My name is Dmitry Voloshin. I was invited here today to tell you a little bit about myself – to tell you what I’m doing for our country, and to tell you what you can do for our country, why maybe it doesn’t make sense to leave here. Maybe it makes sense to stay here.
And in a nutshell – I came here from Ukraine, I was born in Ukraine. I came here when I was 12 years old, to Floresti, where I graduated from high school.
Unfortunately, I can’t boast of my school achievements. I have nothing to brag about: I studied mediocrely, I had no friends, I was physically weak. I had more enemies than friends.
In other words, my school years were not very good. Frankly speaking, I thought that, man, I must be a loser. I guess that’s how life turned out, that I would have to drag out my miserable existence for the rest of my life.
Until I went to college and realized that it’s not about physical strength or the fact that people don’t communicate with you because you’re pimply. It’s all about who surrounds you, what kind of environment you’re in.
The institute gave me the understanding that I can make friends, I can create a circle of communication around me. I can evolve.
So, my career began. Well, I wouldn’t want to tell you all the points of my career today, all the stages. I would like to tell you a few stories that have happened in my life that have shaped the principles of life that I still use today, and I want to bring them to you.
The first one is called “Be Patient. The story began in 1997, when I learned about computer graphics, when I first saw a cube spinning on some green monitor – a spinning cube.
I realized that this was all new, this was a breakthrough, this was technology, and I wanted to do it. It seemed unbelievable. Now, of course, after Country or modern games, to look at those graphics… You’d say it was the Stone Age. But back then it was a miracle.
I started doing computer graphics. I studied 3D Max, watched how they make commercials in the world and decided to become the coolest computer animation producer in the country. That is, to make the coolest commercials.
But when you go to a client and say, “I can make a cool commercial,” they all ask, “Show me what you’ve done so far.” And I hadn’t done anything so far, so there was nothing to show me.
So I thought, what should I do? And I decided, let me do a commercial for a product that doesn’t exist, that nobody wants. I’ll do it, and I can already show something.
I went to the Alpha factory – you know, there’s one in Buyukany. They sold televisions there, TVTs, I guess. Well, that’s what the former Alfa was called. So I saw it, I thought, what’s the difference? So I made a TVT commercial on my computer.
It was October of ’98, when I finished. I made this commercial for two months, and proudly recorded it on vhs tape – they used to have such cassettes. I decided that that was it, I had the whole market in my pocket now, I just had to show what masterpieces I could do.
And somewhere from November – I remember my coat, for some reason I remember my coat, it was very thin and thin, and it was cold outside and I was always cold – I put on my coat, took a cassette and went out into town.
And so, starting downtown, I started going into all the business centers where there were some companies. And one by one I would walk up and down the floors, knocking on every door and asking if you needed computer graphics, if you needed advertising.
Most of them would send me away right away, and those who were more curious would say, “What can you show me? What have you done?” I’d show them, a tape, and they’d say, “What is that?” I said, “A tape,” and they said, “Where can you put it? We have one at home where we watch action movies, but we don’t have it at work.” I said, “Yeah, I can keep that tape, I’ll pick it up tomorrow.” They said, “No, thanks.
This went on for one day, then two, then three. I finished the center and went to Ryskanivka. In two weeks I went all over Ryskanivka, but the result was the same.
Thus a month passed. I walked around Ryshkanivka, Botanica, the Center and started to move towards the Telecenter. To tell you the truth I was very tired, not physically, but because of constant rebuffs, I counted more than 100 rebuffs, I heard them all the time.
But I realized that if not, then there is no way, because I had no information resources, no friends, no connections, no money. I had no other way to make myself known.
And so, a month and a half later I was walking around the Telecentre and came across some building in the park, called Sun TV. I didn’t know then that it was cable television.
I went there. It was snowing lightly, I walked in freezing cold, and they looked at me like I was frozen: “What, are you here to get a job?” I said, “No, I brought you a tape to show you what great videos I can make, maybe you need something.”
They gave me a cup of tea and took a cassette. Well, thank God it was cable TV, they had a bunch of equipment. They watched it, then took me to a room, where suddenly not only the managers were gathered, but also the new director.
And he said, “Young man, you have no idea how timely, at the right time, you ended up here, because right now we’re looking for a contractor who will do computer graphics. We only found one studio in Moldova that does computer graphics, well, very, very expensive and very, very long. We probably have to agree to work with them, but here you are.How much does your work cost?”
I give a figure – one that I just had enough for bread. I mean, the main thing was to get a grip. They said, “Fine, we’ll hire you. Now do a 40-second video about a steam train.
So I grabbed that order and ran home happy. I even remember buying myself some dumplings – an extra portion. Well, I usually ate them little, rarely, I couldn’t afford them.
So I started making computer graphics. First there was one commercial, then two, then three, then commercials got to know about me and in 2002 I was able to open a company. Thanks to that story.
So if you want to achieve something, you can’t stop after a day, after 3, after a month and after a year. Sooner or later any wall will collapse if you chisel it down.
Second story. I want to tell you what to do if life gives you lemons – you have to try to make lemonade out of these lemons.
How does this happen? In my case, it was as follows. It was 2008, you know, the year of the world crisis, and the crisis was not only raging in America, but it came to us.
At this time, I already had a website 999 – maybe you knew something about it, heard something. Well, then the model on the nines was different. Back then, the site was completely free, that is, everyone placed ads for free, and we earned money so that commercial enterprises placed ads, banners, and we took money from them for it.
The biggest advertiser we had was Orange. It placed more and more ads with us every year.
In other words, we were able to double our advertising, which allowed us to hire new programmers, expand our website and capacities, and change our offices. In other words, these were very big advertisers.
When 2008 came, they called us and said: “Guys, we are not going to increase your advertising twice any more, we will cut it in half, because the crisis is almost here, and everybody cut advertising budgets”.
I say, “How so, we booked cool people, took a cool office, we have big plans. If you don’t give us money now, we’ll just implode, we might just go bankrupt.”
And they say, “We don’t know anything, we didn’t promise anything. We don’t know that you were counting on us. Goodbye.”
Now that’s the lemon that gives life. It seemed like what good could come of it? It is unclear how to make a plus out of this minus – it was very hard to imagine.
We were very sad. I bought dumplings then – I only remember that I usually ate something else at that time, but I felt so sad that we bought dumplings and vodka, and my partner and I wondered what we should do next.
We thought for a long time, about two weeks. It was actually a hard time for us, but in the end we came to the conclusion that we realized: we had to change the monetization model. We realized that we had to move away from taking money from the advertiser, and take money from the people who buy and sell – at least one leu each.
It would seem that the figure of 1 leu is small, by the way, we still have not changed the price, it was in 2008, and 12 years later it is also 1 leu. But it brings us now 20 times more than the advertisers who are placed on 999.
This model has completely changed the capabilities of our site. We finally realized that we had to make money from the end user, not from big advertisers. That is, we changed the model from B2B to B2C.
That’s how we managed to make lemonade out of lemons. So in life, when there’s some negativity, some difficulty, try to turn it around so that it goes to your advantage. It’s absolutely real, and you have to try to make a positive out of every situation.
Next, we have a story about… There are so many stories and I don’t know which one to start with. Let me tell you about the importance of loving what you do.
You’ve probably heard it many times and been told it many times. But in fact, it’s right down to the basic principle that allows a person to become successful and achieve a lot in what they do.
I will tell you about one project, this story is related to freediving. It was six years ago, I went diving with friends. Diving, if anyone does not know, is diving underwater with oxygen tanks and climbing along the corals to watch the fish. That’s where I first saw freediving, freedivers.
Freedivers are guys who do the same thing, only without tanks. They just fill their lungs full of air, dive deep, and swim there for a few minutes.
They’re very beautiful-they’re in wetsuits, they have these monofilaments, goggles, and they’re considered elite, like elves, and they consider divers to be orcs. They’re such a special special special elite race.
And I started to find out what that is. Turns out there’s a whole freediver world-it’s a fascinating, fascinating sport. Probably one of the most beautiful sports, when you turn into a fish and swim like a fish in water, it’s amazing.
I got into freediving, started practicing, trying not to breathe underwater. Then I won the championship of Moldova in the 1st year, in the 2nd year, in the 3rd year. I got a master of sports in freediving, then went to the world freediving championship on behalf of Moldova.
My best result was 6.5 minutes without air, and I swam 125 meters on one gulp too. How many pools? Five pools. This is by world standards a very modest result, but for Moldova it was then – ouch.
But now what I am saying all this – when I went to the world freediving championship, I noticed that even the world champions dive with a tire on the neck.
That is, they take a bicycle tire, stuff it with lead shot, and hang this thing around their neck. And I knew what it was – it’s a weight that keeps you from surfacing. Because when you fill your lungs full of air and dive into a hot pool, you get thrown to the surface like a cork.
And if you have a weight on you, you can swim in the water column, but you flounder like a frog at the surface. Well, man, that’s not pretty! It’s a tire around your neck, and you’re a world champion. You can afford something normal, it’s not cool at all.
Especially since everyone has different lung volume, and that weight depends even on what you’ve eaten, not just whether you’ve lost weight or gained weight. That weight has to be changed and you have to carry 20 different clamps with you.
Anyway, I decided to make a freediver weight. The most beautiful weight in the world, the most comfortable, the most, most, most, most.
I came to Chisinau, got my team together: “Guys, we have to make freediving weights that all the freedivers in the measure will use.
Now I want to put on a video about how the Lobster was made. Let’s see how we worked on it, how the concept came into our heads.
I brought you a sample of what it looks like. It looks like this. You can come over and look at it, take it apart. It wears like this, I can adjust any weight on the back, depending on how much lung volume I have.
Recently, a year ago in Lobster, a world record for diving in a pool was set. A Serbian swam 250m, and he had such a tail that he was up to his tailbone. He has a lung volume of about 9 liters, so that’s a toy for him.
He picked up this thing where there is such a thing, and put together a black and red “tail” of different pieces, right up to his tailbone – and set a world record. And just the other day an Italian woman set a national record in Italy with a Lobster.
The device is very simple, ordinary lead inside, rubberized weights. The trick is, first of all, that it is very hydrodynamic, streamlined, secondly, it does not put pressure on the collarbones, and thirdly, there is a special patented mounting system and the fact that it is customizable.
Now the Lobster is sold in more than 40 countries around the world, with a very active expansion into China.
We launched the second version, Lobster 2.0, and just two weeks ago, Lobster received a design award – one of the most prestigious industrial design awards in the world, and in Moldova no other product has ever received it. Lobster was the first.
And why did it take me so long and so painfully and so much time and effort to make it cool? Because, first of all, I needed it personally.
I didn’t want to do it just to make money, I wanted to make a load I wanted to dive with myself. I was familiar with the subject, I was very close to it, I understood it, I loved it, and that’s why I did a cool thing.
So try to do everything you do with love and sincerity, to make it your favorite thing. And turning a hobby into a business is a fairy tale.
About my sporting history tell you in a nutshell. Seven years ago I started playing sports – out of the blue, I have never been an athlete and have never set any records. That’s enough of an “office mold”.
But I had a breakdown, so I started running. I ran and became an Iron man, twice. I ran all over Moldova, I crossed the Sahara Desert for 230 kilometers with a backpack, I sailed across Gibraltar, swam in the Arctic Ocean – there was plenty of everything.
But one of my most difficult races was in Oymyakon. Last year I decided to set a world record, to do something that no one had done before me.
Another story I want to tell you, and its message is that you should trust the universe. That’s the unexpected message, and I’ll tell you what it means.
I set myself the goal of running an ultramarathon in the coldest temperatures. It’s a marathon over 50 kilometers in the creepiest weather where people have never run before.
To do this I need the coldest place on earth, and this place, if you know is in Yakutia. It’s the village of Oymyakon or Oymyakonskaya hollow, the temperature minimum was recorded there: -71 degrees.
It was a long time ago, but temperatures drop to -60 every year. That is, you can catch such temperatures, there is such a temperature a week a year. And so, I went there with the hope of catching that temperature, even more hope of being able to run an ultramarathon there.
The trouble started when we went to Yakutsk. We realized that the cold front that had been in Yakutia was receding. That is, it was cold, but when we arrived in Yakutsk, it was getting warmer.
So my goal was to go to Oymyakon as quickly as possible and run the race. I didn’t have a goal to run at -60, my goal was -50 and lower. I mean, it’s already a record, no one has run in colder temperatures.
So when I saw that they were saying that it was -53 now, tomorrow it would be -52, and the day after that it would be -50, I started to rush. I started rushing, even though that wasn’t the schedule we had in mind. We were supposed to go there in a week, but I didn’t want to miss the cold wave, not to run in some -40s – it’s a shame.
So I said to the guys – let’s take a shuttle bus now, get together and go now. I was told, “Dima, it’s complicated, no one will go now.
To make you understand, it is 900 km to Oymyakon from Yakutsk, and you can only go by car. The roads there are frozen. There is a cafe every 300 km along the route – that’s all. And if you get stuck somewhere between these cafes and, God forbid, something happens to you, your car will be p****. I’ve heard so many of these horror stories there!
But we went anyway. We found a car, crookedly arranged it, and moved out to catch the cold. We drove for twenty-four hours and got a flat tire in the car. The driver berated himself terribly for agreeing to drive with us.
Then we got stuck in one of these cafes more than we needed to. Then one car got stuck in front of us – they have warm springs by the river there, they don’t freeze for some reason, and one car drove across the river, fell through and froze instantly. And there was a line of cars behind us.
Eventually they brought ropes, people got together and pulled that car out. In short, with such adventures we got there. I look – everything, the cold is going away. According to the forecast it will be -51 – I don’t sleep.
We got there at 7:00 in the evening. I decided to go for a run, to get my bearings, because I had never run in such temperatures before. I ran out, ran 5 km – everything was ok, let’s go.
We run out at 5:00, so it was cold and the frost had not yet had time to go. I have not slept all night, tossing and turning. Man, how the hell will it be? I’m tired after a day on the road, I have to run in 3-4 hours, and I didn’t sleep a wink.
I go out first. I got dressed: “Let’s get ready!” And everyone was tired – well, where are you rushing to? And I said, “Guys, you can’t miss the cold!” That is, I went in spite of what the universe was whispering to me: “Wait, don’t rush, it’s not your time.”
I couldn’t hear anyone, I was breaking through. Eventually the car that was supposed to escort us arrived. That is, I did not run alone for 50 kilometers, and a car was driving along just in case – carrying food or something warm.
And we get in. The thermometer reads -50, and the temperature keeps getting higher and higher. I say: “Let’s hurry up! We need to record at least -50 degrees, 49 is not serious”.
We all got in the car, loaded, but the door in the minibus did not close. I once again – it does not close, the driver gets out – slam-slam outside, and the door does not work. “Fuck the door,” I say. – Let’s go like this!”
The driver says, “No, guys, it’s 50 outside, and I’m not driving with the door open. The car is not government-issued, the car is mine, so nobody is going anywhere”.
My friend Andrei comes up to me and I say: “That’s it, stop. Stop guys, we break the universe, we break all the laws. If they tell us we have to wait, let’s wait.”
We started to wait. They let everyone go, relaxed for two days – slept, rested. We really had to wait 10 days, but after 10 days we were rested, I practiced a few times.
I realized that my outfit was wrong, I wouldn’t run with it, so I changed it. I had a weak spot in my elbow, because the cold air was going through where there was no air. Once I run with my arms permanently bent, there’s no air here, and there’s a very short path from the elbow to the air.
I had to cut my socks and sew a sock in here. I ran with those things sewn on, but it was warm.
And 10 days went by, a really cold front came – there is this video on the Internet. I was able to run 50 km, and the peak temperature at 7:00 am was -60.
So, I was very lucky with that. Thanks to the Universe that as soon as I relaxed my rolls and said be as you will, everything was as I needed it to be.
It’s a very complicated principle, it took me 45 years to accept it. It’s hard for you to understand it, and I understand it perfectly because I usually say, “Come on, you have to, break it, bend it, go ahead!” And sometimes you just have to relax and wait for things to work out the way you want them to.
Next story. I’m not racing too fast, am I in no hurry? Okay, next story. Before that, I want to show and tell again about my hobby.
My sport is my hobby, and I decided to make it a hobby for thousands of people. That’s how the company Sporter came into being, which organizes races, swims, and races in our city, in our country.
I wanted to show you a video – a report video for 2019, what we did, so that you understand that my hobby has become a hobby for thousands of people, and that’s absolutely fine.
Thank you. I would like to take this opportunity, friends, to invite all of you to volunteer for our sporting events. To do this, go to Sporter.md and fill out an application, write a letter, and you can participate in our sporting events – come and help the organizers to distribute water, or remove dead bodies from the track.
The next story has to do with our latest project. It’s called SONR, and it’s an underwater radio for swimmers. It also has to do with the fact that I’ve done a lot of swimming and realized that swimming is a unique sport in that in swimming, students can’t hear their instructor because their ears are underwater.
That’s why learning to swim is so slow. While you’re swimming, the coach can’t point out your mistakes, even seeing them. Only when he comes out can you explain, during the swim you can’t.
I came up with this thing that fits under your cap, and the coach has a walkie-talkie, and he can talk to the swimmer even underwater. While swimming, he can coordinate his technique.
So they made this prototype and sent it to an accelerator-a US gas pedal, which is a company that takes a startup project that’s young and fresh, takes a certain share, anywhere from 5% to 10%, and for that, trains them on how to enter the market correctly. He gives them experts and resources, and trains them to get a good start.
We got into such a gas pedal in New York, it was last September. But I have one difficulty, which I hope you no longer have, but I’m not very good at English. Oddly enough.
You’d think it would be wonderful, but I have linguistic cretinism, and that’s why English is so hard for me – because I don’t really need it.
You can make up your own mind that you can’t do without English, and many of you can’t do without English. But I’m fine. I don’t really need English, so I didn’t study it that hard. I didn’t make up excuses that I’m stupid – no, I’m not stupid, I’m just lazy.
So, I went to America. Started studying there, and at the end of the course we had to have a pitch. I had to present my project, my SONR with a cool presentation in front of a hundred New York investors.
You know, right? Naturally, not in Russian or even Romanian, but in English, and it had to look natural. That is, it must be relaxed, so that you can see that the person believes in his project and that he can be trusted.
We were trained for this demo day. We were coached every week, every week we were pitching, pitching, pitching to make it look more or less natural, but I was constantly on edge.
I was constantly remembering the next sentence, and from the outside it looked like the person didn’t understand the product they were pitching. And the investor says, “I won’t give money if he doesn’t believe it himself.” In other words, a disaster.
When there were two weeks left until the demo day, I started to get really nervous. I realized that I wasn’t making much progress – I was starting to freak out a lot when I went out in front of an English-speaking audience.
And that’s when I decided to tighten the screws on myself more. I thought, what else is scarier for me than speaking in front of investors? The thought occurred to me on the subway – the New York subway – as a homeless man walked past us, scattering papers and singing a song.
I imagined: shit, what if I go pee not in front of investors, but go down the New York subway and walk around the cars and stations and tell people, raise money for my project? Just New York passersby.
What could be worse for me? There was nothing worse for me. So I decide I’m going to do it.
A week later we had a demo day, and there were 6 projects from the gas pedal, except ours. I asked the gas pedal organizer, “You, after our pich, after all the pichs, please put this video to them.”
They laughed very loudly. They had never seen anything like that, and the gas pedal told us that young projects that will be coming in will all be forced to go down to the subway before the demo day and make this video – to show the report that they made it.
Because the speech went very well with investors; there was a lot of positive feedback. They came up to us, shook our hand, and I realized that it’s diving into the fear zone that changes us for the better and pushes us to the biggest growth. You can go slow if you want to, but to go in fast, that’s where you have to go.
Here, great, hand. Listening, great.
-How do you feel about our education? Is it possible to become a successful person without an education at all?
-That’s a great question, thank you. Now the teachers here will probably kill me, but I’m not in favor of a classical education. I know that you teach a lot of crap that you don’t need to learn, you’d be better off learning something else. I taught it myself at school, I taught it at the institute. I even think that a person doesn’t need higher education to succeed. In fact, it’s not what we learn that determines everything, but how we can apply what we’ve learned in practice. Not just theory. That’s why I would rather go to work after school, because I would get things done faster. This is the time of technology, the time of the Internet, when a person can learn any profession in a year or two, just sitting at home and using the Internet. I believe that each of you will no longer be the bearer of one profession, as it was in the 20th century. In the twenty-first century you will be multifunctional, each of you will have 5 to 10 professions in your lifetime. So getting hung up now and spending 5 years to learn one profession is too much of a waste. So just finish school, see what you like, what interests you, and start moving in that direction. Learn courses, develop. If it didn’t work – you drop out and take something else. Then drop something else. I have a kid who’s a ball-buster, just like me, Mishka, who’s a “D” student. And last year, the year before that, I was faced with the fact that I don’t understand what’s going on in his school. We started doing electronic diaries – if you’ve heard anything about the Studii system. We’ve been working on it for the second year, and it’s now implemented in 21 Moldovan schools. I hope you will also have it soon – it’s a very handy product. You may think it’s evil, so parents can see your grades and your progress. But it’s actually a plus: one person writes down your homework, and everyone else can see it online. Well, now I’m already more like for parents, for teachers – it’s very important for our country to change education in general. If I were the Minister of Education, I would simply cross out everything that has been done up to now, I would take the Finnish model of homework, and try to teach the next generation of children completely differently. I understand, faced with the fact that we have teachers who were taught differently. It’s very difficult to remake them. Don’t expect anything to change by the time you graduate from high school. Maybe first graders in 5 years will be learning a different curriculum – we will help them with our Studii.md education system. I hope you will have some influence on it, too, when you become an expert. So don’t worry about grades, don’t give a damn, it doesn’t matter.
-How do you evaluate the Moldovan universities?
-Moldovan universities? Now my daughter is 15, she studies in Pushkin, and she’s also finishing ninth grade, she’s puzzled over where to study, what to do, just like most of you do not know what to do. I say, “Daughter, don’t rack your brains, finish high school, 12th grade, and then maybe you’ll have the opportunity to study online.” I believe in online education. That is, to study in the coolest university in America you do not have to go to America, you can do it here, because now most universities have online programs, which you can study and once or twice a year go to that university to take exams. I don’t know if you know this or not, but in 10-15 years this kind of education will become ubiquitous and will become the de facto standard. And about local universities… Well, I probably wouldn’t study at our Academy of Economics. Well, they say, for example, that doctors are taught here well, that our level is quite high. But the others – Moldovan State University and others… And, again, I, guys, studied at the Floresti Secondary Russian School. I went to the Moldovan Polytechnic Institute. And I have a bunch of acquaintances who graduated from MSU, who have several degrees each, but they can’t do anything. So I think that, by and large, it doesn’t matter where you study. It is very important that during these 5 years, while you study, you could work, apply your knowledge in practice. So do not worry. If you feel comfortable here, you have the opportunity to do something and learn, study here. If not – go somewhere else. But I still think it is better to think about online education. It’s a convenient and quick way to figure out if it’s your thing or not. And about what a huge difference people’s choices make, both in business and in their personal lives. Starting with the fact that you have to choose your spouse, which is your career. If you choose the wrong person, he will interfere with your development as a person and as a professional. And if you find the right person, he will give you strength as a springboard, both for men and women. It’s very important to find that person. And as for friendship, all my friends are my colleagues. I can’t work with someone with whom I can’t steam in a bathhouse. Basically, if I’m comfortable spending time with him, I’ll be comfortable working with him. So all my colleagues are my friends. And I am loyal to them, and they are loyal to me. I want to say a very important thing. Friendship is not just about having fun. Friendship, especially nowadays, is a very complicated social process in which you have to invest a lot of time and effort. That is to say, I am now faced with the fact that in order to maintain a relationship with a large number of friends, you also have to constantly ping. I mean, let’s go there, let’s go to the bathhouse, let’s go have tea just for fun. If you don’t do that, you create a vacuum around you – people scatter. Everyone has their own things to do, their own families, their own problems, and in order to maintain your social circle, you have to invest time in people with whom you feel good and comfortable. So don’t expect someone to call you and say, let’s go to the movies or let’s go hang out. I have the same issue with my daughter, why don’t they call me, I keep imposing. If you do that, you ping, you get people together, you become the center of the community. If you keep waiting for people to call you or get dragged to the street, you’re more likely to end up alone. So consider it part of your job to create a hangout around you and increase your number of friends. It’s a very important skill that will come in handy in the future.
-Have you had any problems with government agencies or the government itself?
-Also a great question. Why do you all ask good questions? I haven’t had any problems on the level of any criminal liability issues, administrative liability issues, or business issues. It’s been fine here. But I literally have problems right now of the nature that our government is not really responsible for the partnership between business and government. Two years ago we signed a memorandum with the Moldovan government that we will make the public procurement system transparent – so officials can’t steal, and all the purchases made by public institutions will go through a site where everything is visible. A tender is announced, and everyone can participate. We spent two years on it, we spent a huge amount of money, millions of years, and now when it is ready and can already be used, the government says to us, “Guys, you can’t earn anything, because here the European Union gives us money for another system that is ready, and goodbye.
say – we invested a lot of money, how? – We don’t know anything, those were your risks, that’s it, goodbye. I said – geez, you realize that no one will work with you, I now if I write about it, no business will not want to work with the state. And I, for example, am a supporter of the fact that business must work with the state, because the state does not know how to do projects – the same Studii.md, diaries, why haven’t there been any so far? Because all the state projects are dying out. Because there is no financial interest there. That is, any project that doesn’t make a profit dies sooner or later. That’s why I think that business should help the state. The same Sporter, which organizes events, has done more than the entire Moldovan Ministry of Sports. We’ve done more in three years than they have, because we have the interest. Therefore, this cooperation should be very fruitful – between the business and the state. And the state now gives such a slap on the wrist that you think next time, should I get involved with the state, or should I give up on it, and just do business. And now I’m frustrated, frustrated, but I hope that we will somehow resolve this issue. Because sometimes my hands are empty, frankly speaking, but we keep fighting. We are already thinking of taking it to Transnistria or to Ukraine – this system works in many countries. Businesses and the state each do their own thing. he state has a single free system, it pays nothing for this, everything is transparent, there is no corruption. And the business makes money from the suppliers. That’s great, man! This is called symbiosis. It is not like that in our country yet, but everything will be all right. Our state is getting smarter little by little, new authorities come in, everything is peeling off, the skin is peeling off – they’re getting better, cleaner. Everything will be fine, don’t worry.
-Do you have any goals at the moment?
-Yes, I do. It’s probably going to be hard for you to understand that goal. What do you think people, all people strive for? What is it? How do you figure it out, what do all people strive for?I think all people strive for peace – to do nothing and still be cool. That is, you can do whatever you want, and you have everything – such communism. Yes, everything is difficult to get these days, but more often than not people are not even driven by this. More often than not, the people who have everything feel miserable. Because they feel crusty inside, they constantly lack, they need more, more, more, more. But why, if you earn a million lei a month, for example, do you need two million lei a month? What will you do with them? You can already afford everything. That’s how I want to get to a point where I realize that I don’t need anything else? In general – in creative realization, in money, in business, in sports, I have favorite people around me, I feel good and I don’t need anything else, I have nothing to strive for. It’s close to nirvana that Buddhists talk about, and it’s a very difficult thing to achieve. But if you ask me what my goals are, I would like to come to that – I don’t know, in 10-15-20 years.I understand that it’s hard for you to understand that right now. You’re hormonal right now, you need something completely different – and that’s absolutely right, you can’t jump over the steps. I think you have to go to spiritual development through money, you can’t go around that, you have to go through it. You have to make money first, and then there will be spiritual development. You can’t do one without the other, so the spiritual path starts with making money. And if you’re talking about plans for the very near future, in terms of sports, I want to go to the South Pole. I’ve already been to the North Pole, now I want to go to the South Pole. I have such a funny dream – I want to pee on two sides of the Earth. I’ve already peed on one side, now it’s harder, that’s right. There are a bunch of projects in Moldova that are too early to finish. I want to finalize Studii, figure out procurement and SONR, which is something we’re launching to the world right now. A project that’s made for all swimmers: teaching kids and adults to swim 20% faster. I want to spin this thing around the world to change the world of swimming in general. And, if you don’t already know, I just don’t have it in my presentation, we also do cartoons. I don’t know if anyone’s seen our die-hard cartoons – I can show you, but there’s no internet there.
-Could you go anywhere in the world?
-That’s another great question. People say to me, “Dima, man, you’re like a millionaire – live wherever you want. You have such a business, thank God you’re not needed in business anymore – it’s also very important to make a business that can work without you. And I say, “Well, let’s figure it out – why? What’s in it for me? Why do I need to go to Barcelona, any place on earth, the very paradise? What would be better there?” Well, there’s the Internet now, and I can get any innovation I want. We’re doing things that don’t exist in the world-the same SONR. There are no such little radios in the world, and we can and do them here. Why it’s better to do business here, from my point of view, is that we have a lot of smart and talented people in Moldova, and at the same time they cost 5 or 10 times less than in America. That is, I can create a competitive business that will do the same thing as an American company, but the cost of production will be half as much. I would have a competitive advantage in the market, because it would cost 10 times as much to hire a manager in America as it does here. Yes, of course, there is more choice in America. That is, I can choose extra-class specialists there, which we don’t have in Moldova. But I can also get a couple of such people from Kiev or Moscow, and the cost per person will be much lower for the same quality. What other disadvantages are there for me. I don’t feel good where there’s health insurance or better roads. I feel good where my loved ones are, where the hangout is, my family, my friends, where everyone knows me, where I feel good. That’s why I live here. I feel comfortable here because here I can come to you and in the language that I can speak well, tell you what I think and listen to you. I can’t do that in Barcelona. Yes, there is jamón in Barcelona – well, buy jamón in Kaufland! And you can buy the same wine.You can go to Guidigich, have a picnic, after all. And if you have money, fly to any country for a week, for two, for a month. That’s why I don’t plan to go anywhere from here. I feel very good here, plus I see a great potential to do a lot of interesting and colorful projects. But I will do business globally, too: in Moldova we are already up against the walls. We’ll go out there and we’ll make Moldovan products for the American markets. It’s okay.
-When you first started moving towards your dream, did you have support?
-Yes, my parents left me and went to Orenburg. Actually, they wanted to take me with them in 2000. My father was in the military, he retired, and my parents, who were from Orenburg, Russia, went there and dragged me along. They said – how can you stay here? You don’t have an apartment – you rent, you don’t have a job, you don’t know the language, you’re here alone, why the fuck would you stay? I told you I believed that everything would work out, that everything would be fine here. This is the capital, after all, I can make my way. And Orenburg is a fucking city beyond the Arctic Circle, the Southern Urals. So, I stayed here.And in fact, when I created 999 in the late nineties, nobody understood what I was doing – nobody, didn’t understand what it was for. It was complete nonsense. Really, for three years I was making commercials, and I gave the money from those commercials to the programmers who were making 999. For three years we didn’t earn a penny at all, and nobody understood what it was or how to make money on it. But it seemed to me that it would definitely work, and it did, and people who did not understand what I was doing now say, “Well, if I had known…” And I answered that you knew about it. In fact, there was little support, but, once again, I repeat: I was much easier when I met my wife in 2002. If we have time, I can tell you how it was, because it was a very amazing story. The girls are going to say, ah, cool! In 2002 I already had a couple of websites, one of them was forum.md. Now you don’t know anything about it, but back then it was just such a Moldovan social network – there was a hangout there. I was alone then, naked as a falcon, sitting on dumplings, looking awful, wearing ripped jeans. I had a vest and orange hair. Well, I also had a potbelly. It came with these sunglasses – well, don’t mention it. And so, I wanted to get married. We had a mutual acquaintance who decided to marry me. She knew that I do not feel good about getting married all sorts of introductions, and she said that she had an acquaintance, and she represents the foundation and wants to cooperate with forum.md. I said – oh, let’s meet, let’s talk. We came – it was in McDonalds. Well, where else did successful businessmen meet in the early 2000s? I came in and I’m sitting there, waiting. A girl comes in and I immediately start talking about what kind of fund she is, what she does, and what kind of investments she makes. And I see that she somehow floats, somehow answers. In short, I lost interest in her at once and I say – look, I realized that nothing will work out with us, and I’m hungry, let’s eat somewhere. And so, this girl, who introduced us, came with her boyfriend, and the four of us went somewhere inexpensive. We sat down, ordered pizza, and 2, beers. We’re sitting, chatting, talking. I saw – well, a girl, like a girl, a pretty girl, a beautiful girl. But at that time girls did not interest me so much as to build a serious relationship. And so, it was time to pay. The waiter brings the bill, and the couple who introduced us, pushed me, like, and we have no money, we thought, since you invited, you bet. I thought to myself – shit, I have in my pocket there 3 or 5, how do I put it? And they look, and the one who came – Vika, who was brought to match me, looking at me, smiling. And they look at me like, ‘Come on, Dmitry Sergeevich, you have a social network, let’s pay. I sit and think, what a shame! Okay with these at least as friends, but this girl thinks I’m cool, but I do not have money, damn, uncomfortable. The waiter comes over – so, we’re young people, pay up, it’s been half an hour. In short, I sit red in the face, I think – what a mess, and suddenly I feel under the table, someone touches my knee. I look quietly, and it’s Vika talking to them, as if nothing happened, and under the table I handed 20 dollars. I look at this money, I look at her, and suddenly this music – no way, it can’t be! In short, I fell in love from that second on. I took the dollars, of course, and threw them on the table. And I went for a walk with her.We kissed the same night, and on the next date I took her to my house, and she never left again. She is still my wife, she gave me two children. I love her very, very much, but I never got the money back. She says, Voloshin, you’re going to pay for 20 dollars for the rest of your life – it’s the coolest investment I’ve ever made. I’ve already paid back a thousand times, a hundred thousand times more, but she says, you haven’t paid me back. She says, you’ll pay me back a million times as much, and if you haven’t earned that much, go ahead and work. That was the story. This is from the series that people are very important. When I realized that this woman will always be with me – and when I feel good, and when I feel bad, can always help and support me, just grabbed it – mine! Yes, yes.
-Do you think we need a Undergraduate? How do you feel about theUndergraduate?
-When I studied, there was no Undergraduate. What kind of provocative questions are you asking me? About the tank, about exams? That’s a tough question. Do people need to be tested? Do we need grades? I believe that we are at a point in education that without testing, without a grading system, it is impossible to do anything. But in the future, I’m sure there will be no assessments or tests. You won’t be able to compare someone to you, people will be different, and everyone will have something better and something worse. Any grades will lead to bad consequences. Those who have it better will become arrogant, those who have it worse will become complex. Next comes bullying and so on. It’s all bullshit, but we now live in the reality in which we live, so there’s nothing without it. I’m sorry, you have to go through this.
-Did you write the business plan yourself when you opened Simpals or did someone help you?
-How do you know about the word business plan? I want to let you in on a terrible secret: there are no business plans. You don’t need a business plan to start a business. For you, a business plan is a document that describes the business process, but in fact everything can be written on a napkin. In the course of business you start to understand how all the business processes are arranged. It is really enough just a desire and an approximate understanding of whether the economy will add up, whether in principle we will be able to sell what we are doing, whether someone needs it or not, and whether we will be in the black. If we are in the black, then we can work. So there was no business plan. Everything developed intuitively. Moreover, I was so lucky to have partners that I never did any accounting. I still have a hard time understanding what VAT is and why it is needed at all. I didn’t go to banks, I didn’t fill out returns – I have friends who do that. So don’t sweat the fact that you need very complicated paperwork at all. Just do what you believe in and what other people need.
-Most awkward moment in your career?
-Awkward… I had, not so much an awkward moment as a fucking awkward one! I didn’t think to tell you, but since you asked. It was 2009-2010, when business was going very well. It was growing – business always grows very fast and then slower. And so, for some reason during this period I thought I was Neo, I was the chosen one. And all the people around me are not exactly like me. Just helping me. Of course, I didn’t say it out loud, but it read. I started talking down to people, became rude, boorish, could throw a mug at a person, could fire a person for being late for work. In short, I got a gold crown. I truly believed in it, and during this period, it was a year, I lost 30% of employees, made a lot of enemies, lost a lot of partners and health, and almost divorced his wife. It was a mess! I didn’t know it was in my life, I still echoed to myself that Voloshin was a complete dude, crazy in the head, it was better not to deal with him at all. When, a year later, I realized that I was only hearing bad things about myself, that people stopped smiling at me when they talked to me, I realized that I was going somewhere in the wrong direction. I started to wonder what was going on, and I realized that I was having megalomania, I had grabbed a “star.” I started working on it, but everything didn’t happen with a snap – one, and I was good. It took me a year or two to get back to my original state, and then another five years to find everyone I shit on my soul and make peace with them. I set myself a goal: I would find everyone, apologize, roll around and close all my gestalts so that I could move on with my life in this society and not feel any shame. I ended this epic about five years ago, when I could already say I’d dealt with it. It’s great that I got through it, because it changed and showed me a lot, What can I be. I hope this nonsense doesn’t happen to me again. That’s the kind of pussy I’ve had in my life. Thank you very much.
-How do you feel about business coaches who are willing to teach you how to get your business off the ground for a certain amount of money?
-You know my answer. I often get dragged to meetings – I don’t want to. I mean, they just come in and waste time. Well, the fact that you also take money, that’s bullshit. People come out motivated, they have another 2 days on fire, and after 2 days everything deflates. I don’t really believe in business coaches, but let’s define it. There are different kinds of business coaches – there are motivational speakers who tell you how to do business great, and then there are people who give you specific tools. He tells you how to do analytics in Google, how to count displays, how to increase sales. That is, gives tools as a coach, as a teacher, as a lecturer? We need people like that. And if it is just a motivational speaker, this, of course, is water, so do not waste your time on such comrades. Study yourself, move yourself, ignite yourself.
-Is your company experiencing staff shortages?
-It does. Tough, like any Moldovan company. Any Moldovan company absolutely categorically lacks human resources – adequate people who can do the job. We have a terrible deficit! Smart people, unfortunately, leave the country – to a great, great regret. Not the most qualified people are left, it’s hard to work with them. So if any of you would like to work for us someday, I would be very happy to employ you – if we take you, of course. We don’t take everyone either. Yes, we are experiencing hunger, but now we have decided to do it the smart way: we are opening an office in Kiev, because there are more specialists there. They will work in the office there, but for a Moldovan project. Now we are opening Kiev, and then maybe in Moscow.
-Tell me about the pigtail, do you have a story about it?
-I have all the stories. Now here’s a story that relates to my son. My son is now 10, he was born, so it turns out, in 2009. By that time I had long hair, such long braids. I got very tortured with them, because I was putting them in here, combing them – I’m not a girl, I don’t like all that stuff. I decided, since my son was born today, I gather my friends, we take a roast piglet, we go out, we boo. Maybe we’d had a few drinks in the evening, and I said, “Guys, I can’t take it anymore, let’s cut this hair off. Here’s a pair of scissors, and each of you take a strand and cut it off your head, and I’ll be a normal guy tomorrow. Do I have to ask drunk men twice? Snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap! And the last one was our animator, Serdar Jumaev – he got the last shred from behind. I give him a pair of scissors and he goes, “I’m not going to cut it!” Anyway, we were left with this piece in the back. We continued drinking and ate the pig. I don’t remember the end of the party, but my son was born, that’s normal. I woke up in the morning and he was dirty and shaggy, and there was something sticking out. My face was soiled, there was soot all over it. I went to the mirror – p****! There are such shreds. I run to the hairdresser’s, I say guys, I have a meeting now, people are coming to see me now, do something with me. And they say – what the hell should I do with you, shave your head? They shaved it off. And what to do about it in the back? I said, what are the options? – Well, we can braid it. Well, I’ve been walking around with this braid for 10 years now. And I’ve used it for more than just hanging out. When I had a sports transfer, my wife and kids used to weave three threads into it – yellow, red and blue. I used to run and swim with them – like a symbol of Moldova, a symbol of family. It supported me, in short.
-You talked a lot about your partners, that you had a lot of examples. You fight with them, you make peace with them. But they also say that in business there’s no trust, you can’t trust anybody. You have to rely only on yourself – what do you say about that?
-Partners are my colleagues. Yes, when I say partners, I am talking about the colleagues with whom we work. We sit in the same boat. Provoke, provoke, provoke! That’s why I came, so that you could provoke me a little, not just lick me. I have not encountered theft, for example. I mean, my partners are probably able to steal. Like anyone, I guess. But I’ve never encountered it. I don’t know why, maybe because I trust them. I never lock the door in my house. I don’t have a key – not me, not my wife, not my kids. I mean, when we all leave, the door stays open. If you know, you can punch in an address in principle, but nobody ever gets in. And I know people who lock their doors with 10 locks, but they get in and steal. So I think whether or not a partner will steal from you depends on how you trust that space. If you trust the universe, if you’re not doing anyone any harm, why in the world would you steal from it? If your conscience doesn’t bother you, then everything will be fine, in order. A man should not only take, he should give, and give quite a lot.I see business as a kind of big pool with two pipes. And in order to have water there all the time, you have to drain it. Because if you do not drain the water, the outgoing valve is closed, the pool will be full, everything will stand and mold will appear. This is why we also open the outlet valve, and most of the money we earn goes back into the country. First of all, there’s a lot of investment in sporting events right now. If you think marathons, all of our swims, are profitable, they’re not. It’s all an investment project. Maybe it will make money at some point, but for the last five years we’ve only been investing. If you know, we are planting trees – the verde.md project. After the hurricane 3 years ago, when trees were crumbling from the snow, we did a project in which a person can go to the site, pay for a tree, and we will bring it to a certain place in the city, and he can with friends, with his family to plant this tree and hang a tag with his name, and it will belong to him and, respectively, the city. We help veterans, we help children. We have a social project Chisinau Is ME, where we paint the city, make different illustrations, draw on the walls. We also put a coin in one can, maybe you have seen near the Ministry of Finance. In this way, we return the money we earn to the country we live in. And Achizitii.md, studii.md – it’s also an investment project, and it’s also unclear whether it will pay off or not. But this stuff works – that is, when you give money back, you get even more from the outside. So I take it as a natural process – the Universe, seeing that the business is adequate, that it doesn’t just gobble, gobble and get fat, but makes the world around it better, gives it resources. This is the right mechanism. And for those businesses that clamp down, on the contrary, it takes away the opportunity to make money. I was baptized when I was 16. I don’t know why: they put me in a basin and said, “Now you’re a Christian. Okay. I wouldn’t baptize my kids now. I believe that every person is free to choose the concession he believes in. That is, he has to grow up and figure out for himself what he wants to be – a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Christian. Catholic, whatever. But when it comes to religion, I’m closer to Buddhism, I guess. But generally, I think, each person forms some principles of life in his head – some religion, some church, where he thinks that if I do this, it will be good. But he takes something from Moslemism, or, for example, I like to walk barefoot, that’s from Buddhism. And the Christian – do not kill, it’s not a bad commandment. Here, by collecting himself such commandments, he gets his own personal religion. Most of mine is from Buddhism. I understand their religion, I believe in karma, I believe in rebirth. I’ve been to vipassana, which is the kind of meditation where you don’t talk to anybody for 10 days, and 11:00 hours a day of meditation. This is right up there as a topic for a separate lecture. If they tell me to choose, it would be closer to Buddhism, but I don’t pay attention to that. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to dig into myself again, because every meeting is like a rethinking for me from what’s been happening in my life, and what’s going to happen. Because when you want to learn something from someone, teach it to someone else. So, thank you very much.
I’ll be glad to see you again, if there are any other questions, write me on Facebook in the personal, I’ll be glad to answer.
-We want to give you a diploma like this. The administration of the Lyceum expresses its gratitude for active cooperation in the educational project and we wish you success in your future activities, new ideas and aspirations, joy of the results and reaching new heights.
-Thank you!
