CO-FOUNDER OF SOFTMEDIALAB AND BUSINESS TRACKER ALEXANDER KARABASOV: "INSTEAD OF LIVING ONE ENTREPRENEURIAL LIFE, I LIVE TEN"

Instead of a Foreword:
Alexander Karabasov started programming at the age of six—his cousin taught him BASIC. He worked professionally in the field for five years. After gaining experience in several major companies, he founded his own—SoftMediaLab. Today, alongside growing his company, he is also involved in tracking.
Alexander first encountered tracking while working for a company—when he was helping SKB Kontur expand into the U.S. and later while launching an internal accelerator. “For about two years, I watched how these guys worked, what they did. Gradually, I started assisting them, then got interested, then started selling consulting. And I found that I enjoyed it. Over two to three years, I got more and more immersed in it.”

We recorded this podcast episode over two years ago, and since then, much has changed at SoftMediaLab. In this article, we've kept the original podcast transcript and added Alexander’s comments on the current state of affairs.

Who is a tracker, and what are their responsibilities? Is a tracker basically a mentor?

A tracker is a mix of a mentor, corporate psychologist, coach, and, in some ways, an expert.

Initially, the goal was simple: in the venture industry, where startups are abundant and capital needs to be invested wisely, only 1 out of 10 companies typically survives. How do you identify that one? You take ten startups and push them to their limits—until they almost break, facing psychological breakdowns, depression, and exhaustion. The one that survives such extreme conditions is the one worth investing in.

Trackers emerged as the people who know how to accelerate businesses in a way that reveals whether a team is resilient enough to succeed. In Russia, this approach has been evolving since around 2011. A sort of a "cookbook" of solutions was developed—what to do in specific situations. Over time, tracking turned into a methodology and even a profession. Some brought in solution selling, others sales strategies, unit economics, coaching techniques, and more. The field formalized into a structured methodology.

For example, my case was:

• Expanding SKB Kontur into the U.S.—I had no idea how to do it.
• A business making 70 million in revenue that couldn’t delegate sales from the founders.
• A 600-million business needing to transform unit heads into mini-CEOs to scale to several billion.

Every business faces similar issues. Tracking, by exposing businesses to various case studies and trial-and-error solutions, offers paths to overcome these hurdles.

How deeply does a tracker get involved in a business? How much time do they typically dedicate to a client each week?

Usually about two hours per week.

Just one-off calls?

Yes, once a week. But they dive in pretty deep. It’s also crucial that the tracker has experience in that specific business field. For instance, since I run an outsourcing company, out of the 30 companies I work with in a year, 10 are always outsourcing firms, 10 are advertising agencies, and 10 are product-based IT companies. I understand these industries, so I can immerse myself quickly. If a B2C company approached me, it would be harder, even though the general approaches and tools might be similar.

Why help other companies grow instead of focusing on your own?

I gain experience. Instead of living one entrepreneurial life with one company, I essentially live ten. There’s always something to learn. For example, I once picked up a lead scoring system from someone. From another company, I learned that you can build a partner network to retain leads that don’t convert immediately. Some things we do well, but other businesses might do even better—and I can incorporate those insights into my own work. Some of the businesses I track are much larger than mine, with billion-dollar revenues. I teach them something, and they teach me something.

What do your clients get if you’re also learning from them?

A consultant is essentially a seller of hacks. I share hacks I’ve learned from others and add new ones to my own toolkit.

Clients receive:

1. Expertise—in sales, marketing, product development, and management. Not just mine, but also from my network of experts in HR, Upwork strategies, international expansion, and even overcoming mental barriers.
2. A competitive edge—the tracking methodology itself, which helps companies grow faster and continue using the framework in their work.
3. Ready-to-use processes—templates, frameworks, and systems they can immediately apply.
4. Extended founder capacity—objective feedback on their employees, processes, and overall strategy.

What’s your motivation? Do you just charge an hourly fee?

Yes. Tracking typically costs between 100,000 and 300,000 RUB per month. For a small company (under 100 million revenue), the price is lower—about 100,000 RUB. For a billion-dollar company, it could be 300,000 RUB or more. Some trackers also work on a performance-based model: “I’ll find a growth opportunity in your business, and if it leads to additional profit, I’ll take a percentage.” This can be more lucrative than a fixed fee. Some trackers only work this way because it’s more profitable.

Have you tried performance-based tracking?

I haven’t personally, but I’ve seen companies grow from hundreds of millions to billions. Others didn’t grow at all. At the start, it’s hard to predict how things will unfold. There’s a saying: "Nothing is impossible—if you’re not the one doing it yourself." (laughs)

A tracker gives advice, but execution still falls on the CEO and team. And despite claims that everyone wants to grow, other motivations can be stronger—like just doing what they enjoy rather than focusing on scaling.

In theory, many people can talk about how things should be done, but actually making it happen requires a lot of effort…

It's impossible to sell any kind of tracking, consulting, or exponential growth strategy if you can't do it yourself. I say, "scale a business by 2x or 3x" because I’ve done it in my own company—I have that experience. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to sell this idea. You can’t just show up and tell people how to do something if you’ve never done it yourself.

That seems like a fairly obvious statement. But in the tracking industry, do all trackers have experience growing their own businesses?

Not all of them. Still, even just knowing the methodology can sometimes help. If a company has never formally focused on "growth" as a separate area of work, then even a tracker without personal experience can have a positive impact by introducing concepts like unit economics, hypothesis testing, and value propositions.

If you’re a total junior and just need to get familiar with a topic or methodology, you can attend a conference or training session, and it will help. But if you want to become a master, you need a mentor. I think the same principle applies here. If a company has never worked on growth before, they can start with a junior tracker, work with them for three months to grasp the methodology. Because if you go straight to an expert, it will be too hard to even understand what’s going on—you’ll just be trying to grasp the terminology, the framework, and all the core concepts.

What percentage of trackers have business experience?

There are about 3,000 Russian-speaking trackers today. 50% have experience running at least a small business. 10-20% have experience running a business with 100+ million RUB in revenue.

There is a huge demand for trackers from accelerators. Every large company has its own accelerator. They don’t need a ton of trackers with extensive business experience. There are people launching their first startup ever, and for them, a tracker without business experience might be just fine. But then there are companies with $35 billion in revenue and 100 products, like SKB Kontur, and in that case, of course, you need significant experience to work with them.

Do corporations hire full-time trackers or use external ones?

Both. But external trackers tend to be more effective because they can give honest feedback without internal politics. If you’re an internal employee, you always have to consider the workplace karma—like whether the person you criticize today might become your boss tomorrow, so you need to consider company culture and future consequences. An external tracker has no such constraints. If someone disrupts a meeting, I can throw them out. If someone needs tough feedback, I can give it without hesitation. That’s the value of an outsider’s perspective.

How to become a tracker?

I think everyone has their own path. I learned solely through direct mentorship—from Alexey Kostarev, Artem Kharitonov, Oleg Zhumakhanov, and the creator of the methodology, Evgeny Kalinin. Basically, from those who were at the origins of tracking and had been doing it for ten years before me. There are several good tracker schools (for example, Evgeny Kalinin’s School) that I know of. There’s also a Sales Tracking School that teaches how to sell tracking services. And, in general, since these schools have existed for several years now, they offer quality training. So, as a first step to understanding what tracking is, I think attending a school is a good idea. But if you already have a business, you can find a tracker-mentor.

Right now, I have a client who, on the one hand, hired me as a tracker, but on the other hand, I’m also teaching him tracking in parallel. He realized that he wants to level up both his business and his mentoring skills. So, while I’m tracking him, I also explain what I’m doing, how, and why, so that he can learn from it.

Should you choose an experienced tracker or a mentor with similar experience?

Let’s say I have a company with 100 employees, and I find a company with 500 employees and say, “Dear CEO, please mentor me.” That CEO might have taken a completely different path. The strategies that worked for him may not work for me at all. I’ve experienced this firsthand. I’ve advised people, “It’s simple—build a partnership network, delegate sales,” but it didn’t work for them. Even though I know it works. Then I realized that it works for me, but their company’s strengths lie elsewhere. They don’t need my path—they need their own.

That’s point number one: There’s no guarantee that their approach or experience will be relevant to you. The second point is that being a great entrepreneur and being a great mentor are two different things. It’s often difficult for me to set aside my own experience and say, “Okay, that’s just my experience—I shouldn’t impose it on others.” People have their own strengths and perspectives. They are entitled to think differently, and a different approach may suit them better. You need to help them find a solution from scratch—one they believe in and can implement. That said, if you want growth, you should use all available tools: mentoring, consulting for specific expertise, tracking, coaching, and even psychotherapy.

How many clients do you have right now?

At the moment, not too many—five or six clients at a time, two of whom are large companies with fifteen sub-teams. I spend about 10–20 hours per week on tracking.

Doesn’t that take a lot of time away from your own company?

It does, but that’s how I’ve been operating for years. The past two years, I’ve spent 30% of my time on tracking and 70% on my own business.

*At some point—when we grew beyond 50 employees—I realized that my influence was decreasing. We have a CCO, CTO—they have a much greater impact than I do. Spending ten extra hours on the company wouldn’t significantly change its trajectory.

Have you built processes so well that your company runs without you?

The key thing is that I’m not the CEO of my own business—I have a partner who serves as CEO. We also hired a COO. I learned from consulting that, at a certain stage, you need to pull the CEO out of day-to-day operations so they can focus on strategy. So, we have a COO, a CEO responsible for sales and strategy, and I serve as a development director. My role isn’t as critical.

Development director sounds like a big role. What are your responsibilities?

I’m responsible for the overall direction—where we are heading, where we want to be in three years. I focus on strategy, identifying market segments, and everything that contributes to growth. In essence, I’m already a tracker for my own business.

Comment from Alexander:

This year, my partner and I switched roles, and I became CEO. It happened during a crisis—market conditions changed, old products stopped working or became less profitable, and the company stopped growing, so we had to fix things. For example, digitalization in real estate development stalled. Industrial digitalization budgets were also cut. I’m now deeply involved in my business but still continue tracking. Because of this, I have to sacrifice a lot of personal time and work 50–60 hours a week. So far, I’m okay with that.

Do you currently have an external tracker?

Yes. We’re really hooked on tracking. An external perspective is valuable. Sometimes, when I look at my own business, it feels like a mess. But an outsider, with a fresh perspective, sees things more clearly and brings their own experience.

How do you measure their effectiveness?

We review it annually. We ask ourselves: “Well, we’ve grown from 70 to 200 people—before that, we weren’t growing. So, obviously, we should keep them.” This year, we didn’t grow 2x or 3x, but, for instance, our tracker introduced the idea of hiring a COO. That decision was a game-changer at the right moment.

My partner had been handling accounting and finance for seven years. Of course, we had people for these tasks, but he was still heavily involved in production and sales, and he was exhausted. Pulling him out of day-to-day operations, thanks to the tracker, was a fantastic decision. We used to joke, “Gera, how many seconds can you take off before things start falling apart?” Now, that problem no longer exists.

As a tracker, you have access to many product-based companies and a lot of product experience. Why do you still focus most of your energy on an outsourcing business?

I have a simple principle: We start a product business only when we have at least 500 million in revenue. That way, we can invest 10–20 million per year into a product without risking the company’s survival.

Can entrepreneurs find outsourcing itself fulfilling without switching to products?

Yes. I had a conversation with a tracker when I was starting out.

He asked me, “Why don’t you like outsourcing?”
I said, “The margins are low.”
“How low?”
“10-20-30%.”
“And why is that bad? If your margin is 20%, you earn a month’s worth of income in just five months. If your margin was 3%, that would be risky. But 20%? That’s a solid business—what’s wrong with it?”
“Well, it requires managing a lot of people.”
“And what’s your issue with people?”

That made me think—there’s margin, and the real challenge is just learning to manage a large team. I don’t want to shut down outsourcing, even if we launch a product.

Many outsourcing companies dream about launching their own products. They think, “We’ll make money, then develop our own products.” But often, they just burn cash and fail. However, there’s a great approach—growing an outsourcing business while delivering product expertise instead of just selling labor hours.

I think this is a great path: You gain product expertise by helping others develop their products in an outsourcing model. It’s a very logical progression. And I believe that those who try to launch their own product too soon miss some crucial steps and end up failing. It makes sense to build experience, work on 100–300 projects, gain deep expertise in product development, help others succeed multiple times, and then launch your own product. That way, your chances of success are much higher.

Back in 2022, I realized that outsourcing companies like ours have a much easier time adapting when the world goes to hell. It’s a huge advantage that your company can sustain itself in the long run when “black swans” cross your path. This positioning of outsourcing businesses may be somewhat underrated in terms of the stability it ultimately provides.

I definitely think it’s underrated. People often see product development as a way to solve outsourcing-related problems. If an outsourcing business struggles with margins, growth, or something else, the usual thinking is: “Let’s build a product, and everything will be great.” But in reality, it’s even harder because product development is a venture game with a much higher failure rate. A better approach is to first build a stable outsourcing business, generate revenue, and then reinvest some of that money into a product—leveraging the experience gained from working with clients and industries in outsourcing.

Who handles sales at SoftMediaLab—founders or salespeople? What’s the ratio?

At first, it was just my partner and me. Then we hired our first salesperson. Then we built a team, and eventually, that team took over about half the sales. Now, they handle 100% of it.

How long did that transition take?

Two years. I still don’t think we did it perfectly. We’re still running on a “special forces” model—elite salespeople who can find clients, close deals, and handle everything themselves.

How did you find them?

Mostly trial and error. We hired about 30 people, and only three remained. The funny thing is when we asked for feedback on the salespeople we fired, others would say, “They were amazing! We don’t know why you let them go.” And I’d think, “Maybe the problem is us?” But it was just a tough environment—everything had to be done independently, requiring exceptional skills.

We’re trying to set up a system where the CEO talks to the CEO, the CTO talks to the CTO, and the sales rep engages with product managers, project managers, and CFOs—so there’s alignment at all three levels. That makes deals close more smoothly.

Who initiates the first contact in this model?

It varies. Sometimes the CEO reaches out, but I’ve noticed that a bottom-up approach works better. The salesperson connects with someone, builds rapport, then introduces the CTO to the CTO, and finally, the CEOs meet. So far, I like this approach best.

Do your three top-performing salespeople have specific KPIs?

Yes. A salesperson pays off when they bring in at least 60 million RUB per year. With bonuses, they cost around 3 million per year, and if they generate 60 million in sales with a 20% margin, that’s 12 million in profit. You pay them 3 million, and they deliver a 4x return. That’s the bare minimum. Ideally, they should bring in 80–100 million. At 100 million, it really starts looking great.

Other than this “natural selection” process, have you found a way to consistently hire good salespeople?

Nope. Not yet.

So you’ll keep hiring and firing in large numbers?

It’s a tough process, but yes. We have test assignments, trial days, trial weeks, and trial months—and still, it’s impossible to fully assess someone at the start.

Let’s talk about your third big passion—yachting.

I first joined an IT Regatta in 2019 after seeing an online ad. I loved it immediately. First, because a yacht is a super high-tech machine with tons of controls, ropes, and buttons. Second, because I love outdoor adventures like hiking and rafting, and yachting has a similar vibe—a journey with a group of people.

I recently heard an idea that for business growth and personal development, it’s beneficial to form new neural connections and put yourself in situations you’ve never experienced before. It adds new experiences to your "neural network" and increases the chances of meeting someone new who can share valuable insights. Has this experience benefited your business?

I’ve met people I became friends and business partners with—like-minded individuals. Yachting is about teamwork and freedom.

Networking is key. Clients may come as a side effect, but the real value is the informal interaction with entrepreneurs. Where else in daily life can you just meet up for an hour or two? Let alone spend a whole week together? That almost never happens.

IN ANOTHER EPISODE OF OUR PODCAST FOR PROGRAMMERS, JETSTYLE FOUNDER ALEXEY KULAKOV DISCUSSED THE KEY RULES FOR EFFECTIVE NETWORKING. INCIDENTALLY, WE RECORDED THAT INTERVIEW DURING AN IT REGATTA.

Many successful people are into yachting. What’s the appeal?

I think it mirrors business in many ways—especially with unexpected situations. One moment, everything’s fine, and the next, your anchor is lost, or something breaks. Just like in business: things are smooth, then suddenly—boom—there’s a crisis. It’s also about team coordination—your success depends on how well the crew works together. And, of course, there’s the sense of freedom.

You can watch the full episode of the podcast with Alexander Karabasov on VK Video, RuTube, and Zen. The audio version is available on your preferred platform.