Operator & builder · Prague
I build businesses — and the systems they run on.
A decade in finance, marketing and operations — most of it in real estate and financial services, now in proptech. My method hasn't changed since the first job: understand how a process actually runs, find where it loses time or clarity, then rebuild it. Increasingly, that means building the software myself.
What I bring
Three layers, one method.
Most careers specialise. Mine accumulated — each move added a layer of the business I could see, and eventually fix.
I learned to read a business through its numbers
Investment planning and control at an industrial group, audit at KPMG, a master's in corporate finance. Capital discipline came first, and it still decides how I judge a deal.
Then how to grow one
Four years at a Prague investment and real-estate group — marketing first, then whole projects and market directions. A 15-person department, a client base doubled in 18 months, +45% customer retention, new markets opened across the CIS.
Now I run the operation and build its tools
General management of a serviced-apartment operation in Prague, inside a company whose whole thesis is tech-enabled real estate. And, on my own initiative, the systems that speed up the daily work.
Where I operate today
Blueground Prague
The current chapter: running the Prague operation of Blueground — a global proptech company with a fully digitized platform for furnished, flexible living. Sourcing and evaluating apartments, landlord relationships, launches, occupancy and pricing, finance and the local team, aligned with global standards.
The portfolio keeps growing by five to ten apartments a month, and six departments report into the role — real estate, marketing and sales, operations, client experience and quality, accounting and finance, and legal. In this seat you watch everything at once, which is exactly the vantage point that shows you where a process breaks. That's where every system below started.
Systems I built
Built on my own initiative.
None of these were assigned to me. Each started the same way: a process in my daily work cost more time than it should, and no tool fixed it. So I defined the problem, designed the logic and the data model, built it, and put it into use. They speed up the team's daily work and give me the numbers management decisions rest on — pick one and ask it a question, or walk it through from problem to result.
How I work
I don't reorganise a process
before I understand it.
My approach hasn't changed since my first finance role. I go in and watch how the work actually happens — not how it's supposed to happen. Then I document it, together with the people doing it, because they know where it hurts. We look at what's strong and what's broken. Only then does anything change, and only then does it get automated: a process nobody understood doesn't get better by running faster.
I don't hand down instructions and walk away. And when something falls outside what I know, I go and learn it — which is how the systems on this site came to exist.
I use AI because it serves the thing I've always done — finding a better way to run something. It compresses the distance between spotting a problem and having a working fix. I also don't think it's optional anymore: in a couple of years, a manager who can't work with these tools will simply be a weaker manager.
Professional history
The track that led here
Finance and investment, then product, marketing and market development — and now general management. Expand a role for responsibilities and results.
- Develop and run the Blueground operation in Prague
- Source and evaluate apartments; negotiate and maintain landlord relationships
- Launch units and manage the portfolio against home-comfort standards
- Own occupancy, pricing and the local P&L
- Own client relationships and the housing experience end to end
- Lead the local team and align operations with global standards
- Selected consulting in marketing, project management and business development, delivered with a small team
- Built five internal systems on my own initiative — see the console above
- Grew the portfolio past 120 apartments, still adding 5–10 a month
- Held 95% average occupancy across the year
- Built the local team from scratch — 15+ in-house plus around 15 contractors
- Lead a Prague-based flexible-rental service as chief executive
- Responsible for strategy, operations and growth
- Analysed and developed target markets across CIS countries
- Managed B2B and B2C sales, supervising representative offices
- Planned and ran development and marketing strategy
- Built and automated the sales and marketing chain end to end
- Represented the company in partner negotiations and at conferences
- Built the marketing department structure from the ground up
- Owned advertising and sales strategy and the marketing budget
- Coordinated marketing with financial and branding goals
- Built PR and media strategy to grow brand and market share
- Led a 15-person department covering acquisition, retention, branding, communications, B2B and sales support
- PR programme that doubled the client base in under 18 months
- Increased customer retention by 45% and reactivated dormant customers
- Built the sales funnel from lead generation to revenue and automated it via CRM
- Ran newsletters and direct mail to 3,500+ contacts
- Executed international investor road shows
- Built partnerships that added revenue
- Market and consumer research; rebranded and repackaged services
- Evaluated market potential for new financial services
- Defined product strategy and roadmap
- Developed core positioning and messaging
- Set pricing strategy — P&L and unit economics (ROMI, CAC, LTV)
- Planned budgets against business plans and revenue forecasts
- Led customer engagement teams; liaised with vendors, analysts and clients
- My first full product ownership — where the builder's instinct started
- Audit engagements and financial analysis
- Built the discipline of evidence over assumption
- Organised planning and review of investment projects
- Controlled project implementation and operational compliance with the investment budget
- Prepared and presented implementation reports to management
- Prepared and implemented an investment-project optimisation programme in collaboration with McKinsey & Company
- Capital discipline that still shapes how I judge a deal
Education
Finance, from first principles
Certificates & courses
Always relearning
A running log of what I've studied — filter by area. The list keeps growing.
About
Finance first, then business, then building.
I was born and raised in Perm, a small city in Russia, where I spent my childhood on books, maths and sport. I studied finance and investment at university, then moved to Prague for a master's in business management and corporate finance — which is where the direction became clear: investment marketing, the point where finance meets growth.
After graduating with honours I worked across Russia and the Czech Republic — first in finance and audit, then building marketing and running projects in real estate and investment. What stayed with me from those years is a habit of looking at a business from two sides at once: how it earns, and how it actually works inside.
What ties it together is temperament more than career planning. I like taking something that works badly and making it work well — a marketing funnel, a monthly close, a lease decision, the running costs of my own car. The domain keeps changing; the instinct doesn't. New technology interests me for the same reason: it keeps widening what one person can actually fix.
Notes
Notes on building
Occasional writing on operating a business and building the systems inside it.
Contact
If you're building something that needs both an operator and a builder — let's talk.
Open to conversations about business operations, internal systems, product work and real estate in Prague and beyond.