Writing

Twenty-two posts I would still stand behind, kept here so they do not live only inside someone else's network. The English ones are published as written. The rest were written in Russian and translated.

Closing Empy.ai Four years in six numbered steps, with the money named. August 6, 2026
Working hard, and hiding On mistaking survival for building, and what happens when "then" never comes. May 17, 2026
Thirty people and their first agent A laptop, a five-euro server and three hours in Yerevan. May 14, 2026
Three languages, three versions of me Armenian, Russian, English, and where I am actually myself. March 27, 2026
The AI coach that catches my patterns before they spread Five questions every evening, three minutes of audio, one concrete action for tomorrow. February 25, 2026 · translated from Russian
The perfect deck that raised nothing Weeks on slides, a paid designer, and the thing investors were really buying. February 13, 2026
I learned to live in a way that avoids doing things directly I thought my problem was discipline. It is older and stranger than that. December 24, 2025 · translated from Russian
Why I spent four years building a dream instead of a product Mission-driven is not problem-driven. A mission lives in the future. A problem lives now. December 18, 2025 · translated from Russian
Five investor red flags I missed What a slow maybe, nonsense diligence and free consulting actually cost me. December 17, 2025
What Draper actually taught me I arrived thinking I was further along than everyone. I was not. December 4, 2025
Pushy and fast is the best combination there is Two users installed it. It broke twice in front of investors. Here is what I did next. August 29, 2025 · translated from Russian
Pitching Empy with Empy We migrated the backend, stabilised the app, and I used the product on the investor call about the product. August 27, 2025 · translated from Russian
Fourteen wrong co-founders Why great developers kept being the wrong partner, and what I looked for next. August 15, 2025
Founder loneliness is its own species Skin in the game decides it. Everything else is people nodding from a safe distance. May 24, 2025 · translated from Russian
Why 99% of accelerators outside the US waste your time They do not invest. They administrate. May 1, 2025 · translated from Russian
Empy is not about focus It came out of the feeling that you are in the conversation and not there at all. May 1, 2025 · translated from Russian
Three years of an early stage founder, in numbers Twelve attempts, eleven co-founders, 200 pitches, and what I concluded from it. April 30, 2025 · translated from Russian
I left for support and ended up in a garage November 2024 to April 2025. New York, Vipassana, a concrete floor in Los Angeles, and the way back. April 24, 2025 · translated from Russian
I had the money and could not take a step February 2024. $100,000 in the bank, a model, feedback, a team. And nothing. April 23, 2025 · translated from Russian
Zero money, zero sales, zero product January to autumn 2023. I did not know how to build. I knew how to burn. April 22, 2025 · translated from Russian
We sold air and called it the future Autumn 2022. The model worked. There was no product. April 21, 2025 · translated from Russian
How it started July 2022, a retreat in Armenia, and the man who could not be in contact. April 20, 2025 · translated from Russian