Welcome to the Innovation Conversation, a podcast
about innovators, both in business and real life.
Hosted by myself, Ricardo Rescual and Harry McCona.
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the software. Hi, and welcome to another episode
of the Innovation Conversation. Today we are
joined by Ross Kolodiagini. Ross, welcome. Thanks,
Sorgardo. It's really cool to be here. Thanks
for inviting me. It's a pleasure having you here.
Ross, would you like to tell the audience a little
bit more about your very exciting life journey
and professional experience? Yeah. So as I said,
really glad to be here. And so a few details,
a few bits about me. Of course, I have a really
long and some time, tremendous story about myself,
but in a nutshell, what I do, I see myself as
an entrepreneur, founder, startup creator of
the companies that grow from the very beginning,
from the very zero to the enormous heights. And
so I normally, that's what I do normally, creating
the companies, creating the products, grow them
on the new markets. and specifically dedicated
on the fintech and the blockchain cryptocurrency
market. And right now, of course, playing a lot
and doing a lot of things in AI. Right now, I'm
the chief technical and product officer at Calyptus.
We now create the hiring and financial platform
for the Web3 industry. So my whole experience
is through the fintech starting from banks to
startups and few really remarkable companies
i've built from the not far long one of them
is wirex which reached more than seven million
customers and dcm where i created the really
innovative real -time payments and tokenization
platform that unites traditional finance and
blockchain for banking and that's what i do well
i have so many questions right now it's absolutely
crazy because you you literally touch i think
upon Some of the major things that everyone's
talking in tech right now, which is WebTree,
blockchain, AI. And then most importantly, you
don't just start, you just don't know about them.
You also have actually implement them in the
real world and actually have, you know, working
companies with all of this. So you kind of, you
can actually explain to the audience how complicated
it is to go and talk about all these things.
Yeah. I guess that's exactly what I see my unique
advantage. everywhere on the market and so when
I start speaking with the companies when I start
speaking with investors and so on and I tell
them what I do they like oh my gosh that's exactly
what is on the frontier of the everything that
happening on the market and say yes and I'm specifically
dedicating myself to that to the most unknown
and most innovative things and trying to implement
them in the real world Just because I see technology
as a tool that helps us to make things better.
I'm trying to make the life better, the world
better, and bring some new stuff that definitely
would help people using the new technology. Not
just attaching that for labels that, hey, we
use AI, but... There is no smell of any AI on
that, but specifically bringing values through
this new technology. And that's really cool stuff
and we have plenty of stories of ups and downs
on that and of launching the companies and launching
products in these areas. I'm curious on one thing,
because, you know, all these technologies are
fairly new. How do you go about explaining to
a more traditional client? Because I'm assuming
you've done a lot in fintech as well. How do
you go about explaining something new to fintech
client, which is traditionally very, I guess,
old school, if you want to call it that way?
Yeah, this is a really cool question. And I can
go go back to my experience at Wirex, where I
started to work with blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Back in 2017 I've been full of banks and bored
by banking and freshly made one of startups in
fintech around investing and meet some guys from
Yrex and they introduced this technology which
I read about but I never saw that they will be
working with and I've checked some information
about Bitcoin, about its kind of ups and downs.
In the time when we spoke with these guys, the
rate of the Bitcoin was about, it had like two
grants of price. And then after I joined, at
the beginning of 2017, it kind of fell down to
the 300 bucks per one Bitcoin. And I was kind
of, oh my gosh, what I'm doing here? Why am I
in the company that... had this can happen, that
dedicated its business to the asset that has
such enormous volatility. Through the careers,
through the careers, through the building things
in blockchain and web3, I understood that this
volatility is a power to try out new ideas and
to try out new things and concepts really quickly
validating them on the market, which you can't
do that anymore in fintech and you Entirely cannot
do that on banking. Imagine like to build a new
bank. It will cost you and will take a lot of
years to be honest. But getting back to your
question dilemma of explaining how to use a new
technology to people. That's actually what I
met at the very beginning of virus where there
was a wave of DJN as we name them people that
early adopters of new technology. And this wave
went to the wind down. And so we needed to attract
more people, no ISIS in the technology. And so
tried to explain them at first, hey, this is
a blockchain, you need to use this address, you
need to use the wallet, and kind of going straightforwardly.
Both explanations are all nuances of the technology,
but that obviously that won't that didn't work
and that won't work in any in any technology
even right now on AI and so there and we had
an issue so back in the days with such a straightforward
Explanation and what we charge what the open
AI did with releasing strategy PT and that's
what the cell are some outman said The technology
was in place for the chat GPT. And what they
did, they just connected all bits and packed
that into the normal conversational interface
that people are used to work with. And they used
to try it through the messengers, try it through
the chatbots and through the different applications,
specifically messenger. So the whole concept
of structured GPT was let's take WhatsApp messenger
and apply it to the new technology. Let's take
the familiar interface, familiar user experience
and familiar UI for users and apply it to the
new technology. And there's a recipe for everything.
That's the recipe for explanation of the new
technology, and not even the explanation, that's
the recipe for introducing of the new technology
to people. Because you shouldn't explain what
is AI. AI is a sophisticated statistic model
that uses different ways to produce the statistically
correct answers and blah, blah, blah, and so
forth. No one would buy that yeah, I helps you
to do xyz on the go AI answers on you all like
a lifetime questions blockchain would help you
to save your money or would help you to earn
more money or would help you to Write data into
immutable It's too tacky, but you can store store
data that and no one can change no one can change
it and that's the explanation that's the interface
that you should look while adopting a new technology.
And what I did at Wirex, I've changed the interface
and change the all application side and so on,
and introduced the familiar experience of dealing
with Neobank to Wirex. And so that was a solution.
People used to work with Wirex as they worked
with Neobank. And so they seen all the power
of cryptocurrencies are packed inside their familiar
interfaces inside the familiar UI, and they kind
of all right, I can send payments, I can send
cross border international payments in stable
coins, or whatever what is that like it says
use USDT, but it's kind of familiar to USD and
it's kind of like usually, but I can send this
payments to anyone in the world for the fees
of less than $1 instead of sending Swift or instead
of sending SIPA transfer, which are far more
expensive than sending cryptocurrency, any cryptocurrency
to anyone else. That's what Wires introduced
the familiar user -friendly interface back in
2018. And that's what OpenAI did with AI. And
that's what RCPI have. for any digital products
that I'm using. I'm trying to wipe out all this
kind of techie thing. Put the technology on the
last place of the overall product proposition
and put the value on top and tell people that
what you can do with the product. You can do
X, Y, Z and it will benefit you for ABC. And
if there will be a tacky guy like myself, or
maybe I like you, who will ask a question, hey,
Ross, how are you doing that? And I will say,
OK, I'm using AI, web3, quantum mechanics to
make this happen. And that's the recipe to go
with the best products that will be adopted in
the market, even though you will have the most
complicated and raw technology that you'll use.
And you know, I interviewed a lot of people here
on the podcast and I'm always curious People
keep on, how should I put this, they keep on
saying Web2 is completely dead instead of Web3.
I also think that in some regards it is but not
entirely. Now, do you think that Web3 is completely
the way forward or there's still room to build
things in Web2? And this is a tricky question
because I know how much you know about all, you
know, all these ecosystems. So I'm curious to
hear. And that's a good question because my experience
and that specifically goes from the more than
eight products that I've built in finance and
blockchain and cryptocurrency. And the, my last
company that I run as a CEO and my current company
that I'm running is CTPO. The last company that
I ran as a CEO was DCM. current companies, Calyptos,
they both were on the bridge between Web2 and
Web3. DCM was specifically on Web2 and Web3.
And so let's say traditional finance and blockchain
finance, cryptocurrency finance bridge, Calyptos
is on the Web2 and Web3 specifically. hiring
and traditional finance and decentralized finance
and Web3 finance and Web3 industry hiring and
so finding the best job and the best company
and the best team for your company. And by saying
that, I just want to show it as an example that
it probably was cool to say that Web3 will conquer
banks, blockchain will eliminate the financial
system. It was cool in 2016, 2017, 2018 when
we had an avalanche of ICOs that sucked money
from any point, from any industry and so on.
And why I'm saying that it was cool because today
building any product which is related to the
specifically finance, you cannot avoid Touching
the web three component they build in any product
which is related to the AI and you can you can
you can't avoid or you today to build any product
digital product you can't avoid to touch an AI
and Going back to the finance part web three
and web two There is no more strict border between
these two technologies specifically in FinTech
we can talk about art and like an NFP and so
on because that's a part of Web3 as well. But
my expertise is specifically in fintech. And
you cannot build fintech product anymore, which
wouldn't be completely separated from the Web3
industry. And even though because if you're building
the traditional Neobank with the card with like
a traditional fiat accounts, I don't know who
would do that today. But anyway, If you're building
this product right now, you will have an avalanche
of people that will be bombarding your support
with begging to add cryptocurrency in that product
because they want to use cryptocurrency as a
storage of their assets. They want to use cryptocurrency
as payment. for specific stable coins. And they
want to use meme coins to gamble around and to
have fun, but because losing money and just to
have fun and to be conscious about what you're
doing and to have like a more fun tools to do
stuff. And by building, for example, building
the DCM company, where I will build the real
time payment system and real tokenization platform,
which specifically breached the to traditional
bank accounts and blockchain. I understood that
I've got this understanding before by applying
my expertise to this specific company and by
speaking with different partners, blockchain,
foundations and so on. They see and they work
on the even far integration of real world assets
and traditional finance. into their blockchain
and into the traditional finance, then we tend
to think about that. You can see that on the
things, on the events that happened around us.
BlackRock tokenized its funds, tokenized its
assets and worked with tokenized assets around
different funds in their organization. JP Morgan
ran all the internal payments using blockchain,
different bands started to work with stablecoins
as the payment methods. Mika in Europe, this
new regulation in Europe that literally allows
anyone to issue stablecoins or to issue tokenized
assets will bring even more adoption to these
Web3 penetration of the traditional finance but
moreover traditional finance will penetrate web3
as well and in order to think about that in the
form of what's gonna be next what we will have
in the future building the DCM I've came to the
conclusion that traditional finance banks will
be the low layer infrastructure on top of these
things, on top of the innovations that are upcoming
to us. Because banks already, and that starts
from the FinTech. Do you remember the wave of
neo -banks? From any corner, you've got five
new neo -banks happening, five new neo -banks
launching, new shiny cards with new shiny things
and so on and so forth. Different colors, and
they're all bright orange. What's the difference
from that one, Neobank application? No difference.
We have a new color of our application. The buttons
are on the buttons. We have like a square buttons
instead of round buttons. And that's much more
easier. Just give us like another 100 million
of investments and we all can run. But there's
a couple of people that even launched banks and
they said, I didn't know anything about banking,
I just went to investors and said, I want to
launch a bank and they say, here's my money,
go and open a bank. So there's a couple of stories
like that as well. Yeah, but how everything works
on that side and how it can work in a bank, it's
just an application that has a bank on the background.
And wow, that could be a super surprising thing
for someone, but Yes, that's right. Neobank,
it's not a bank. It's just an application that
runs on top of the regular bank. Soon we will
see blockchains and we will see more integration
with Web3 that will run on top of regular bank.
And what's even more surprising is that building
DCM and engaging and onboarding more than 14
bands onto the DCM payment platform, on the DCM
platform that provides real -time payments. I
was literally frustrated considering my experience
in 2017, 2016, 2018 when I approached banks with
cryptocurrency pitch and with pitch about blockchain
and banks just that I want to shoot me in my
head with all this stuff and literally shut the
door in front of my face and didn't want to hear
that. And right now, if you start speaking about
the cryptocurrency and if we start speaking about
the stablecoins and blockchain integration with
banks, like an any bank, like, okay, we have
these products and we have these things for blockchain.
And this product is dedicated for blockchain.
And we are extremely open for the new things
that will give us an opportunity to make more
money. And I'm like, wow, guys, we have a solution
here. So let's kind of, let's be friends. Let's
get it together. And it's really interesting
to see how people evolve in their understanding
of new technology. And how the evolving with
adoption of it, of course, it was a regulation.
Of course, there are more like a real world cases
where they can see these guys are already making
money on that. Why don't we do that as well?
Why don't we do not have these fees in our bank
and start processing cryptocurrency payments?
uh, make things more efficient in our, in our
industry. And that's, uh, that's their way, how
they think right now. Um, it's kind of one more
time just confirms this curve of adoption of
technology when something is new and you just
must have real world cases that someone tries
that. And then, and then anyone else will, uh,
will like that and want that and so on and so
forth. And this AI specifically, these use cases
just started to pop up here and there with tremendous
speed. Back in the like 10 years ago, five years
ago, launching a new technology, you will get
a new use cases in a year or two years. AI, Charged
GPT OpenAI was launched. And the new use cases
with using that started to pop up. immediately
and literally in two years after that, in one
year after that, we have the whole industries,
all industries penetrated with AI. SaaS right
now has AI component in there, whether it's kind
of just for investors in a pitch deck or whether
it has some value. I find a lot like that where
they just put AI because they need to put in
AI because it looks cool and investors only investing
in AI. Yes, we have AI. We do something with
GCPT. We ask for text correction or something
like that. Very basic. What do you think about
the regulations for all these things? Because,
you know, I think that was one of the main blocks
for people to adopt, you know, all the crypto
and blockchain and all that. Do you think there's
enough regulation as it is? And is it safe to
use all these things or you still need to be
more regulation? And I know that one of the big
advantage is actually not having to comply with,
you know, something that Central Bank would say.
So what do you think about this? I hate regulation.
I like to... play with things freely. Of course,
I do understand the... I don't understand the
objective of that, because different people tend
to do different stuff with new things that pop
up here and there. But I probably don't hate
the regulations itself, but the way how people
apply that, and how some people apply that, and
specifically the people that have power how they
apply their regulation on the new industries.
And I specifically said about the ways on 2018
-2019, the regulators, without any understanding
how the blockchain and web3 works, started to
ban blockchain and started to ban cryptocurrency.
And that was so obvious. that they just banned
that because it was so popular back in the days,
and it was so... Everyone gambled through the
cryptocurrency. Everyone very often said, we
heard from any person about the cryptocurrency.
And yeah, they just... And they just started
to ban that without any understanding how it
works. And it's a question why we had the first
It was like the first big crypto winter because
of the overheated cryptocurrency market or because
the regulators just cut everything and artificially
created this crypto winter. I don't know why.
theory maybe that they wanted to pack their pockets
with shorting the cryptocurrency or whatever.
But the truth is that regulators often and even
more often than needed tend to just ban things,
just to forbid and cancel everything. without
understanding how it works. And that's really
sad. I would ask you to do your math, do your
own research before canceling everything. How
I see regulation and how I see these activities,
maybe probably sometime in my future I will work
at some national conduct, financial conduct authority
or whatever, like a national bank and so on.
And these organizations, in my opinion, should
be spectators on top of everything that happens
in the market. And so work with other departments,
the state's authorities to pick up some fraud
related companies that tend to cheat on people.
try to get their head into what's happening specifically
and think together with industry how to develop
the rails so we can go more smoothly and how
to develop the rails that will open the doors
for new products, for new mechanics more easily.
For example, the tokenization of assets. Everyone
is talking about that right now. But the problem
is that national banks and national financial
authorities, they are afraid of opening these
box because they... They afraid that hey, it
will have an influence on the traditional financial
markets. Hey guys, wake up. It already has an
influence in traditional finance market. Your
pockets are half in the cryptocurrency. Your
pockets are half in the tokenized assets already.
What are you talking about? You just dumb assholes
that just don't want to do math and don't want
to research that and go forward with that. Anyway.
Do your own research and help people to make
things happen. I've dedicated a lot of energy
to that. For example, in Ukraine, I've been in
charge of banking commission and I've been before
the board Ukraine, I've been in charge of banking
commission on the on the International Chamber
of Commerce and I've been one of the person in
charge helping to create the regulation for blockchain
for Ukrainian jurisdictions. and so literally
fighting with regulators and putting the facts
in front of their faces that hey guys, that's
already happening in front of you. Ukraine is
the second country in the blockchain adoption
and the cryptocurrency adoption according to
the 2022 analytics reports or 2023. But anyway,
before the war, Ukraine was on the headliners
of the cryptocurrency adoption and right now
even more because of partial collapse of the
cross -border relations, cross -border financial
and intellectual relations between Ukraine and
the whole other world. Cryptocurrency is already
circulating more actively, but everyone just
tends to close their eyes on that because They
don't know what to do with it. Literally. I got
a question for you. I guess for someone more
traditional, when they look at all these different
cryptos, different coins, they always get a bit
confused and say, okay, which one do I actually
believe in? Which one is a scam, right? So is
there a way for the common man to actually go
and say, you know what? Bitcoin is okay, but
Dogecoin is not. And how do we go and educate
the market? Because I think, you know, when you
look at traditional banks and the way they're
doing crypto, not even traditional bank, but
let's say, for example, Revolut. Let's take Revolut
as an example. You can actually buy a lot of
crypto. People are saying, why do I buy Dogecoin?
Because Dogecoin is the one that shows up on
the news. It's climbing. I want to gamble a bit
there. So how do you go and actually educate
people and say, you know, one is a stable coin,
the other one is not. The other one is, you know,
just playing around with your money and that's
okay. But at the same time, if you want to make
sure that it's safe and doesn't go up and down
too much, go invest something more stable. How
do you go about telling people about this? Yeah,
that's a really good question. And unfortunately,
there is no silver bullet here to say, all right,
you should do this ABC activities and everything
will be all right. And even not because these
ABC activities are not right. But because we
live in a world that has tremendous up and downs,
even in traditional finance. So right now it's
a time of significant changes in all industries
and all ways to assess the world, assess the
shares, assess companies, assess blockchain,
cryptocurrencies. they could give you some grass
or could give you some understanding or could
create in your mind the false confidence about
what you've got but hey tomorrow we're gonna
have a black swan hit your ass and everything
will go down and the probability of the black
swans right nowadays is super high because we
live in such volatile world not because of cryptocurrency,
because of interconnectivity of the world and
because of the volatility itself. And what the
main take that I have to read the book about
black swans, which I forgot the author of this
book, it's literally called Black Swans. You
can maybe elaborate on that more. and to understand
the concept of being prepared or being at least
conscious about the things, unpredictable things
that could happen literally tomorrow. Build everything
that you've got and build everything that you
analyze and assess, whether it's cryptocurrency
or any other investment, if you want to gamble,
because shares, shares and that's a gambling
as well if you do not sit in a board of directors
of the company and you do not have look at Tesla
because Tesla was actually fascinating fact thing
because he was growing the market value for Tesla
was higher than Volkswagen. However, the Volkswagen
Group actually has, you know, more assets than
Tesla ever ever is going to have. But people
say, no, we actually believe in there's so much
we keep on gambling on it. And they kept on rising
and rising. But in reality, when you break down,
you know, if they had to sell everything, they
actually didn't have that much to sell. So it's
big. And what you just said, It's a brilliant
example of what you should kind of pay attention
on and build your way of thinking from the back
door, rather from the front assisting of the
asset. You should go to Tesla and look on their
sheets and look on what they do and so on. Yeah.
You probably won't see that a lot of assets over
there. You'll see like a growth and steady things
and you will see that the company is growing.
But if you look on their shares, there is no
specific reason for that, except the hype around
it. And the hype is the backdoor. The hype is
current fuel of everything. And that's specifically
related to the cryptocurrencies and to the blockchain
market. If there is a hype, there is a growth
of the markets and there is a growth of the projects
that usually do not have, there is even more
high growth of the projects that usually do not
have any value behind that and by understanding
where is the hype and how to identify that and
by justifying this hype whether the company or
whether the asset has enough value behind this
hype or has enough strength behind this hype
in case if the best one happen what I gonna do
whether I would lose everything will complete
zero, zero, whether I will be wrecked for the
market, or I at least will have the asset that
will grow in the next cycle, in the next hype
cycle. And that's my framework, how I assess
the assets to invest or to work with long term
to consider the specific asset, whether it has
the baseline. If the most horrible thing happened,
I will build this baseline. Will I be near zero
or there is a concrete baseline that I will stand
on and this baseline has a value? And then I'm
assessing the site around that. What is it, on
which scale is it right now? On which scale is
it right now? Is it kind of on the scale of overheated,
ass -burning? types that everyone's talking about.
All the taxi drivers are talking about. And all
the people were talking about it. All the press,
even the most yellow, the magazine that wrote
about your, that wrote usually about the things
that happen on your local community starts writing,
starts writing about the Bitcoin and about the
investment in deathlash shares. That's the determination
of overheated. hype. You should kind of just
jump from this wall because it's already burning
from all the places. And that's the cycles. That's
cycles of the economy because the hype is already
about the greed and about the looking for ways
to apply your capital in the place that tend
to make you more money. People are buzzing around
that and people are chatting around that. Hey,
I put my money into Bitcoin, you should do this
well. And that's the conversations that happen
in the kitchens between like two friends. These
conversations just spread out and this type is
kind of growing around. Of course, there is a
pouring money in that. Pouring marketing money,
paying different influencers to make more conversations
around that. But in all time, It kind of always
join mergers with the real conversations of people
that put money in that. And so just amplifies
more and more and more with the money from marketing
and people, real people like putting money on
that and speaking about that and so on and so
forth. So assessed by the hypers understands
the baseline by the, by the, what in case of
worst case scenario, what, what would you get?
in that case. And if you are at the very beginning
of the height curve and in the worst case scenario
you at least will have your pants, it's worth
to go there. But it's funny, we're talking about
the hypes and buying into the hypes, but in reality,
traditional banking has actually sold many people
on many different hypes throughout the ages,
right? I'm thinking, you know, in the last couple
of years, we had the whole subprime thing in
2008 and the big financial crisis that then was
caused by that. But then if you go to a bank
or if you went to a bank back then, they will
still sell you this super complex financial product,
which had no idea what it was about. And they
all the only thing they will say, yes, in five
years time, you might lose all your money or
you might make a little bit of money. OK, this
sounds OK in your big financial institutions.
So I should trust you because I was going to
talk with you. But it was still the same risk.
It's still the same the same mentality, which
is, yeah, we're creating this very complex, complex
thing. My work might not work. But if you trust
us as an institution, you'll be safe. And yeah,
that's kind of what happened with banks, isn't
it? Yeah. And that's why I really hate speaking
with regulators and speaking with people that
from banking that are blaming cryptocurrency
and blockchain on any case. with cryptocurrency
and blockchain and that's really overall, that's
a dangerous industry because a lot of people
lost their money in that on the fraud companies
on the fraud coins and activities. And I'm sitting
I'm sitting on listening on that. Hey, mate,
do you know how much money people lose lost on
the banks or on the banking fraud on the fraud,
financial fraud activities? It's a way more than
people was in the cryptocurrency market. And
you literally don't know what you're talking
about. And that's the reason people are biased
and just trying to build the borders of adoption
of new technology, blaming things that they think
are happening. If you look at the numbers, it's
kind of completely controversial. Look at the
crisis in 2008. Because of banking fraud because
of fraud in traditional finance and look on the
micro crisis as that happened like a literally
No, but last few years ago and so all these short
squeezes all these manipulations with the Percentage
rate, national bank, percentage rate and so on.
Why we cannot say that these are scams and fraud
activities as well when people literally losing
their homes because they can't afford the mortgage
to pay anymore because someone decided, hey,
why don't I kind of just clear all of this? National
credit rate. in two times fire just because I
think that the economy is not good and I wanna
do something for the banks but people can't afford
mortgage because of that and people can't afford
to buy their homes anymore because of the tremendous
inflation and so on and that's a huge that's
enormous these are enormous scams that happen
in in our lives but hey guys We need to blame
cryptocurrency because because it's kind of Because
it's my wise and cool to blame to kind of keep
the guys in web three in there but what's interesting
because or about the web three and the bossy
cryptocurrency blockchain specifically no one
can No one can take your money and to do anything
with them if you own your assets on your like
a blockchain connect or something like that.
And that's really cool. That's why I like this
thing. Russ, I'm curious on one thing because
you've done so much. Have you have you managed
to identify what's going to make a company successful
or not? Because you've been in multiple companies
have all been extremely successful. Have you
found that magical magical formula yet? Do you
know what it is? this magical formula literally
wrote on my banner and Peter and I I literally
do like to think about that and so get back to
the world that I came from and so where I and
how I just built my way through what's have what
I have right now and what I know right now what
skills I have and so on so forth so in order
to be successful you should work but not just
work specifically do everything and so on you
just you should be conscious about how you do
things and you should be really tricky about
work you should do specific things that you need
to do and I do understand that's really obvious
and bold statement, but you need to think more
about what to do right now which will give you
more leverage tomorrow and which will kind of
bring to what you want rather than just do the
all work that you have on your plate. And that's
probably the point. To think more about how to
creatively to do not do things that you have
on your plate and to be a bit more lazy doing
stuff. Look for the ways how to avoid to do things
and how to engage the additional power, additional
forces to help to do the stuff much easier for
you. And that's the entrepreneurial mind of thinking
that everyone should employ if they want to get
from zero to something. Cause at the very beginning
of my career, I was into mate, you must work
hard. You must work hard on anything. And that,
and that will bring you kind of the success.
And so after some time of working hard, I understood
that, Hey, maybe it will kind of, I will die.
If I can just continue to work hard as a sole
hard work that leads to success. And what I understood
is that you should avoid work as much as possible.
And that doesn't mean to be lazy completely and
lie on your couch with your head down. It means
to pick up things that give you an ability to
create the bigger things with what you do. And
the statement that I employ says, think, build,
scale and repeat. And it's always thought about
from thinking, you think, you think about few
core activities that you must do right now and
focus on. And there will be always a lot of things
around these activities. You always kind of must
do dishes and you always must write a beautiful
post on your social media about things and so
on. But you must focus on the core things. You
must think about the core things to focus on.
And then build. It doesn't necessary to write
a code. It means even like to write a few words
on your paper in front of you. and to start like
writing or start kind of writing to people to
find the right person to help you to build stuff.
And I'm not talking about only digital products.
I'm saying about the real world things to build
a table or chair or to build a house or create
a masterpiece and so on. And then just to step
back a bit and to look on that. Is that worth
to scale what you've built? to scale that and
repeat. If not, just abandon that and try from
the very beginning. But there is one good moment
that you should be conscious about. In anything
that you do, there is a bit of luck. And that's
the... really cool stuff that you can't predict.
I'm a really rational person. I tend to do kind
of plans and to make roadmaps and put targets
and objectives and so on and so forth. And in
our life you must do all that. But what makes
life really interesting? The tiny probability
of luck. as it is in everything that we do. And
what you can do about that, pretty much nothing.
The only thing that you can do is to think and
to try to increase your probability of being
lucky. But you cannot be lucky by default. You
cannot engineer your luckiness. to the 100 %
of probability of being lucky. You can increase
that. And there are a lot of activities of how
to be luckier and how to be more successful in
what you're doing and meeting new people and
speaking with as many people as possible is one
of the activities, is one of the ways how to
be luckier, let's say. You always should be conscious
about these things. that if you're building something
in your corner and no one sees that and you are
not sharing with anyone about that, that's a
huge mistake. You won't be successful and you
won't achieve anything. Of course, there is a
tiny probability that you would, that you could
achieve something. Yeah, but it's so tiny though.
I think this is like, this is kind of the probability
of being lucky in this world as well because
there are a ton of people that sitting in the
tagging corner and doing something and hoping
that they will be the one being chosen to get
viral on this world yeah someone could be but
it will be one of billions probably. Rather than
being one of thousands that continuously trying
to increase their luckiness. Meeting new people.
You know people's like it's the same thing. I
mean all these kids doing videos. It takes a
while to get lucky I mean if you if you look
at for example, what's it called? Mr. Beast Mr.
Beast even says look I was doing so many videos
and no one's having a look at it No one was watching
them until I kept on you know, improving them
day in day out I joined a group a master class
and all we did is focus on YouTube how to grow
YouTube and we try multiple things and even now
it keeps it says every time he launches a video
it's like actually We have, you know, a hundred
different, uh, hypothesis of how the video might
work and we put them all there. We try them out.
And then when you find the success one, that's
the one we're going to launch. Um, so it's luck,
but a lot of hard work at the same time, but
also work smarter, not harder, isn't it? Yeah.
Work smart, not farther and think, build scale
and repeat continuously repeating and show working
more and more on what you believe in with amplifying
your life. that's the point of to get get more
like it. I always like asking people about their
favorite book. Now, what was the book that most
inspired you or you still go back every once
in a while or just for you know, some some grounding
and kind of gives you that energy to continue.
That's really, this is really complicated question
because I tend to be a bookie, let's say, and
my life is separated on reading science fiction
and fictionary books. And I would talk more about
the authors rather than books. And the second
part of my life, my alter ego, is reading the
business related books. And I can say that I
enjoy something more. It depends on what I do
together with that. And it depends on the mood
and so on. But at the very beginning of my life,
I all, of course, I've started from the, not
from the business books. I've started from the
just regular books about everything, about different
adventures. And I've came to the fiction and
science fiction. Most, my favorite authors are
Isaac Kazimov and Roger Zhelezny. and, of course,
Tolkien with his tremendous Lord of the Rings
and whole Middle -Earth saga and so on and so
forth. And that's the classic that I think everyone
should read, specifically, for example, Edi Kazimov,
because I have a huge number of flashbacks from
what he wrote about what's happening right now,
specifically watching about the videos about
the new Atlas of Boston Dynamic Robot or Figure
One, another company that makes these robots
powered with OpenAI technology. And I literally
have these flashbacks to what he wrote about
robots, about AI, with his multi -wack supercomputer.
And he, of course, he described everything on
his kind of technology level, but the general
principles are the same. All about AI and all
about robots. Everyone that work in AI and robotic
infrastructures, industries, they must read every
old book so far because they know there's a mass
reading. to see the trends, to see what's gonna
happen in the future. And of course, in order
to amplify your imagination, you must read a
lot of fiction and a lot of things that happen
in the fictional worlds, and they will help you
to justify, and they will help you to be more
strong against things that happen in the real
world, because... Right now we live in a time
where continuously happen something that's completely
out of this world, that's completely unpredictable.
Go back and watch the latest debates of Biden
and Trump. that you won't go, you won't fall
asleep because that's complete science fictional.
That's something that looks like a fictional
thing happening not in our world. And that's
something that is completely out of this world.
Science fiction and fiction thing. uh with this
world create worlds created around uh around
different things they help you to broader your
imagination and help you to kind of accept craziness
that's what happened and uh i really enjoy to
read um to reread books that i read when i was
a boy is my son, my son is nine years old. And
I read with him through different books like
Hobbits of Tolkien, or like playing the world
of book of the author, but reading a lot of things,
or reading the books of Roald Dahl, the Charlie
Chuckles Factory and all these things. These
are all fictional worlds. And with really interesting
characters and so different stuff and so the
if you start if if you felt kids or if another
you someone from the audience have Has kids you
must read with them and goes through these books
They will really help you even though was he
second kids book or meant to like a for child
reading but these books won't teach you about
About life, but they will kind of amplify imagination
and will give you more confidence about yourself
and about living life through life and so on.
Another side is business books. A hell of a lot
of stuff here. I've read maybe all the books,
all the regular books that everyone must read
about like being successful in like speaking
with people and so on. And I said, I'm more rational
person. because you probably know these people
that just easily catch the vibe with any person
but some people need to be trained and need to
kind of get more into the I had to do that, I
had to kind of work through my homework and to
read all these books and to focus on the specific
skills rather than the book, to train more. my
confidence of for speaking in public because
I wanted to share my knowledge and I've trained
through the books and but the books only of course
by kind of the practice and so on and I've read
about a lot about that. I wanted to share I wanted
to understand the world better and I for and
I've read a lot of books about the different
trends and gonna be in the world and how to justify
these trends, how to predict things. One book
that I can use, the knowledge from that I use
on daily basis is about black swans. Unfortunately,
I can't remember the author, but these are the
books that I really remember and really use in
my day -to -day activity to justify things around
me, what's happening around me, and so on and
so forth. And then building companies. We've
read a lot of books about how to bring the company
from zero to success and how to scale the company
from little startup to the enterprise level,
which I successfully did. leader of Wirex and
growing this company from zero to 500 people
under my management. That's a tremendous, really
the experience that's unique for the market and
only a few people have that to transform the
company and transform its processes from zero
to the fully enterprise functional company and
to work through this growth. or to take the company,
the small company as the DCM and create the working
mechanism and to create the convoy of the success
for the B2B, heavy B2B infrastructural market.
And that's the piece of work and the piece of
experience that I have. And in order to be, I
wasn't prepared for that and I always had to
deal with the ton of shit that can adjust uh
was put in my head uh and so in order to do that
stuff you must read books you must uh learn the
experience with people that uh were more as if
they are more like a clever that you well why
did you at that seen all these issues or at least
analyzed different companies and provided you
with an outcome or provided you with the specific
recipes of what to do. But books or any other
learning materials never give the right answer.
You just need to some ideas. You just need to
work out, yeah, on the ideas and you just need
to think by yourself and take these ideas, apply
the environment and apply the context that you
work with and so go ahead and try with some hypothesis
and so on. There are a few books that I read
about the companies and read about the building
products, about the company specifically from
good to great and That's kind of one of the books
that really impressed me on the mindset that
you must have on building the companies. Then
I turned to the pumping my skill and building
the product, building the right products. Because
if I build the right company, if I build the
right team, I have to make them to build the
right product. And so one of the books that I
read called Hooked. That's the really cool book
about how to build sticky products that people
will use and how to build really valuable products
that people will use. And so after that, I kind
of went back to the basics because through the
last two years in my life happened a lot of earthquakes
that completely shifted my perception. of life
with all this kind of big war that russia started
against ukraine and one of the books that i'm
reading right now called satyans it describes
the whole history of the humankind from the very
like beginning when we were monkey like people
and how our animal elder ego plays tricks inside
our brains and plays tricks in our society as
we are homo sapiens right now and how we work
together how we construct all these artificial
entities around ourselves to make our societies
go forward and so on. And that's what really
helps me to understand some kind of global activities
that happen in our world, that happen in our
world and justify the things that people do and
things that, how people make decisions and so
on. So getting back to... helicopter view on
everything that I've did and I've learned. That's
a really good exercise to uplift you to the next
level of knowledge that you can accept before
going forward. Ross, one final question, which
is if people want to reach out to you and get
in touch, how can you do so? That's really great.
looking forward to have people reaching out to
me with opportunities, with questions, with issues
that they see on their road. And I would like
to help to make the path of some person that
tries to create something around himself or herself
and tries to amplify skills, experience, or business,
professional identity, whatever. I really would
like to help someone to make his or her life
easier and ready to share my experience. And
in order to contact me, and of course, welcome
for investors. I have plenty of interesting products
to speak about, and these products completely
out of this world in terms of potential that
they can bring to the market. And so the best
place is to speak with me, of course, it's a
LinkedIn. I always welcome for direct messages
and connections. If you want to read more generic
content, welcome to my Twitter and where I can
share my thoughts around blockchain, sharing
my thoughts specifically around Web3, LinkedIn
more like a more about traditional more about
high level things that I read and so that I experience
and share with them. And of course, happy to
work with your garden and jump on the things
that you've got jumping on the opportunities
that you've got. And happy to speak with Aaron.
Sounds good. Ross, thank you so much for your
time. I really appreciate it. This podcast is
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