Hey there, thanks for visiting The Path Forward.
You're probably here to learn more about me or one of the businesses that I've started, grown, and sold.
Thank you in advance for taking the time to learn about me.
I want to share more about my background and the experiences and challenges that have defined my life and my point of view up until now. I also want share more about myself, what I stand for and what I'm interested in.
Who I am today is the product of what I think is a unique upbringing. I was the first in my family to be born in the United States. My parents are immigrants - they came from St Petersburg, Russia as refugees in the late 70s. I was born in Brooklyn, and lived in Brooklyn, way before it was a cool place to live in, or to be.
My parents are entrepreneurs. They're both self-employed doctors, and they came to the United States, after having received their medical degrees in the Soviet Union. And when they came to the United States, they had to retake all of their exams, they had to learn a new language, they had to do their residencies again. They did it, and they became successful doctors. So they're a great point of inspiration and motivation for me.
I went to public school in New York City, up until ninth grade, and then one day I woke up and learned I was going to military school. Most people don't look at me and say hey, that's the persona that I imagined when I think of someone who goes to military school. So that's something that's non obvious about me. It was a tough and challenging experience but it was one of the most formative experiences of my life. And I'll be sharing more about that later.
From a young age, because my parents were entrepreneurs, I was inspired by entrepreneurship and building companies, and I've been doing that, since my early 20s with a few breaks in between to focus on things that are of interest to me. Before starting my first company, I worked for the side of a family office that specialized in the types of opportunities that didn't fit in elsewhere. Real examples: Buying Major League Baseball teams, financing airlines in the Democratic Republic of The Congo, and lending against the assets of various diamond mines in South Africa. The first company that I built was a company called eponym.
eponym was a venture backed company that was later sold to one of the country's largest contact lens retailers. I had the pleasure of working with some of the brightest and motivated folks I've ever met. I'm lucky to call many of them friends today.
I also had the opportunity to learn from some great entrepreneurs who invested in me (and the company) and gave me a chance, to name a few: Alexis Ohanian (776/Reddit), Sam Altman (former President of YCombinator and CEO of OpenAI) and Garry Tan (Managing Partner at Initialized Capital) just to name a few.
Starting a company and managing it when I was 24 years old did not come without its challenges - namely working with other people. I wish the learning curve hadn’t been so steep for me and I want to prevent others from making the same mistakes that I made.
I'm now working on Highrise. With Highrise I'm hoping to solve a problem that I personally experienced. I'm hoping to help others accelerate their careers by having the tools and resources necessary to deal with challenges in their workplace/careers.
Highrise makes that possible through a combination of group leadership development with other like minded peers, 1:1 coaching with top coaches who are also experienced operations, and highly relevant workshops/content.
I'm looking forward to sharing more about me and Highrise as I embark on this journey. I'm also looking forward to hearing from you and doing anything I can do to help.
Andrew