Maxim Nogotkov is a 45-year-old serial entrepreneur based in Miami. He was awarded the National Winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year 2010 contest in Russia by Ernst & Young, and was named #13 in the global list of young billionaires (below 35 years old) by Forbes in 2012.
Maxim began his career by selling computer programs and personal electronics while still in school. He later dropped out of college, where he studied software engineering, to focus on building his retail business. He received an MBA in Marketing in 1999.
Nogotkov has created from the ground up the largest mobile retail network in the country, “Svyaznoy”, boasting over 3,300 owned shops. The company controlled about 25% of the Russian mobile retail market and had an estimated revenue ~4B$ and EBITDA of ~150M$ in 2014.
In addition to “Svyaznoy”, Maxim founded the online store “Enter” and owned a chain of over 200 jewelry shops under a franchise from Danish company Pandora. He also established Svyaznoy Bank, which had over 2 million customers by the end of 2012.
In 2011, Nogotkov launched the Nikola-Lenivets project, the largest land-art park in Europe, spanning 650 hectares of land and open for creative experimentation.
Maxim served as Chairman and majority shareholder in VisualDNA, a London-based data analytics company that leveraged psychographic data to improve credit decisions in retail banking. He also held the same positions in Vidmind, an Israeli OTT video software provider for telecommunications companies.
In his pursuit to promote participatory democracy Maxim Nogotkov founded Yopolis. It was backed by SCYTL, a leading global provider of electronic voting systems and election technology.
However, due to leverage and the Russian economy’s turmoil following the 2014-2015 Crimea crisis, Maxim lost control of his group of companies in 2015.
In July of that year, he relocated to the US to work in the venture industry. He is passionate about early-stage startups in the wellness and creator economy spaces, specifically, he founded Terra Ferra in 2021, a community-powered fashion platform that leverages a social marketplace for emerging fashion designers with an engaged community of superfans.
