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I’m closely following a Russian coach in Germany with a successful Telegram channel. She’s smart, coaches Russian women (in Russia and abroad) on soft skills for Europe – emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, boundary-setting, the usual. Her content comes from respected English sources, but it’s all delivered in Russian. LinkedIn shows 100 connections, so basically no…

I hardly speak with my mom, forget about my dad.  I’m writing this because unhelpful relationships with parents don’t pause while you’re building your own independent revenue. And I’m realizing that the mental space I need to figure this out is the same mental space my mom demands – and I can’t have both. My…

I’m going to be quite frank about what’s going on in my professional life right now. I’m almost halfway through my runway, before I’ll start “Bleeding cash” meaning touching my well earned strategic savings. In Germany, there is ALG 1 – a social benefit that pays you 9-12 months of 60% of your previous salary.…

I grew up monolingual, only with Russian. When I was 14, I started learning English When I was 20, I seriously started learning German But it all really started falling together when I moved to Berlin when I was 20 y.o.. By the time I was 25,I was speaking English and German, on a very…

I moved to Berlin from Novosibirsk in 2010.  Nobody is telling you this when you move to the western bubble – what emotional intelligence means in those countries. How you will most likely not get promoted if you don’t show signs of high emotional intelligence. How networking is key. How being in harmony with your…

I saw this “keep everything private” advice and had to disagree with almost all of it (except 6 – never share others’ secrets). While we’re all posting advice about protecting our “privacy,” we’re feeding our entire lives to big tech companies. We’re having deep conversations with ChatGPT instead of real people. We’re lonelier than ever.…

I’ve been noticing something in founder culture that bothers me – this obsession with grinding through everything. Work weekends. Just grit your way through. And I get it. When it’s yours, it’s easier to keep working through holidays. The urgency is real. You’re behind, you don’t have a co-founder yet, you’re not full-time. So you…

The article “The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful” by Arnon Shimoni’ is brilliant.  His core point: In 2024: A credible-looking cold email cost real money and human labor → you could trust most of them. Pattern recognition worked ~80% of the time. In 2025: It costs ~0€ → you can trust none of…

As a Russian-born founder, here’s what I learned about where (and how) I can actually build… Professionalism Takes Different Forms 🇩🇪 Berlin incubator: program was scheduled months in advance , smooth digital application, structured program you can plan your work around. German efficiency at its best. 🇪🇸 Málaga incubator ran on WhatsApp voice notes, application…