His parents fled the USSR for the United States in 1990, fearing criminal prosecution of their son. However, six years later, Eduard Shenderovich returned to Russia, and in 2006 he became one of the co-founders of LiveJournal, which bought SUP company. Later, he did business with the son-in-law of Boris Berezovsky, and in the early 2010s he became an investor in the Internet startup Delivery Hero, which, with his help, is now worth $7 billion. in $500 million. And this is just the beginning, Shenderovich is sure, in his plans to create a company worth $5 billion. Elizaveta Osetinskaya managed to get the first big interview from Shenderovich and find out how the idea to bring LiveJournal to Russia was accidentally born and why it failed, what metaphysical questions tormented Berezovsky, what is the secret of Delivery Hero and what will turn Knotel into Uber in the real estate market? See all this and more in the new issue of the Russian Norms! project.

- Why and how did you end up in Russia in 1995? What drew you back?

- In 1995, I just went [from the USA] to look at Russia. With Dad. I was 19 years old. He went first. He decided that the Soviet Union ended, Russia began. He has a lot of acquaintances. Everyone suddenly started doing business. He decided that he could also do some business in Russia. I was in Russia in 1995, then I arrived in 1996, I spent an amazing summer in 1996 in St. Petersburg. Voted for Yeltsin. With homeless people and all other people without a residence permit.

- I mean, you no longer had any registration ...

- And I never had a residence permit, neither Soviet nor Russian, because I received a passport at the consulate in San Francisco, which has now closed.

“Now you won’t find any trace of him at all.”

And now I don't have a passport.

– Are you not a citizen of Russia?

- Theoretically, yes, but I physically do not have a passport.

- So you came on a visa?

- No. Then I arrived in 1996, while still studying at the university. I came to Russia next time, maybe in 2000. And I [already] had a company that had an office in Moscow and a development office in Novosibirsk. And then I came to Moscow in 2006, met [American entrepreneur] Andrew Paulson, then I met [businessman Alexander] Mamut, and SUP was born.

- That is, not just met, but brought LiveJournal (Livejournal.com service) in Russia.

“It was an incredible time. I consider myself just very lucky. I saw how it all grows, and it attracted. Especially from San Francisco. And then you live in the city for 14 years, it is small, the boom is gone, and it is not very clear what will happen. It seems that everything is fine, but you see that people are leaving for Russia, they live in a completely different way. In general, Moscow is an incredible city in terms of vitality.

– I cannot but agree, I love Moscow very much. I was born in it, grew up and love this city very much. I think that this is one of the coolest cities in general on the planet.

- Yes. I really miss Moscow.

Who came up with the idea to bring LiveJournal to Russia

“Everyone knows Paulson and [Anton] Nosik, both are dead. And they are both considered, how to say it, the progenitors of the zhezheshki. But in fact, there was a third person, and, as far as I understand, it was you.

“There were other people.

- From partners, as I understand it.

- In fact, there was Sasha Mamut, who was Paulson's real partner. I came [in 2006], met Paulson, we had a great breakfast. Paulson became one of my closest friends. We decided that maybe we could work together somehow. The next day he introduced me to Mamut. And I introduced him to my friend Mike Jones, who at that time had a small Internet company. He sold it to AOL a few months after I introduced him to Andrew. He somehow rose up the corporate ladder and then left AOL, became the CEO of MySpace. I introduced him to Andrew. After the meeting, Andrew calls me and says: “I talked to your friend Mike, he told me an amazing thing. He has some kind of infinite amount of traffic that he cannot monetize. American company and he cannot monetize this traffic. There is something in this. We can help him monetize his Russian traffic.” And I say: “Andrew, well, yes, I guess. For example, LiveJournal has a lot of traffic.”

– From [LiveJournal founder Brad] Fitzpatrick?

Fitzpatrick had already sold LJ to Six Apart, which was a rising Californian star. She eventually went bankrupt. Andrew and I met with the management of Six Apart in California, and they themselves say: “You know, we have a problem. These Russians are paying, but they don't want our advertising. And we started to monetize LiveJournal advertising. They buy paid accounts from us and send these pennies in envelopes.”

- In what envelopes?

They don't have credit cards. They send cash or even coins. And Andrew and I thought and said: "Well, let's somehow agree and take it from you."

- What do you mean we'll take it for free?

- We'll buy it. Immediately after that, as we announced it, the wave against SUP immediately began ...

- SUP is the company that actually bought, which included Paulson, Mamut, probably Nosik?

- The nose came later. The nose was the most important part of it. We met Nosik, probably in August 2006. Andrew called him to a meeting and says: "Since we have already agreed on a deal, I want to involve Nosik in this." And Nosik came, he rummaged through the Internet, dug up some things about me that I forgot. He simply said, “Here is that company and that company. Well, you probably know about it, because you must have had such an experience here in this company. Spout came with his Rothmans. And we agreed that we would somehow attract him. And he became what was called the head of the blog service. And, of course, Nosik knew much more about LiveJournal than everyone else ...

Because he was LJ.

- Yes, he was LJ.

“A friend of mine told me very well about you. He described what happened at SUP:“There was a breathtaking office on Smolenka. Glass ceiling, flickering darkness and light bulbs, among which was Paulson's office, where a giant, 8 by 12 meters, Persian carpet lay on the floor.

- It's very beautifully written.

- It was said. I recorded by ear.

Paulson didn't have an office. There really was a carpet.

- I'm talking about the pathos with which everything [was done].

“Actually, it was all very beautiful. Paulson was a theater director. He was all about the scenery, about the process, about the theatrical approach. How will this meeting go? How will the board of directors proceed? Here we meet, here you enter this moment, Nosik enters this moment. He was all about the stage.

- As I understand it, the scene is needed so that at some point an investor enters, gets emotional and gives money.

- Not only. It seems to me that we had an absolutely normal, working relationship with Mamut, who was the main investor. Nobody wanted to rent this office on Smolenka before SUP rented it, it was some kind of strange room in which no one had an office before.

– For me, it was a metaphor for expenses, [indicating] that the project is quite expensive. And I'm leading to the fact that as a result, LJ was not monetized either in the Russian segment, or when you bought it entirely from Fitzpatrick. Why?

– Because this product was not needed by the market.

- How interesting.

– For example, to take money from the user?

- It was possible to take money from users ...

– Try to take money from Russian users!

- And they paid, by the way. I think they paid hundreds of thousands if not millions a year. I don't remember the numbers now, but they were significant. That is, when we looked at how many users pay, how many users would be willing to pay ... Theoretically, we could earn more from advertising, but practically real money came from paid ones ...

- Usually 5% pays out of the total mass of the audience.

- Pay more. I think it paid more. Moreover, there are different audiences. LiveJournal is not a social network, there was an element of a social network.

– So this is a blogging platform first of all?

– This is, in principle, a blogging platform, but it is also a media space. And in this media space there are people who produce content and people who consume it. And there were really 5% of those producing content. And of course the concentration was in the top 1%. There is probably some discrepancy between what people who write want to convey ... they do it absolutely not for commercial reasons. They want to deliver content and they absolutely do not want anyone to monetize them. Successful companies are not created at the moment when a good product appears. A good product is an important part and a necessary part, but what is called product market fit is much more important - that there is a demand for this product, no matter how good it is.

- Monetary demand, that is, not user demand ...

– Market, market demand. That is, not a user request, but just a market demand. For me, this story ended in August-September 2008. And for Spout at the same time, and for Paulson.

– When a group of comrades sold [LJ] to Mamuta.

“No one bought anything from anyone. It was, in fact, basically Mamut's [project], and that's how it's stayed.

How to write poetry and build companies

– Let's go back for a while, because it's not entirely clear what happened between you landed on the coast of California, then went to the University of Berkeley, studied philosophy there in general, and suddenly somehow went into business in Russia.

“I wanted to become a lawyer. And after university, and even before university, I worked for a while at Baker McKenzie, which was at that time the largest law firm. I was their summer associate in St. Petersburg in '96.

– Do you write books in Russian?

I write poems, children's poems.

- They are very expressive.

- I really wanted to become a lawyer and deal with some interesting, complex legal issues. And I worked for a while at Baker McKenzie and realized that I didn't want to be a lawyer.

- Boring?

“Just not about me. But I was very lucky, because I worked with a partner who, in principle, turned out to be without hands. He had two associates, two lawyers who worked with him, and they both left for various reasons. And he was left alone, with me, who had just graduated from university, to make a deal. And that deal was the sale of Power Computing to Apple.

- Important deal.

“It was the biggest deal. It was just after Steve Jobs returned [to the company], and he decided that he needed to consolidate ownership of Apple, and I got a generally phenomenal, grandiose work experience, an understanding of how the company is structured from the inside structurally. And I thought: “Why am I sitting here, I’m going to build my companies.”

- So, at the age of 22, did you decide to build your companies right away?

- Yes.

How Shenderovich's parents left the USSR

- I think now is the time to talk about what connects you with Russia. Or rather, how did you end up in America.

– It was still before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think my parents got scared. They were going nowhere. I think that if my parents knew what they were going to and where they were going and what they would have, they would have thought a thousand times more. Because it was, of course, an absolutely heroic decision. In principle, we were leaving, as Syrian refugees are leaving now. That is, we really came as refugees.

- And you left what part of the Union?

We were leaving Leningrad. I just started talking about this with my parents. It is very difficult to discuss with them, because it is still a painful topic for me and for them.

- Why?

“Because we really practically ran away. I was admitted to the hospital at the end of September 1990 and was on a drip. I needed urgent treatment, so I was treated on an emergency basis. And in the hospital there was one boy with whom I had a conflict. At some point, he came up and began to fart in the face, somehow behaved not very pleasantly.

- Well, I would give him a drip.

Well, I pushed him away. He fell down, cried, and then the next day he was discharged. And he left the hospital.

- That is, without consequences?

- Without consequences. I was discharged from the hospital three days later. And the next day I was alone at home, my parents had just left, a bell rang, a man from the police called me and said that I had a fight with this boy and now he is in the hospital with a fracture of the spine and that I need to come to the department with my parents to sort it out because I've been sued.

- A real criminal case?

“A real, absolutely real criminal case. I didn't understand anything at all

Did he get up and leave with you?

“I had absolutely no idea what was going on. And my mother and I came to the police station, and they said yes, eight years in prison, infliction of grievous bodily harm. Parents began to try to solve this through some of their connections. It turned out that this is an absolutely unsolvable question, that all this is at the level of some serious people with shoulder straps. It turned out that this boy's father, a former KGB officer, is involved in such a story not for the first time. This boy is not the first time in the hospital with a fracture of the spine and not the first time a criminal case has been opened. And he came to my parents and said: “Well, you know, children, it happens that they fight. Of course, I can close this case and take the statement from the police. I talked to the neighbors. The upstairs neighbor said it would cost 30,000 roubles, the downstairs neighbor said it would cost 3,000 roubles.”

- With whom the boy has already fought?

“When I heard that, I didn’t understand at all what it meant either. But he says this metaphorically, this is bargaining: “Well, give me some amount.” And his parents somehow agreed with him. They raised the whole city to their ears, they had some kind of connections, a lot of acquaintances who told them: “You know, such a person.”

- Is that how he makes a living?

It's not like he's doing this for the first time. I don't fully know all the details. I know that they came to the OVIR with this man, handed him an envelope of money, and they were given passports in return.

So they paid some kind of ransom after all?

- They paid. And that day we left.

– I want to say that this story, which is how old? thirty?

- Well, yes, 27.

- It painfully resembles modern stories from Russian business.

- Parents said that they did not believe that they would be put on a plane. Even when they landed in New York, they did not believe that it was all over. They walked and looked around. They thought maybe someone was following them.

- KGB general in New York?

– Yes. [They thought] that the whole story did not end so easily.

- Did you have a fear associated with returning to Russia?

- When I returned to Russia in 1995, that is, five years later, there was absolutely no fear, because there was no Soviet Union. The Soviet Union ended and some other country began. Other people came to power. And everything that was, was not. It seemed so.

- And as it turned out, in fact, other people [came to power].

- Yes.

How to go from tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions?

– When I left SUP and created the Kite company, I met the German entrepreneur Lukasz Gadowski, who at that time was creating his own company called Team Europe. She was supposed to be cloning other companies. If there is some model that works in America, then why not take and make the same model in Europe or Russia? That is, there was [for example] the Just Eat company, which did the same in Denmark and England.

- Is it the same - is it just delivery and ordering food?

- Delivery and ordering food via the Internet. The idea is that people do things one way, that is, they make phone calls and food is delivered to them.

“It's terribly inconvenient.

– This is still 80% of the market. And we saw, we just understood and someone explained that there is such an idea as a channel switch, that is, changing channels. The same people do the same thing, just not by talking on the phone, but by pressing buttons on the phone.

- It's the same as Uber. You can call a taxi, or you can press a button.

– Yes, when you press the button, it changes a lot. It takes a lot less time, it's much more efficient in many ways, it's even more efficient for restaurants.

- Because it is written exactly what they want.

- Yes, yes, because when you call a Chinese restaurant and there is a person who does not speak English well, does not really understand what you are ordering, he wrote down something, maybe he even wrote it down correctly, and in the kitchen this piece of paper someone else saw it. Well, this happens all the time.

- I didn't hear the address.

- I didn't hear the address. Well, this kind of thing happens all the time. Yes, there are many such questions. There were already clear companies - Just Eat, which worked in Denmark and England, Seamless and Grubhub, which worked in America, and the guys decided that they could do the same in several countries, while doing it in several countries at once. They started in Germany as a separate business called Lieferheld and made Delivery Hero (Lieferheld means delivery hero in German). We decided to launch in England by buying Hungry House, which was such a small player compared to Just Eat. Just Eat bought them recently from Delivery Hero already. And in Korea [launched], and in several other markets. And Russia, by the way, was one of them. And the company was led by Niklas Ostberg, who is still its CEO, who previously ran the same company in Scandinavia.

- You seem to be listing the success factors in essence, which predetermined why this company became successful. That is, a person who has already done this, entering several markets ...

– No, entering several markets is not exactly a success factor. The success factors of any company is that there are the right people who, in principle, know what they are doing, on the one hand. On the other hand, this is a market, a clear and understandable market, so that you do not have to go and search and test. You just enter the market and immediately begin to monetize.

- And at that moment you raised $ 5 million.

Actually, there were even more. I came to Leonid Boguslavsky and told him this story.

– This is a Russian major and international investor.

- Yes.

– How did you know him?

- I was introduced to him by our mutual friend Jovan Marjanovic. And his situation also changed at that time, because Yandex went public and he found himself in a situation where he could expand his activities (after the Yandex IPO, Boguslavsky sold part of his stake in the search engine. - The Bell).

- What do you mean, there are funds?

- There were funds, he began to look at the world and investments differently. And we began to look at different companies and invested. It must have been 11 years. And we invested in two different companies at that time - the German company Lieferheld and Delivery Hero as an international company. We invested in both companies, so they merged to make a bigger company. And after that we started to really buy into other markets. The first big purchase was Online Pizza, which is Online Pizza and Pizza Portal. They were in Finland and Sweden. And Niklas, who was the CEO of Delivery Hero, naturally knew them well, knew the founders well. We agreed on payments, installments, of course, there was no money for this. To buy this, we again began to run around the market to look for money. And that's basically how the company came to be.

But in general, the company was constantly engaged in fundraising, constantly growing. We began to buy different markets. And now, in my opinion, Delivery Hero in 47 markets.

- It's really important to say this. You, so to speak, behave modestly. You have such an image of a humble person. But, in fact, when the company did a public offering after many, many ways to raise money, it was valued at 4.5, if I'm not mistaken, a billion euros. She grew up to some absolutely phenomenal story.

– It is now the largest Internet company in Europe. If you do not take into account "Yandex".

– Now the company is worth seven [billion euros], because there are some rumors that it will merge with another European company - Takeaway, I think. It's like you've moved into another league. That is, it is one thing - you attracted a million there, and another thing - a company that costs seven billion dollars.

– What I am doing now is no less interesting.

- I'm not talking about interest now. It brought you into the category of large people who may not think about money anymore, who have their own large portfolio of money. Or not? Your big capital.

- OK.

- Yes or no?

- Well, yes, there is.

– Are you worth more than 100 million [dollars] or less?

- I do not think.

- You don't check?

- I don't check my account.

- Well, about how it feels?

“I don't understand why. I don't really understand these bullshit. It would be a misfortune for me to be on the Forbes list.

How to work with Russian investors and oligarchs

- I will return to the Delivery Hero company. After reading about its IPO in the Vedomosti newspaper, I found two interesting investors there. You named one - this is Leonid Boguslavsky, and another even more interesting investor - this is Gavriil Yushvaev, who is called, how to say, an authoritative entrepreneur. The last vivid episode associated with Gavriil Yushvaev in the media is the episode when his guards in Moscow City shot, had some kind of incident with other guards. And at one point he owned up to a quarter of Delivery Hero.

– We met him through a Moscow banker, whom I told that Delivery Hero was looking for money, and he said that there was a portfolio investor with whom he could talk and he had invested in different companies. Yes, he invested in Lyft, he invested in Domo, he invested in some medical companies, but he is a peculiar person, probably like many other peculiar people. I don't know, I learned a lot from him.

- For example?

- Decisions. I think I understood roughly how he makes decisions, how he works with people.

- Explain, you also make decisions. And before that I took it.

– Yes, but [learned to make decisions] faster, more clearly.

- More decisively.

- Yes.

- A person lives with protection. In America, I don't think many people drive like that.

I didn't see him with security. I meet him in Berlin or in Los Angeles. And he is an absolutely normal person, he lives in a hotel. He has a wonderful family.

“It just seems a little surprising that people behave in the same way at home. They have one reputation at home. In doing so, they change their behavior when they are abroad. That is, they perceive the international market with its rules, principles, rules of conduct. As we know, communication in America is rather delicate in form, although rather firm in content.

– Yes, I really like this solid content [communication].

– I mean, communication is different in Russia and in America.

- I recently read somewhere that in Russia people are hard on the outside and soft on the inside, but in America it’s the other way around.

– Are there any other well-known investors from Russia whose money you attract and who have not been so publicly disclosed?

– We worked quite closely and continue to work with the Invest AG group, this is the money of [Alexander] Frolov and [Alexander] Abramov, who are the founders of Evraz. Frolov Jr. created the Target Foundation, which is based in Berlin and Moscow. He has a great team, they are investing in different technology companies. And Invest AG, one of their main partners, also invests directly in various businesses.

- And when Russian businessmen, who are usually called here frankly oligarchs, power authorities, power businessmen, they are all more or less Putin, one way or another, "Putin's hand." One of them was in prison, the other was something else, but here they are not shy in the newspapers in expressions. They will say: "Criminal Russian something." How do you explain that in reality it's all different, more complicated, that's all?

- If there are questions, then you can explain, provide some papers. It seems to me that this story of the persecution of Russians in America is extremely exaggerated.

“I want to get back to the historical facts for a second about the company you say you don't do much of anymore, Kite. I read Wikipedia, and it says that you did not create it alone, you created it with a man whose name is Yegor Shuppe. And since he was Berezovsky's son-in-law for some time, the question arises about Berezovsky's money.

- No, he did not have any money from Berezovsky. There is generally very little money.

“Why did you need Schuppe at all?” And how did you become friends with him, met, and then for some reason parted ways?

- Dema Kudryavtsev introduced me to him, because they worked together. Together they created the Cityline company.

What was his interest?

- He invested money.

- Yours?

- His. And then we began to attract other investors.

- How do you know?

- I just think that the father-in-law was absolutely not interested. It was such a small [project] at the time. Delivery Hero was something by the time he died. But still, I think that Berezovsky, in principle, was not interested in money.

- I think, yes. As they wrote and said, he was interested in power.

- May be.

- Power over people. What do you think?

- I don't know.

– Do you know him at all?

- I met him several times. He was undoubtedly interested in Russia. He was interested in some such metaphysical questions. For example, he absolutely amazingly defined progress. That is the idea of ​​progress. He said that he thought about what progress is. And he said that for him it was the transition of energy into information. When you don't know how to play tennis, you rush around the court, sweat and use too much energy to achieve a certain result. And the more you study, the better you play tennis, the more information you get, the less energy you need.

- An interesting interpretation.

– Interesting, yes.

- Please tell us about your current affairs and why you are no longer involved in a company in which you have a partner Schuppe. Or has he ceased to be?

–. He stopped being a partner. We are friends with him and sometimes we meet, but ... I do it because I do what interests me.

A company that will be worth billions of dollars

- From the moment we met, it became clear that you were not at all the person you introduced yourself to for the first time, you turned out to be the founder of a super-successful startup, which now, as it turned out, is worth half a billion dollars.

- May be.

– So, at least, investors estimated in April.

This is what The Wall Street Journal wrote.

“And this company is called Knotel, and it positions itself as Uber for renters. For those who are going to rent, relatively speaking, offices. Please tell me about it.

“More like Airbnb for office real estate. That is, it is a kind of marketplace that connects property owners and companies that need this property. And unlike Airbnb, where people stay for 2-3 nights, Knotel stays for a year, one and a half, two. Therefore, this is not a transactional marketplace, like many others, but what we call a managed marketplace, that is, a marketplace with some kind of management.

- Can not understand anything.

- This is very good. We've been trying to explain what Knotel does for the past two years. We are talking about the same thing. The company grew about a hundredfold in two years. And nobody understands.

- And yet you own something or you rent it, you rent it to someone, re-let it, well, just tell ordinary people who do not do business or want to do business, what is it?

– I came to New York in 2012, at the end of 2012. And in 2013, a friend and I co-founded Knotable, which was doing very different things. And they rented an office that was five thousand feet (that's about 500 meters) because they thought we were going to build a big company. But in this company, a maximum of four people worked. And there was too much space, so we found other companies that rented this room from us. Well, there was some kind of company for 20 people, for 15, for another 10. Somewhere in another six months, another floor appeared on the market. Companies constantly come to us and say: “Oh, how cool it is here! Let's get something for you too." We rented another floor, and it was immediately rented (the whole floor) by one company. They said that "we got another round of funding and will grow, so more space is needed." A year later, we looked at the numbers and it turned out that this strange real estate bullshit feeds this software company. I looked at the market and thought there was a concept in the market called coworking. There is a big company called WeWork.

- What is WeWork, people need to explain. WeWork rents out coworking spaces.

WeWork is the largest co-working company in the world. We looked at this market and thought that coworking is interesting. But this is a very small part of the market. But maybe at that moment it is less than a percent. But there is the rest of the property. And the rest of the office real estate is just an office. And in this office people just work. They don't coo, they just coo. You and I started a company and there are two or three or five of us and we can fit in the little space that WeWork has to offer.

And we have a company of 15, 20, 50, 100 people, and this company does not want to sign a lease agreement, because this is a serious obligation, these are long-term contracts. Any company that grows cannot control the space it is in. That is, she cannot predict what kind of space she will need in 5 or 10 years.

What happened in 2000, in 2008? These contracts just killed the companies. And from this WeWork turned out. They came out with a product that helped small companies somehow grow after the 2008 crash. But what's next? This company here grows to 20 people, and WeWork didn't have a product, and now there isn't a particularly good product for a company of more than 20 people. And we made this product. And now Knotel employs maybe more than 5 thousand people. I can't even tell for sure right now. More than 200 companies.

- And what is its manufacturability?

– In principle, this is a marketplace, that is, it has a web interface and an application through which you can find real estate that you can register to become part of this marketplace (if you have one).

- If I have, roughly speaking, a floor in some skyscraper in New York, suppose that instead of renting it myself, I can connect it, like an Uber Car, to the application and rent it through you.

– We have created a system with which we partner with property owners. And they earn more than they could. And the market is so inefficient that we make it cheaper for companies. That is, if you are a small company of 20, 30, 50 people, on average it is 25-30% cheaper than renting your own office. It's cheaper because you don't have to plan ahead for the next five years. No deposit required, just cash that is eaten by property owners. In general, all office real estate is about 30 trillion [dollars].

– Only in America?

-In the world. There is a lot of office real estate in Moscow, and we naturally think about Moscow from time to time. I just think about Moscow more often than the average American. And it is not yet clear to us how to work in a market where there is a very high level of vacancy, that is, a lot of real estate has been built, and a lot of real estate is empty. We are currently working in markets where demand exceeds supply.

- And such a question. Do you rent from these guys on a long-term basis and sell them to others at retail?

- Not really. We negotiate with the owners. We rent from someone, and we rent if it is profitable for us, or we agree with someone that we are engaged in property management. In principle, this is how the hotel industry, for example, is built. We haven't come up with anything new. Marriott does not own any of its properties. Marriott has financial partners. They come and say: “We agree with you in a certain way. Your building will be a Marriott or a Hilton or some other hotel chain.”

- Your partner said that you can order toothpaste from Amazon and it will be delivered to you in an hour, and you will rent an office for a year. And with the help of us, he said, for propaganda purposes, of course, the same thing can be done in a day.

- Theoretically, yes. You can fill out forms online. Someone will immediately contact, call back, give out a few offers. We had cases when people had to move in, but not tomorrow, well, in a week, in two weeks. And in the office world, these are some kind of record speeds. Usually a company starts looking for an office a year in advance.

- Do you earn money or do you just spend it?

We earn enough. Well, of course we make a lot of money.

- Where are the dots?

“Mostly Manhattan. We have two [office centers] in San Francisco, one in London, there will be [more] several in a while. I think we will end the year with about 10 [locations] in San Francisco, 10 in London and about 100 in New York. Well, there are a few other European cities that are interesting.

- Tell me, please, who is your boss? After all, the CEO, that is, as it were, the main leader, is not you.

- I have a partner. His name is Amol Sarva. He is such a serial entrepreneur.

I take it he's from India?

“He comes from Queens, from the New York area. And he still lives in Queens. He built a building there across from the PS1 Contemporary Art Center. This is the only building he built. That is, he had some experience in real estate. So he's still a tech entrepreneur, but he has a lot more experience in real estate than I do. And I had experience in thinking big markets. Now I have such a role when I have no subordinates, but I am in the office every day. And I'm building a company.

- From subordinates, from ideas, from cubes of ideas.

- From cubes of ideas. No, well, I'm just building a new direction. For example, we recently announced that we have a major blockchain project.

– What is a modern company without blockchain! If there is agile.

– Bitcoin is actually an interesting phenomenon, but blockchain as a platform is much more interesting. And for a company like Knotel, I think it's incredibly important. Because this is a huge commercial real estate market where there is no clear information. There is information that there are buildings here. But the parameters of this building: the owner says one thing, one broker says something else, some government papers say something else. And what happens inside - no one knows at all. This mass of information is necessary in order to speed up the market, simply to make the market more transparent. Everyone wants this - brokers, owners, and people who rent real estate. Everyone wants to have information clarity. You have a lot of information about restaurants. Why is this not the case for office real estate? We decided to make such a distributed system in which all owners of information can register this information and exchange this information. Based on this information, you can already conclude smart contracts.

- You, I see, there have already conceived some kind of revolutionary change with Amol.

“Not what we thought. We are really just reacting to what we see in the market.

- That is, you want, roughly speaking, to digitize all real estate.

“We want to digitize all commercial real estate. And by digitizing it, we want to bring liquidity to this market.

- You mean money?

- Liquidity - in the sense of the ability to quickly sell a share. What is the difference between the exchange and investment in shares from investment in real estate? You bought a share and sold a share, you can do it on the same day. You can build derivative instruments.

You can do it even in a minute.

- You can even in a second, even in a fraction of a second, if you are sitting on the New York Stock Exchange.

- If you accidentally press the wrong button, then you can even scary where ...

- Settlement happens in a split second, but this does not happen with real estate. With real estate, it is generally surprising - a lease agreement is signed. In almost any American city, almost any lease agreement will cost at least $20,000 to sign a contract. The tenant, lawyers, in general, different verification. One side pays $10,000, the other side pays $10,000. Might be worth 50. We believe that we can replace the word rent with the word Knotel.

“You mean like a photocopier?”

Yes, like Google.

— Knotel? Of course I expect.

-So it will be $500 million, then $5 billion.

- Yes, I do.

"News"

Non-commodity ambitions: why the son of the president of Evraz preferred venture investments to metals

Is it worth investing in Internet projects

Eduard Shenderovich, Managing Director of the Kite Ventures venture fund, believes that now is the time to invest in the Internet, and Igor Agamirzyan, CEO of the Russian Venture Company, believes that investments in Russia have already skewed towards IT and the Internet. Igor Agamirzyan, CEO of the Russian Venture Company: — In Russia, there are not enough projects that have been formed to a stage that is understandable for venture investors. When they can calculate the risks and prospects of these projects and develop for themselves a reasonable and economically viable model for investment, development and exit from companies
link: http://newsaltay.ru/index.php? dn=article&to=art&id=7

Investgazeta learned what it takes to attract investment in IT projects

If you decipher the concept of "company", it becomes clear that there are very clear components behind it: people, products and the market. There are no companies without the right balance of these three elements,” says Eduard Shenderovich, Managing Director of Kite Ventures, a venture fund that has invested in a dozen companies over the two years of its existence, two of which are in Germany, one in England, and the rest in Russia. Most developers only think in terms of the product, leaving out important points such as the market they will operate in, its size and growth rate, the competitive landscape, a complete team with the combined competencies to create a business with a sustainable competitive advantage, a go-to-market strategy, and a marketing strategy. , business model and other important factors, says Pavel Levchuk, director of Vivex Invest, which is an investor in such projects as Mapia.ua, Address.ua, etc.
link: http://investgazeta.net/ kompanii-i-rynki/investgazeta- uznavala-chto-nuzhno-dlja- togo-chtoby-privlech- investicii-v-it-proekty- 160161/

Eduard Shenderovich: "An investor must be an optimist"

Eduard Shenderovich is a man of numerous and diverse talents: a poet, philosopher, philologist, entrepreneur. And to all this - a successful investor, founder and managing director of the management company Kite Ventures. It is quite possible that it is the combination of different and seemingly contradictory abilities that allows him to invest in the right projects, at the right time and in the right amounts. At his lecture for students of the specialization "Management in the field of Internet technologies", Eduard Shenderovich told the basics of the difficult art of investing.
link: http://habrahabr.ru/company/rma/blog/50494/

Ukrainian IT entrepreneurs found their investors

According to Eduard Shenderovich, managing director of Kite Ventures venture fund and Forum speaker: “The task of a venture investor is to correctly identify people who can unlock the potential of the market. Such an event in Ukraine is unique, but necessary for the fruitful development of an innovative economy. I hope the tradition will continue and bear fruit soon.” The event for two days was attended by about 1500 IT-specialists, investors, venture funds, top managers of leading companies dealing with Internet technologies, business angels, experts, representatives of Ukrainian and international media.
link; http://newsukraine.com.ua/news/232816-ukrainskie-it-predprinimateli-nashli-svoih-investorov/

The venture capital market lacks “early” money

Eduard Shenderovich, Managing Director of the Kite Ventures venture fund, told RBC Daily that the activity of investors at the seed stages is low not only in Russia, but also in other countries where there is no “buyer market” for such companies, for example, in France or Italy. “Funding companies that not only do not understand how they will earn money, but also do not know what exactly their product will be, is an extremely risky business,” the investor believes. - In more developed markets (say, in the US and Germany), the money is received not so much by the seed companies themselves as by their founders - most often if they already have success stories. They are trusted by their colleagues, friends, just people from the industry. In Russia, there are still few serial entrepreneurs who could count on such trust.”
link: http://eford.msk.ru/venchurnomu-ryinku-ne-hvataet-rannih-deneg/

Eduard Shenderovich, Kite Ventures: “Entrepreneurs are revolutionaries by definition”

Eduard Shenderovich: I don't think it's particularly difficult, this activity has very understandable components, but simply knowing them is not enough. Just like with the revolution, its theory is described: there must be tops that cannot, bottoms that do not want, and the corresponding economic situation, but understanding this does not bring us closer to revolution. High technologies are interesting to me for their never-ending dynamics. This is a world that is constantly changing and therefore requires permanent study, quick reactions to what is happening, and continuous improvement of oneself. At the same time, there is no doubt that the Internet is part of the overall business structure, and companies that develop Internet services do not operate in a vacuum, but in a common market.
link: http://inventure.com. ua/news/world/eduard- shenderovich-kite-ventures- abpredprinimateli-2013-po- opredeleniyu-revolyucionerybb

The Global Venture Market: A Revolutionary Rise

This trend is directly related to globalization. “More market and lower risks is the general line of development of any industry,” explains Eduard Shenderovich, Managing Director of Kite Ventures. As international experience shows, the larger the venture company, the more it focuses on less risky investments in companies in the later stages, the products of which have already been tested by the market. And according to Deloitte, from 8% (venture assets less than $50 million) to 2% (assets more than $1 billion) of venture top managers are ready to invest in companies at early stages.
link: http://www.sibai.ru/archive/index-149.htm

Forum "investment in Russia" - the revival of the old brand

Eduard Shenderovich, Managing Director of Kite Ventures, shared with the conference participants his professional experience in investing in high-tech projects and the Internet, and also gave some valuable recommendations to aspiring entrepreneurs who want to attract funding.
link:

Screenshot of the release of the Russian Norms project

Eduard Shenderovich, who co-founded the SUP company that bought LiveJournal, invested in the Delivery Hero startup in the early 2010s, worth $7 billion. And Shenderovich’s Knotable project was valued at $500 million. The entrepreneur in an interview with the Russian Norms project spoke about his projects in the United States and cooperation with Russian investors and oligarchs.

After leaving SUP, Shenderovich created the venture capital fund Kite Ventures in 2008. Then he met the entrepreneur Lukasz Gadowski, who then created the company Team Europe (should have been cloning other companies). At this point, food delivery companies were operating in the market. Therefore, Gadovsky launched a separate business in Germany called Lieferheld and created Delivery Hero.

In order to raise money for the project, Shenderovich came to the Russian investor Leonid Boguslavsky, whom Jovan Maryanovich introduced him to. Then Boguslavsky sold part of his search engine package and could expand his activities. “And we began to look at different companies and invest,” Shenderovich said.

Edward Shenderovich

entrepreneur

“We invested in two different companies at the time - the German company Lieferheld and Delivery Hero as an international company. We invested in both companies, so they merged to make a bigger company. And after that we started to really buy into other markets.”

Delivery Hero currently operates in 47 markets. And after the listing of the company on the stock exchange in 2017, the cost of the project is estimated at $7 billion. “It is now the largest Internet company in Europe. If you do not take Yandex into account, Shenderovich said. Delivery Hero was also invested by Gavriil Yushvaev, whose name appeared in the media after a conflict with a shooting between his bodyguards and security officers of reputable businessman Dmitry Pavlov on November 17th.

Shenderovich said that Yushvaev has invested in the Lyft taxi service, Domo software developer, and medical companies. The co-founder of SUP said that he learned from Yushvaev to make decisions faster. Shenderovich said that he worked closely enough with the Invest AG group, which has the money of Evraz founders Alexander Frolov and Alexander Abramov. According to him, he manages to explain the receipt of funds even if Russian investors are called oligarchs or power entrepreneurs.

Edward Shenderovich

entrepreneur

“If there are questions, then you can explain, provide some papers. It seems to me that this story of the persecution of Russians in America is extremely exaggerated.”

In 2013, Shenderovich, together with a friend, created the company Knotel, which the entrepreneur calls Airbnb for office real estate. As part of the project, a marketplace was created that connects property owners and businesses that require premises. The site allows you to rent premises for a year, one and a half or two years. According to Shenderovich, for a company with a staff of 20-50 people, renting real estate through Knotel is 25-30% cheaper than renting their own office. Now investors estimate the project at $500 million, and in the future, according to the entrepreneur's plans, the cost of the project will increase to $5 billion.

Eduard Shenderovich's parents left the USSR for the United States in 1990, but six years later Shenderovich returned to Russia. And in 2006, he was one of the founders of SUP, which bought LiveJournal. In the 2010s, he invested in the Internet startup Delivery Hero, which is worth $7 billion. And the office rental service Knotable is estimated by investors at $500 million. Now Shenderovich plans to create a company worth $5 billion.

In June, it became known that the Teremok pancake network had its own establishments in New York, which had been operating in the city since 2016. According to the entrepreneur, he had problems with regulators in the USA and he said that they do not want to see him in the USA. According to Goncharov, the brand should not enter the American market if the business is at least slightly connected with Russia.

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Domestic children's literature is rich in poems for children. Children's poems are published by different publishers. But these are, as a rule, the works of well-known, long-standing poets in literature. Their style, their techniques, their themes are loved and recognizable. Maybe too familiar. And sometimes, as one of the heroines of the series about Dr. House said, “I really want curry!”

And here is the “curry” for you: there is a “new”, yet not very well-known Eduard Shenderovich with his book “About battles and battles”.

And he his
Bang-fuck!
And that one
Fuck-bang!

These "fuck-bang" and "tan-tara-tan" drums herald a new event in children's literature.

Moms and dads need to wake up.

Shenderovich's verse is resilient, concise, saturated with sound and rhythmic play. Rhymes - interesting, unexpected. The line is short, chopping. The dynamics are incredible: every two lines (or even every line) is a new action. That is, this is a verse that, in all respects, satisfies the “commandments of children's poets,” which Korney Chukovsky once set out in his classic work “From Two to Five.”

But it's not only that. “About battles and battles” is not just high-quality poetry. This is historical adventure literature in verse. Not a fairy tale or a poem, but something akin to chivalrous ballads, only in a "new language". It’s as if you were in a magical museum, among frozen figures: knights, gladiators, samurai, musketeers froze in the midst of some hot battle of bygone times, but suddenly, at the behest of the poet, they sharply, instantly come to life - and the battle continues before your eyes. However, this is not a panorama of a mass battle. There are no murders and rivers of blood. If one of the characters dies, then "behind the scenes". And in the center of attention is the duel of two equal opponents, taking place according to all the laws of military art, the atmosphere of a dangerous, risky holiday. That is why one wants to call these verses "ballads" so much.

The characters of each plot belong to different eras and act - move and speak (this is the most amazing!) - in accordance with the spirit of their time. From "ballad" to "ballad" not only the costumes change, the rhythm and style of speech, the plasticity of characters and the code of behavior change.

"I'm sorry sir,
let me, sir,

I will punch a hole
in your underwear!" -

they are musketeers.

And the knight before him
kneels down,

swears that
right
and self-
oblivious -

will serve
four hundred
knightly years,

what is more devoted
there are no knights

what he
will win
and the enemy
and a dragon!

And a song
Princess

sing

at the balcony!

It's clear who.

“... I will take revenge on you
instantly for it -

we will shoot
from the
letov!

We will
Shoot, Bill!

These are cowboys.

Each fight has its own onomatopoeic set that conveys its character and atmosphere. All these "abra-kadabra, courage-boarding", "whack-perevzhik", "chah-shah - sneezing" are so expressive that they can cause auditory hallucinations. And the plasticity of the characters is conveyed in such a way that movements can be imitated if desired. That is, these poems are also scenic.

gladiators already
against each other -

like wild animals
walk in circles.

Watching
into each other's eyes

and as if
growl...

On the title page of the book there is an author's dedication: "Date, Vasya and all the boys who have not yet grown up." Finik and Vasya are the five-year-old sons of Eduard Shenderovich, who, according to his stories, read these poems from memory with pleasure. And in the Samokat publishing house, which published the book, they are proud that they have finally published a real “boyish book”.

But one can hardly speak of the existence of any special "literature for boys."

Here are the "girlish" books, of course, there are. Among them there are both good and bad. But boys, as a rule, do not cling to either one or the other: they simply have no one to identify with here. But there are simply good books for everyone - both for girls and boys. The Three Musketeers were once read by both. And Treasure Island and The Headless Horseman.

"About battles and battles" - a book for boys. This does not mean that girls will not be interested in Shenderovich's poems. Moreover, the “female line” is drawn here gracefully and with humor: For example, in the short story “How the Knights Fight”, the princess,

… blushing

like a thousand
roses,

kisses
knight

And during the gladiatorial battle, the empress from time to time says to the emperor:

"My dear Emperor!

Why don't we go
to the theatre?"

A very feminine stance towards the public bloody entertainment of men.

Note that the illustrations for the book were made by the artist (not the artist) Sonya Utkina. It was she who painted all these "fuck-sharabahs", knights and cowboys - with taste and knowledge of the matter, so that a real historical theater turned out.

The book "About battles and battles" may well become an "introduction to history" for children - the characters of "past times", their costumes, customs - and, most importantly, their attitude are described so accurately and juicy in it. So we can recommend it to children of seven or eight years old, who are already awakening interest in historical events and, importantly, have accumulated sufficient experience in perceiving poetry.
It is best to read a book out loud together. For example, in turn, by roles. But we must by all means let these verses resound. Otherwise, you will not find all their advantages.

Marina Aromshtam

Edward Shenderovich. About fights and battles. - M.: Samokat, 2013.

Annotation:
Real children's poetry from Eduard Shenderovich: bright, funny and memorable poems for boys (and girls too) of all ages.

Tribunes rejoice
both right and left.

And then the king
and his queen

are calling to oneself
dressed in armor

mustachioed knight
in a rumpled helmet.

And in chorus with the princess
they tell him:

"Listen, knight,
You are a brave soldier!

Courage and strength
example of examples!

From now on and forever
You will be sir!!!"

And he is his “Bang-Bang”, and that one is his “Bang-Bang”. And these two with swords in the air “Vzhik-perevzhik”. And these first “Cah-shah!”, And after “Sneeze!” And if you ask what happened to me, I will answer - a wonderful book of poems by Eduard Shenderovich "About battles and battles."
In a small book (thick binding and wonderful illustrations), several bullies met: knights, pirates, musketeers, gladiators, samurai and cowboys. Not without cutting, fencing, shooting. Blood spilled. But nobody died.

Samokat children's literature publishing house is a unique case when I can take any of their books without hesitation, knowing for sure that it will be good, even magnificent. The collection of poems about buzzers and militarists was no exception. Super-poems come with super-illustrations, and one wants to continue them with another dimension - to play out a scene and thereby bring them to life. For now, I enjoy reading them to my son with intonation, trying to speak for such different characters and voice blades: growl for a pirate, scream for a parrot, rustle a samurai sword or granmercier for musketeers (you also have to fawn and lisp for their ladies of the heart). These poems are so wonderful - figurative, bright, dynamic. Alive, dancing, and not so simple as they might seem at first admiring glance. Oh well, read on for yourself:
“Little Roman boy shouts “I want to go there too!”
An adult Roman mother tells him: “Nonsense!
Gladiators die to entertain the people!
And you will be a legionnaire! And no one will kill you!
And the boy says: “Of course! Rome will be eternal forever!
Mom, I swear by Venus! I will become a legionnaire!”

“And it doesn’t work out like that, and it doesn’t go that way,
They even try the opposite -
first, “chah-shah!” - and in pursuit of “sneeze!!”
Throwing swords and fighting without them!

They kick with their feet! Hitting with fists!
They grab each other by the neck with their hands!
And they pull! And they choke!
But the eternally formidable samurai do not die!

The night has come and the stars are lit,
The soldiers went to their families long ago,
And two samurai, like two ants,
In deadly embrace, they all stand the same.

One praying mantis, and the other a dragonfly - the insect has hatched its eyes.
And from the sky the moon caresses them with light - the top of the mountain is visible in this light,
Bats fly by in flocks and night birds fly like shadows.

And if you are in the east,
Near Fuji, or near Tokyo,
In a field where there is never a soul,
In the light of the moon and in the silence of midnight,

There by the stream, whose bend is like a snake -
The two samurai are still standing.
Fight each other and don't die
Eternal Samurai Warriors!”

And Jack says:
"Bill, you didn't kill me!"
And Bill replies:
“Jack, I’m still human!
After all, if you chase after everyone,
then with whom should I shoot later?!”

So, let's be such people and eternally living samurai warriors. And pirates. And parrots. And knights. And, of course, princesses. And you can even break it from time to time. Well, to wrinkle the helmet. And then who next time visor to break?

My three-year-old son has 4 swords, 4 pistols, 2 submachine guns and 3 bows in toys (although only two arrows). With all this goodness, he, at times, does not part even in bed. Do you understand that this book is simply necessary in our arsenal?