At 24, Maxim Dreval became the youngest billionaire in the world. Now the Russian entrepreneur is 28 years old. He dropped out of two universities, worked at Yandex and Mile, launched his online school, is a co-owner of Netologiya-groups, and is launching a new large-scale project on training e-sportsmen, which attracted $ 2 million in investment over three years and 1.8 million users. How did he come to such success and what is the uniqueness of his startup?
First job
Maxim was born in Kemerovo, graduated from school in Tula and moved to Moscow for admission to Moscow State University. Due to the fact that Maxim won prizes at the Olympiads twice, he was enrolled in the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics without exams, but dropped out after two years, as he was disappointed in the education system. I decided to transfer to the Faculty of Business Informatics at the Higher School of Economics, but never completed my studies.
Maxim's entrepreneurial vein appeared in the 10th grade - he organized a computer repair business. As soon as he moved to Moscow, he immediately got a job in the Digital department of the largest company and began to develop his skills. Then he was invited to work at Yandex, and then there was a choice between work and study.
The acquaintance that led to millions
Maxim got real projects after meeting in 2010 with Alexei Polovinkin, a teacher of mathematical analysis at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, who had been developing a project to teach schoolchildren through lectures in physics and mathematics online for six months now. The service had many problems. For example, the sound lagged behind the video, so the students did not linger. Here Maxim Dreval played his role, who took up the technical part and brought the service to mind. At the same time, the young businessman moved from Yandex to Mile. However, the project required too much time and effort to reach a high level, which required leaving the work in a well-known company.
Large-scale association
Maxim and Aleksey rented an office, hired IT staff and teachers. Over the year, they jointly made the real training platform out of the free webinar service, the range of courses has expanded. In 2013, the revenue of the 100EGE online school amounted to 35 million rubles, after which the guys teamed up with Netologia. So there was Netogiya-groups. A few months later, the project received two rounds of investment totaling $ 3 million.
Maxim Dreval wanted to scale the business through a more aggressive confrontation with competitors, but the partners did not agree with him. In 2017, he left Netologiya Group, retaining his place on the board of directors and a block of shares.
Unique startup
Further, the young businessman began to study e-sports, as he realized that this direction has a huge audience and minimal competition, although he was not a gamer and never participated in video game tournaments. The wood was helped by the experience of creating an online school and the knowledge of marketing, which he used earlier to attract students.
He began actively looking for partners to create a service for players and soon launched the first L2P product - a training platform for gamers MoreMMR. Later, in 2018, the first investors joined the project. By the end of the year, investments worth more than $ 2 million were invested, which made it possible to scale the platform. Currently, more than 2500 video tutorials are available for users with a total duration of over 400 hours.Various tournaments with a prize pool of $ 20,000 are also held on the platform. Using the implementation of the artificial intelligence algorithm, the game of each user is analyzed and recommendations are given.
In the near future it is planned to expand the platform by adding new games. Negotiations are underway with investors whose names Dreval so far refuses to voice. However, the entrepreneur said he plans to close the round for $ 4 million.
To questions about how the young businessman managed to achieve such success in such a short time, Maxim replies that his path is not at all easy and far from short. He just immediately set priorities and did not spend years on achieving goals for show. As you can see, the young billionaire made the right choice, abandoning his studies in favor of the development and implementation of his projects. The most important resource is time.