Tonight, before the Warriors game Kerr gave an emotional press conference, commenting on yet another shooting in America. Steve Kerr's statement on school shooting in Texas - ESPN Video Before Game 4 of the Western Conference finals, Steve Kerr refused basketball questions in order to issue a statement…www.espn.com How can anyone not empathize with Kerr’s anger and emotions? I love America, I wrote several stories expressing my appreciation for America, at least from an immigrant perspective. Mass shootings though —…

I like the topic of leadership. Maybe it’s the aftermath of having attended Harvard Business School. At HBS leadership was a buzzword. If you’re trying to get into HBS here’s a tip that will get you in: in your admissions essay mention leadership in every other sentence. Just now I…

If I were to rank my favorite things about America, this would be near the top. Yesterday I had this lovely experience. We weren’t even on a road trip. It was just a one-hour drive, on I-10, from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. My twins had finished their tennis tournament…

I don’t. Having a strong opinion on Musk and Twitter (or some other current topics for that matter) doesn’t make your smarter or more virtuous. For one thing, I don’t use Twitter. I have an account but never really used the platform. So unless Twitter is an integral part of…

Let me introduce myself (there is a reason why I start this story like this, read on). In fact, let me brag a little. My undergraduate degree in Economics is from Cambridge University. There is a lot of math in economics, so even though I don’t consider myself a “technical”…

But it’s ok. I will just have to reinvent myself. Cambridge, Harvard, Morgan Stanley, Silicon Valley, international experience. I could now be a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs at an office of my choice. London, New York City, Hong Kong. I could be a director at a big Silicon Valley…

Not directly, but the connection is unquestionable. You’ll never see from me a screenshot of my Medium earnings! In one of my earlier stories, I promised to never post like garbage about my Medium stats, reads, followers, earnings. And I’ll keep my word. But I do want to admit that…

Before the age of 30, I was flying high. I mean very high. In 1994 I left Russia to spend a year in Oklahoma. I have a lot of stories from that journey and the subsequent ones but the point is that I excelled academically. At my high school in…

I choked when I challenged my thirteen-year-old son Valentin to a one-mile run. I’m not an athlete but have run consistently in the last fifteen years. I’m sure that at my age — forty years old — my running stats are in the top percentile for my age group. My…

Don’t waste your time on friends and family and don’t announce your new awesome undertaking on your social media. Just don’t do it. It’s useless and immature. Whenever I see a friend on Facebook announce their new start-up, or start-up pivot, or signs of their start-up progress, I can predict…

Unless you’re very young or don’t have family. I tried going all in and struggled miserably, ultimately failing. My situation is a little extreme — 4 kids — but I recommend the above anyway. The logic is simple. If you are starting your business from scratch, you can’t expect to…

No one knows anything. The end. Self-explanatory. Not sure about the author. My mother-in-law — Babushka — would disagree. When there is a draft, or when she sees my kids walk barefoot, or if they don’t dry their hair after showering, she knows they’ll catch a deadly cold. She truly…

I’m sure VCs and my friends alike will destroy every one of them — you are not solving anyone’s problem, you don’t have a market, someone’s doing this already, this is too capital intensive, this and that. They’d probably be right. These are high-level ideas anyway. My previous start-up failed…

I’m guilty of some of these. I know! You spend a lot of time choosing a name for your start-up. You’re excited about this life-important decision. You debate with your co-founder. You create a poll on your social media and ask your friends to help. …

Imagine your first date, or maybe the second one. Let’s say, it’s a good one overall — promising and positive; you discover each other, start exchanging your life stories. …

2005 My GMAT score was unspectacular. My phone interview was so-so. The application had six essays. The subject of the last one was “What do you wish the MBA Admissions Board had asked you?” For context, I was applying to Harvard while working for Morgan Stanley, enjoying a very successful…

I’m not proud of it. It’s not in my nature to be bitter, cynical, jealous, or judgemental. Negative emotions hurt no one but me. Criticizing other people is a sign of a small mind. But this one guy… I can’t help it. And probably my mind is small indeed, compared…

It’s probably not shit. Lots of very smart people are preoccupied with it. They’re already using their knowledge to build fortunes, while I’m not. I’m dirt poor. My ignorance is my problem. Still though, I feel so fatigued and uninterested in all things crypto. My closest friends — we’re all…

Entrepreneurship is hard. I personally failed several times with my endeavors. This is why it’s hard. It requires dealing with a lot of uncertainty. Uncertainty can last for years. You yourself might be thick-skinned but if you have a family to support, it’s selfish and unrealistic to expect them to…

In professional life that is, in my career or business. I’m increasingly thinking it’s a kind of a mental illness, though I’m wary of using this term lightmindedly. I’ve been together with my wife for over twenty years and we are raising four kids. I’ve been fortunate on the personal…