Recruit a CEO
Building a team at the start is really hard. I'm not talking about a venture-backed startup with a funding round and an office. I mean starting an ordinary business…
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Overcome fear
I wanted to start selling rooms right after buying the land, the way I always did before. But I was talked into waiting until there were at least renders😉 But when…
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Start talking
Right from the start I began thinking about marketing . Sales were still a long way off, but the market is new to me, and I decided: while there's time, I need to figure…
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Kill the project
I had a finished design project in hand. Nikita delivered it on time, I paid for it — two months of work and several tens of thousands of dollars. The project went in…
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What numbers to look at
❗️Do you know how much developers make? Everyone says "a 15-25% margin", but nobody understands what that means, because "margin" means something different to everyone…
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Get the project designed
Borya introduced me to Nikita. The same Borya through whom the deal with the Sri Lankan went - the one that fell apart Nikita was looking for an investor for a project…
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Trust
I pulled up the chat history for the land deal - 678 messages over 40 days, seven participants . I transferred 75% of the land price to the account of the bank that…
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Transfer the money
This challenge took about 2 months: two attempts involving in-person visits to Freedom in Almaty and Aktau, attempts to transfer dollars and yuan, talks with Turkey's…
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Register the company
Get Y – understand why Registering a company in Sri Lanka isn't a complicated process: the services cost $500 and it takes a couple of weeks. But since this is a…
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Find the land
Location, location, location At the very start, when I was messaging everyone and looking for any way into Sri Lanka, I came across the website lankaplanet.com , wrote…
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Find partners and investors
The first investor believes in the person; the rest believe in the numbers After spending a lot of time choosing a business model, I decided to build a development…
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Choose a business model
The story with Borya fell apart. Here's why: Chaminda (the landowner) unexpectedly started leaning towards not selling the hotel… No legal claims, no conflict. As I…
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Share the risks
Before you scale, test the model (Lean Startup) Testing didn't work out🙈 My first request to Artem was this: I want to bring about a hundred villas within a 10–20 km…
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Start
In any venture, the main thing is to start — to move from fantasies to action What I started doing : I began studying the websites and Telegram channels of developers…
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Choose a country
Why I settled on Sri Lanka When I was first choosing a country, I didn't do any special analysis, because the flow of Russian tourists — and therefore investors — isn't…
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Formulate the idea
How did I realise I wanted to get into income-generating resort real estate? Looking back, I realise this idea didn't just fall on my head one day — it ripened over…
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Hi! I'm Yuri Goldberg
More than 20 years in business — and I still manage to dive into new fields with burning eyes and minimal experience. Apparently that's a diagnosis by now. There's been…
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