INTERVIEW WITH ALEXEY KULAKOV, FOUNDER OF JETSTYLE: "I WANTED TO CHANGE A MARKET"

What companies have you launched, and what was their scale?

A long time ago, I helped ABAC-PRESS transition from print to digital and launched BLIZKO. My next big project was Rideró, where I worked as the Product Director for about six years.

I joined Rideró because of two main motivations. First, I wanted books’ success or failure to depend solely on the authors and their readers, without gatekeeping or external judgment. Second, I wanted the personal achievement of having changed a market.

How did Rideró change the market?

Ten years ago, the market was very different from today. Back then, if you were an emerging writer (not an established one like Pelevin), you only had two paths:

• A publisher might approach you, pay you royalties, and publish your book at their expense.

• You’d self-publish, funding everything yourself.

Both options were problematic. Publishers, particularly in Russia, were struggling, and average print runs were declining worldwide. For example, a young author today might consider 5,000 copies a success, but 20 years ago, that same “success” meant 30,000 copies. Each year, the odds of being discovered by a publisher shrink.

So Rideró enabled small print runs for young authors?

For all authors. Back then, there wasn’t an easy way to list your book for sale on platforms like Ozon, LitRes, or Amazon. That path simply didn’t exist. We paved this way for them. Rideró allowed independent authors to connect with readers, significantly changing the market. Since then, new publishing models have emerged. Now, other companies are involved in loft publishing, but Rideró undoubtedly shaped the industry. I’d say Rideró’s impact is, to a large extent, thanks to me.

What’s Rideró’s current scale?

We currently have 770,000 authors, roughly a third of all authors in the country. I believe we still have the largest author base in Russia. Our distribution network remains the most extensive, and we continue to grow steadily.

Tell us about JetStyle.

We’ve been around for 20 years and have a team of 100 people. We specialize in custom product development, design, and marketing. What sets us apart is our deep expertise in virtual and augmented reality.

We don’t like outsourcing (a.k.a. outstaffing) and have never tried it. JetStyle has a simple mission: we want to work on exciting projects with interesting people and support clients we respect for what they do. Outsourcing, on the other hand, is just a staffing solution. While those who do it are great, the added value is created on the client’s side in that model. The team leads, product managers, and innovators are all on the client side. But we prefer to innovate ourselves.

Agency work is more adaptive than product-based businesses. In an agency, you can work on cool new things just because it’s fun. With a product, it’s different. You need to find product-market fit, and once you do, the product runs like a machine. It becomes structured, and it’s hard to deviate from that structure. A product is creative at the start, but after that, it’s on rails, and you can’t easily innovate.

Agency work, on the other hand, lets you discover new things before they hit the market. It’s a way to have the “engineering joys” of being the first to solve a problem. Engineers love being able to say, “We were the first to do this!”

What’s another advantage of custom development? In custom development, you can build internal “schools” of expertise for each competency. That’s hard to do in outsourcing because, ultimately, the team leads are on the client’s side, which makes it less controllable. The best learning happens through doing, and custom development gives us full ownership of the process. That’s why it’s so fulfilling.

You once spoke about insights you gained while deeply researching sales in international markets. What were they?

Here’s the gist: if you want to sell in someone else’s "red market" (and custom development is “a red market”, as foreign markets are someone else’s territory), you have two options. The first is the same as in Russia—sales through networking. Everything I’m about to say doesn’t apply to networking because networking works fine, except that you can’t press the gas pedal—it’s slow and reactive.

I built a kind of pyramid for myself outlining the stages of readiness for active sales, based on differentiation and positioning.

Level 1: You have expertise in a particular technology—you write in Go, you work with virtual reality, you have great UX. But this level is insufficient for differentiation because plenty of other teams can say the same thing.

Level 2: You don’t just have expertise in a technology like augmented or virtual reality; you specialize in a specific industry. For example, in our case, it might be VR for the entertainment sector. This is fine for inbound leads but not enough for outbound sales.

Level 3: What I call the "narrow case." This means being able to say: We’ve done something for clients like you that solves the exact problem you’re currently facing. Here’s credible data on how it worked for them, and here’s a calculator showing how it could work for you.

For VR, we have something like this: amusement park rides, such as roller coasters. If you’ve ridden one in a shopping mall, it was probably a poor-quality version—cheap technology using 360° video, which can cause motion sickness because the camera’s position doesn’t align with your head movements. We’ve developed a technology—a roller coaster builder with accurate physics—that works with 6D chairs and doesn’t make you nauseous.

We also figured out how to quickly create landscapes. For example, in Amsterdam’s A’DAM Tower (similar to Yekaterinburg’s "Vysotsky Tower"), there’s an observation deck where visitors pay to see the city. They also have our ride, which simulates all of Amsterdam in VR. It increases the average ticket price and pays for itself very quickly.

So, if someone watching this owns a point of interest with good foot traffic and visitors willing to pay for entertainment, we can guarantee an increase in revenue. I can even pull up a calculator, input their traffic numbers, and show them exactly how much they’d earn. This is something you can sell actively because it’s backed by reliable data and proven cases. But without a demo, it’s still challenging—it’s a slow and expensive sales process.

Do you develop everything for these clients, or do you take a percentage of sales?

We don’t take a percentage. We’ve considered it, but this business heavily relies on securing prime locations. Think of those people who make money from inflatable trampolines near parks—their main skill is ensuring they don’t get kicked out of those spots. We’re engineers, and we want to do interesting things with interesting people. Building rides is exciting and cool. I’d argue we have the best rides on the planet.

Maybe I’m not the best businessman. JetStyle might benefit if I were greedier and focused more on profit. For instance, we could claim this business as our own, hire business developers in Europe, and start deploying these systems. It would be a peculiar business but with solid revenues, likely higher than JetStyle’s total today. But that’s not what I want to do, and that’s it.

Returning to the levels, the fourth stage is a product—a clear, replicable solution packaged with marketing and sales. This is something you sell regularly. It’s a software service designed for a specific target audience, solving a concrete problem, with clear evidence of its effectiveness. The most important thing is that the product has unique features—something you offer that others don’t. That creates a foundation for positioning.

Why do you think that the service model lacks positioning? Because for positioning to work, you need differentiation. You have to claim something like, We offer this valuable feature that aligns with your priorities, and others can’t. But in custom services, anyone in the niche can say the same thing. Nothing stops a competitor from claiming, "We can do this too," even if they’re learning on the job with the client’s money. That’s why, in my view, nobody in custom development truly has positioning.

Does this mean active sales aren’t possible at the first three levels?

Active sales aren’t viable at the first two levels. At the third level, it’s possible but feels like swimming upstream. For myself, I’ve concluded that if I want more sales in foreign markets, I either need to strengthen my network or develop products. That’s why I came to the IT Regatta—to invest in networking.

How can networking lead to sales?
I wouldn’t call myself a networking guru, but I’ve come up with a framework that I’m trying to apply now.

The first step is simple: talk to someone and make sure both of you enjoy the interaction. If the connection isn’t mutual, nothing else will matter. Second, form a hypothesis. As you talk, identify a shared context or a potential connection—and then develop it. Third, once you have a hypothesis about a potential business connection, figure out how you can provide value to the other person. Networking is all about providing value first.

The fourth step is consistent follow-up. This is where I often stumble, but it’s critical. You need to turn those initial connections into regular interactions and keep up with them. Often, conversations end with vague promises like, “Let’s do something together!”—but nothing actually happens. People forget because it was just casual small talk. The key is to ensure you never forget and always follow through.

Finally, don’t hesitate to ask: “Can you introduce me to other people in this space?” This step comes after you’ve already provided value.

Can only founders do this, or can it be delegated and others can be trained for it?

Anyone with enough substance and the ability to listen can do this. In my opinion, the core skills for networking are active listening, genuinely enjoying people, and following through on what you’ve said.

But there’s a flip side: as soon as active listeners show up at events, others often want to hire them. What can be done about this?

That’s unavoidable. Let’s look at the alternative: if you don’t let someone do what they’re good at and what they enjoy, you’ll lose them even faster than if you let them go and they get hired. In today’s world, you can’t keep people locked up in a jar.

Watch the podcast episode with Alexey Kulakov on the VK Video, RuTube, or Zen. The audio version is available on your favorite platform.