent to customers, after which the State Aviation Supervision Authority issued a warning to the company. This action was recognized as a successful marketing ploy even in the West.

Now Dodo Pizza includes more than 70 pizzerias around the world (in 2016 it came to the USA). By 2020, the company plans to bring shares to the IPO.

Andrey Pryakhin - business on games in social networks

Pryakhin, a law student at the Russian Academy of National Economy, has always been attracted to computer games. Craving for "strategy shooters" formed his interest in programming. Together with a friend Mikhail Talalaev, they decide to create and sell their own games:

• 2008 - A simple flash game "Mission of Saakashvili" appears, which brought the companions a small profit.
• 2009 - the application "Fashion Week" for women was created, which was launched on the social network "VKontakte".

In 2011, Andrey creates a game development studio "Kefir!", which begins work on a large project "Tyuryaga". He introduces gamers to all the delights of criminal and prison life. The mobile game was launched on Odnoklassniki, VKontakte and Facebook. The idea turned out to be successful - to this day it brings Pryakhin a solid income.

Now the studio "Kefir!" is working on the game "Forge of Glory" ("Forge of Glory"), which should be the next breakthrough of Andrey Pryakhin and his team.

Ilya Sachkov is a brave organizer of an anti-cybercrime agency

In 2003, a student at Moscow State Technical University. Bauman Ilya Sachkov was in the hospital. His friends decided to dilute the boring hospital routine with a fascinating book about cybercrime, written based on the FBI materials.

Ilya left the hospital with an understanding of the idea of ​​his future business. He borrowed 150 thousand rubles from his older brother, opened a company that began its journey in a new industry for Russia.

Reference. The company received its first serious order in 2010. Then the Leta Group website, which represented the Slovak anti-virus company ESET in the Russian Federation, was subjected to a hacker attack. After that, orders from private and public organizations rained down.

Now the agency for the investigation, detection and suppression of cybercrime is engaged in major thefts and hacks in the network, cyberterrorism, unfair competition, etc.

In 2016, Group-IB began to implement a large-scale project on international cybersecurity together with the Institute of the King of Thailand. In the same year, the company received large investments from European funds.

Dmitry Khrapov - travel portal born in the train

In 2003, a student of the Mechanics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University Dmitry Khrapov, like many of his neighbors in a student hostel, visited his relatives in Ramenskoye at the weekend. He learned the schedule of electric trains from paper booklets. But there was a serious problem: often the train schedule changed, and you could find out about it only at the station.

In those years, Dmitry Khrapov and his classmate Yuri Titov were already making a living by creating websites. Useful skills helped them create their own Tutu.ru project. The essence of his work was as follows:

• Train timetables were manually entered on the site.
• Friends found out changes in train schedules by driving around the stations on their own.
• Individual information about shifts in the schedule began to be reported to partners by regular visitors to their site.

Since 2006, tickets for trains and electric trains began to be sold through the Tutu.ru website, and in 2007 - air tickets. The funds earned on banner advertising, the company invested in its own contextual advertising.

In 2007-2008, many sites of a similar type began to appear on the market: the competition intensified.

“If you do something badly, then nothing will work. We must do well, and then the question is what people will choose.”

In 2009-2011, tours, hotel rooms and bus tickets began to be sold through the site. In 2012, a round-the-clock call center for clients was launched.

According to the Kommersant newspaper, in 2016 Tutu.ru became the most visited site for the sale of railway and air tickets, which is visited daily by up to 4 million people. The business turnover amounted to $250 million per year.

Andrey Medvedev - start a business in a barn and earn millions

The career of Andrei Medvedev, a graduate of a Yaroslavl university, began according to a standard scenario: he got a job at the Avtodizel plant, on the basis of which he rose a few years to the position of deputy head of the marketing department. Good position, serious salary, however ...:

1. The plant only sold standard generators through a dealer network.
2. Customers asked for models more adapted to individual needs - insulated, with a cooling system, mobile, with a given configuration, etc.

The proposal to refine the standard models at the request of customers, voiced by the management of Avtodiesel, was rejected. Then he firmly decided to implement this idea on his own.

Medvedev did not have the necessary start-up capital. As a result, he, together with his partner Alexander Salnikov, decided to start a business in 2005 with a bluff. Having ordered a simple site for the provision of services for the completion of diesel generators, they received 5 orders in a month.

Interesting fact. The partners did not have personnel, premises, material and technical base. They placed their workshop in a former cowshed on the edge of the village near Yaroslavl, and hired 12 villagers as workers. Equipment and materials were purchased at the expense of prepayment.

The first order was completed successfully. As a result, Medvedev registers Industrial and Power Machines (PSM) LLC, and invests the proceeds received in the business.

Since 2006, PSM has not only been finalizing, but also producing its own diesel generators: contracts with Chinese suppliers have allowed the company to gain access to cheap sources of components.

Since 2008, Andrey Medvedev's company also began to produce pumping units.

Reference. In 2011, it was recognized as the largest manufacturer of diesel generators in Russia. In 2016, it owned 24.4% of the Russian market, while 72% of the plant's products were exported. The company's turnover reached 1.52 billion rubles at the end of the year.