Russia, Moscow
CTO, East Europe, Nokia Networks
1993: Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University (USA).
1993-1995: Laboratory for Physical Sciences (USA)
1995-2000: Alcatel (France, USA)
2000-2004: Xtera Communications (USA)
2004-present: Siemens / NSN / Nokia.
I was one of the founding members of Xtera Communications: I joined the first team of 7 people in 2000 and build the company from scratch, with funding from a few reputable North American venture capital firms, led by Sevin Rosen Funds and ARCH Venture Partners. I was Head of R&D. We completed our first product in 2002 and our second product in 2004, which was extremely successful on the market. Today Xtera is one of the global leaders in long-haul terrestrial and submarine optical transmission systems.
High-technology; telecommunications (wireless and IP / optical); hardware and software engineering; cloud technologies.
I have a strong senior-level experience in various technological fields. I have a penchant for sharing my experiences and for mentoring. I believe that the "lessons learned" from experienced people can enormously benefit young entrepreneurs to avoid pitfalls in their creative journey. I was one of a small group of people who built a company from its start-up phase and made it a highly-successful and profitable company in one of the most challenging sectors of technology industry. A lot can be shared from my start-up experience and my years as an executive in large multi-national corporations. I'm willing to give part of my time for coaching and mentoring young entrepreneurs in the high-tech / telecom sectors. I expect from my proteges to be able to listen and be ready to make changes to the way they do / see things if need be. I expect an open dialogue rather than attempts at justifying the continuity of their own methods. It is important that the protege be totally convinced that he / she is ready for this mentor-protege relationship and that this is a process that he / she intends to fully benefit from.
My preference would be for early-stage start-ups in the IT Cluster. However, I would be willing to work with start-ups in other clusters if we both see a mutual benefit. I would also be interested in working with start-ups that already have a product and are in need of guidance in sales / marketing / market identification.