Where I come from
In 2006, together with another Max, I built Otvety Mail.ru from scratch — the top Q&A service of the Russian-speaking internet. A hell of a project! Then came Moi Mir Mail.ru, the portal's social network — complex and ambitious. But it was fun :) That's when I first understood what truly fires me up: building systems where people create value for one another.
After that came twenty more years of products: two exits — to Hearst Shkulev and Yandex.Taxi — a TEDx stage, dozens of launches and just as many failures. Each of those failures taught me more than the wins did.
What drives me
Curiosity drives me. I follow it and find things that turn out to matter — and I tell others about them. If something matters to me, there's a good chance it'll matter to you too.
I can explain hard things in plain words — as long as I've figured them out myself. Sometimes concepts are born along the way: Shared Brain — a shared mind for a human and their agents; Compound Context — capital built from everything you've said and thought. I'm more a conduit for ideas than their author: they're bigger than me, I just give them a shape I can carry across.
What occupies me now
These days I'm focused on AI in everyday life and work. Vibe-coding and research — those crowds will manage without me. I'm about how AI changes the work of ordinary knowledge workers: managers, analysts, marketers, entrepreneurs. The people who create value at a computer and want to do it differently.