How I lost $5M and almost lost myself | Dasha Kroshkina
No Bullsh!t, February 18, 2026, 86 min, 303 views. Dasha Kroshkina, a serial startup founder on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, talks about the collapse of her first startup, a study-abroad platform with around 3 million dollars of annual revenue and a team of 150.
| Published | |
|---|---|
| Length | 86 min |
| Views on YouTube | 303 |
| Language of the episode | Russian |
| Where to watch and listen | YouTube, Spotify, Telegram |
Date, length and view count according to data from the episode page on YouTube, as of the page update date shown in the footer.
In short
After February 2022, sanctions and blocks tied to the founder's Russian passport cost the company 80 percent of its revenue in a week, 120 of the 150 people had to be let go, and an attempted sale of the business was derailed by blackmail from former employees, a leak to the press, clinical depression and a diagnosis of complex PTSD. Dasha speaks about personal debt, antidepressants, EMDR therapy, the physiological consequences of chronic stress, and the difference in how entrepreneurial failure is treated in the United States and in the post-Soviet world. In the second half she describes her current project, an accelerator for immigrant founders raising money in the United States.
Key ideas
- A founder's financial safety matters more than heroism: never stop paying yourself a salary, even a reduced one, because the entrepreneur already carries the highest risk in the business.
- In the United States a founder's liability is limited legally and culturally, while in the post-Soviet world there is a strong pattern of the entrepreneur personally covering the company's debts to the team out of their own pocket.
- Admitting your own limits and refusing to take responsibility for everything and everyone is a marker of emotional maturity; trying to carry the whole business and the whole team alone ends in burnout.
- Chronic stress and insecurity physically change how the body works, in the guest's case hormonal failure and the loss of ovulation for a year and a half, and they directly lower the quality of business decisions.
- Shame and guilt are the most toxic emotions for a founder; the antidote is the courage to speak openly about trouble and to get support in return rather than judgement.
- Long-term relationships built on giving first compound like interest in social capital, while a transactional approach from the first message is a red flag for investors and partners.
The full transcript
The episode is recorded in Russian, and the full transcript of the conversation is on the Russian page of this episode. English and Spanish subtitles for the strongest episodes are rolling out on YouTube in waves.
Open the transcript