We are a consulting group of engineers…

Pavel Entin

President

Born in Moscow in 1976, by my teenage years I was living in the chaotic wild west of post-Soviet Russia, where everything old was dead, everything new was being created from scratch, and it was a goldmine for people with a bit of hustle. In 1989, within an exchange program for high school students between USSR and US, I went to New York and studied in Staten Island Technical High. It was a new era for me, an era of a strong belief that the old dark times are over and that all of the people in the world can be friends.

I studied in one of the top schools in the USSR, which became part of an IBM educational pilot. Thus, thanks to IBM I was fortunate to obtain access to the latest computer technologies and studied the Fortran computer language. My motivation was not to become a programmer, but rather I strongly believed that it was the only way to become an integral part of a new world that was being created by a wave of digital transformation.

As an undergrad, I studied economics at the Russian University of Cooperation, and while my professors still preached Soviet economics, I decided to dive into the practical side of the capitalism burgeoning all around me. I started working as a sophomore student, first as an economist, then as a tax consultant. Companies at the time were growing at a breakneck pace. During my senior year in the Forbes equivalent of Russia, I read about the under-30 oligarch Alexander Mineev, then almost a billionaire as the #1 importer of consumer electronics into Russia. I got an interview with him for a CFO role in one of his companies.

At the interview, Mineev asked me, pointing to the floor, “what would you say if I told you to get down on the floor and start scrubbing”?

Despite my great desire to work for him, I took grave offense at this, and said, “I have a degree in economics with honors. I am not scrubbing your #$&! floor!” and stormed out.

One of his associates ran after me. “Do you want the job?” he asked?

“Scrubbing floors, or being the CFO?”

“Being the CFO! Alexander was very impressed. No one ever swore at him like that. He wanted to see if you were a pushover, and you passed the test.”

With Mineev, I went on to become CFO of his whole consumer electronics group. It gave me a wealth of experience and propelled my career forward. After 3 years with Mineev, I moved into a Senior VP position at Aquarius, one of the largest IT companies in Russia, assembling and selling Compaq and HP computers. In that capacity, I helped grow revenues from $10M to $600M in 3 years.

I went on to earn my Ph.D. in International Economics at the Russian University of Cooperation and while continuing on with my corporate career. After the Ph.D., I became the CFO of a $5B Russian state monopoly for spirits production, RosSpirtProm, managing the finances of over 200 factories. I was also in charge of auditing the companies and rooting out the self-dealing and other corruption.

Meanwhile, I wanted to get a US MBA. At that time, Cal State Hayward (now Cal State East Bay) had the only US MBA extension program in Russia. Cal State was no Harvard, but as the only American business school in town, it was where all the action was, with major international business leaders speaking and recruiting at our campus.

Through that program, I became acquainted with the multibillionaire Sergey Solonin, founder of QIWI, the Russian equivalent of PayPal. Together, we created an Investment Banking group which became well-known in Russia for working extensively with the IT sector.

After the 2008 financial crisis, as Putin tightened his hold on power and the economy, I felt that I had to get out of Russia. I moved to Switzerland, and founded a multi-million asset management company and private equity fund called Lakeshore International Management, helping institutions from around the world to invest in various assets; the fund grew to $100 million under management. Subsequently, I moved to China to head one of first Chinese fintech companies called E-Pay. This company, along with other investments I was coordinating in Asia, brought me years of experience in how to build successful technology ventures from scratch.

Notwithstanding Russia’s enormous oil and gas reserves, I believe the country’s best “raw material” has always been (and always will be) the people, who have received some of the finest advanced mathematics and science training in the world. (Unless you live under a rock, you have probably heard about Russian hackers…ha haha…) I’ve decided to dedicate my career to helping these young hotshots, people who are just like me back in the day.

That’s exactly what we are doing at BrainyS, based in Australia, where we allow ambitious companies to access some of the finest AI talent in the world remotely (at labor rates they could never find at home). I am positive that the era of AI does not devalue the power of the human brain, as some doomsayers would like us to believe. On the contrary, the role of educated and gifted individuals today becomes ever more important and value-creating than ever before.