01
Don't look for talent in a vacuum
What matters more is whether a person has already shown growth, handled difficult tasks and can perform not only when things are going well.
Author's column / Business / Experience
7 principles that helped us survive crises and expand into dozens of markets
In 2012, I was sitting in a business training session trying to figure out how venture projects actually get built. I had no investors, no team, and certainly no finished product. What I did have was a sheet of paper with 70 ideas. One of them later became WakeApp.
Today it's easy to retell this story as: came up with an idea, built a product, found clients, grew. In reality, we changed course many times — we launched a mobile development studio, abandoned the old model, rebuilt the team, moved into media buying, lived through algorithm changes and entered new markets.
That's how, step by step, we arrived at the principles that helped us get through crises and keep moving when the old model stopped working. Here are the seven most important ones.
01 / Idea
Test ideas fast instead of waiting for guarantees
In 2011, I launched a mobile development studio. The market was just emerging. We worked with large companies — banks, retailers, sports clubs. For a young industry, it was a good way in: clients were already becoming interested in mobile apps, but there were very few people with real experience.
A couple of years later, I realized the development model wasn't right for me. Long cycles, little control, lots of uncertainty. You can do your part well, but the result still depends on the product, the client's team, deadlines, approvals and a dozen other factors.
In 2012, my partner and I saw the future of the business differently. The best thing we could do was part ways honestly. I left without a ready team and without a clear next model — but with the understanding that I didn't want to stay in development.
That's how I ended up at a business training session and came up with a service that helps apps grow faster in the app stores. Back then, the whole market was chasing installs. The logic was simple: if you help an app quickly reach a critical mass of users and climb the rankings, it can keep growing on the strength of its rating and recommendations.
I found a developer, we built the product in a month, and our first major client was MTS.
What matters here: the idea worked not because it was perfect and polished. It hit the moment when the market already needed such a service, and there were few ready-made solutions.
The idea worked not because it was perfect and polished. It hit the moment when the market already needed such a service, and there were few ready-made solutions.
02 / Team
Team first, product second
For the first ten years, I invested everything I earned in people. Not in an office, not in fancy packaging, not in status symbols.
What matters most to me is a strong team, because a product can be invented, found or rebuilt. But without a team, even a good idea quickly hits a ceiling.
I rebuilt departments many times. The sales team — about twenty times, the tech team — at least four. It's always unpleasant: people get used to each other, processes seem to work, and changing everything hurts. But if the team doesn't fit the current stage of the business, the business starts to slow down.
Over time, I developed my own rules.
02
Ambition without a willingness to work hard is worth nothing
Anyone can talk beautifully about big goals, but only a few can actually deliver and carry all the hard operational work.
03
Don't hire a "one-market star"
If someone once made easy money in a specific situation, they may bring not experience but inflated expectations.
04
Elitism and overconfidence are a red flag
Ambition is necessary, but it shouldn't be confused with arrogance and star syndrome.
05
There should always be room for a strong specialist
I always tried to bring such a person on board, even if formally there was no vacancy for them.
06
No dishonest people
No matter how much money someone brings in, if they behave dishonestly, we part ways.
The main takeaway: a business doesn't grow because you once hired a strong person. It grows when you keep checking whether you have the right team for your current model.
03 / Model
Don't cling to a model that has become outdated
There were several moments in WakeApp's history when the agency could simply have ceased to exist. Each time the problem was the same: the old model was still making money, but it was hard to scale.
That's what happened with our service for getting apps into the top charts. At some point it became heavy and unpredictable in its results. We could have kept selling it out of inertia, arguing with the market and convincing ourselves it still worked. But in fact, the model was becoming less sustainable.
We started looking toward media buying.
To do that, we had to:
01build new expertise,
02find people,
03rebuild processes,
04admit that the old product could no longer be the foundation for growth.
This happened several more times.
The store changed its algorithms — the logic of promotion changed. Platforms rewrote their rules — the mechanics of traffic changed. The Russian market stopped meeting our goals — we looked for opportunities in other countries.
In business, it's easy to get stuck on a model that once made you money. It's clear, familiar, and a team has already been built around it. But when the market changes, it starts eating up the time and attention you need to invest in the next one.
I put it this way for myself: if a service still sells but no longer offers a clear future, don't celebrate the last of the money — prepare a new model.
04 / Expertise
A big low-margin client can buy you expertise
When we focused on media buying, we needed a project where we could quickly learn to work with large budgets and real numbers.
We found such a client in the book industry and worked with them exclusively. It had everything entrepreneurs fear:
01The margin was low, while the level of work and responsibility was high.
02At the start we earned almost nothing but spent a lot of time.
But the project had what mattered more to us than margin at the time — volume and the chance to gain expertise in media buying.
In the end, we grew this project 30–50 times from where we started. After that, we could talk to new clients and show concrete results.
Sometimes a project isn't about quick profit. It's about building the competence, the team and the case study you can take further.
It's important not to romanticize low margins here. Working almost for free for the sake of prospects is a bad idea if there's no clear benefit. In our case, the bet was specific: a big budget, fast growth of expertise, and a proven result that would open up the next deals.
05 / Experiments
Competitors copy what they can see, not the speed of your experiments
After our launch, dozens of similar services appeared. We were copied all the time — sometimes literally.
And that's normal. When a working model appears on the market, it will be replicated.
The key thing to understand: people copy what's visible from the outside. The website, the mechanics, the offer, the product packaging. What's harder to copy is what happens inside — how quickly the team spots a mistake, fixes it, tests a new hypothesis and moves on.
Sometimes we had already realized that a scheme wasn't working well, fixed it and moved on. Meanwhile, competitors kept copying our old version for some time, because from the outside you couldn't see that we had already moved ahead.
We bought ads from major tech bloggers before that became a separate industry. We were among the first to build our own app and get it into the App Store. We tested new hypotheses while others repeated what was already on the surface.
What can't be copied quickly:
If a team constantly experiments, it understands faster what has stopped working and finds the next move sooner. If a team holds on to what has already worked, it will quickly be caught up.
06 / Markets
Enter new countries through your clients' needs
We didn't build an international sales department or open offices in London or New York. It all happened through specific client needs.
When algorithms in Russia stopped delivering the results we needed, we started looking for other ways to promote apps. First we worked with the US store, then with other countries. It was the solution to a specific problem: the old mechanics no longer worked, so we had to find places where they still could.
In the international market, it quickly becomes clear who really delivers results. A client can split the budget between several agencies and keep the one showing the best numbers.
In the end, WakeApp worked in dozens of markets. At its core was simple working logic: there's a task, there are constraints, and there's a market where you can get results.
In other words, we didn't enter other countries because we decided to become international. We simply went where we could solve the client's problem better.
07 / The next role
From agency to accelerator for product teams
Alongside the agency, we launched product ventures: a network of subscription mobile apps and a game studio. This was my first experience in a different role.
Not just bringing traffic to a client, but thinking together with the team about how the product grows, where its economics are, how monetization changes, which markets are worth testing, and which decisions will help it scale.
The classic agency model — "get a client, bring traffic, earn a commission" — stopped being the most interesting one for me. It makes money, but it doesn't always give you influence over the product, strategy, economics and business growth.
Today there are far more apps. The barrier to entry into development is lower, competition is higher, and everyone uses roughly the same ad channels. The winner is the one with the stronger product, the clearer economics and the faster team.
That's why I'm more interested in working with teams that already have a strong technological foundation and clear value for users. We can strengthen them with marketing, scaling experience and a view of the market — and build a business together, rather than just buying installs.
Seven principles
01Test ideas fast instead of waiting for guarantees.
02Team first, product second.
03Don't cling to a model that has become outdated.
04A big low-margin client can buy you expertise.
05Competitors copy what they can see, not the speed of your experiments.
06Enter new countries through your clients' needs.
07From agency to accelerator for product teams.