From exit to collapse: the story of a real partnership
No Bullsh!t, February 21, 2025, 54 min, 532 views. The guest is Sasha Solovyov, entrepreneur and marketing specialist, who describes his path from employed media buyer to co-founder of an education business and takes apart a partnership that moved from a manager and subordinate relationship, through a three-way family system, to an equal and brotherly union.
| Published | |
|---|---|
| Length | 54 min |
| Views on YouTube | 532 |
| 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
The key milestones: a hard agency business at the start of his career, launching a marketing school, selling the company to a large player at the end of 2021, then launching an education project for South East Asian markets, its rapid growth to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and its subsequent collapse when the instalment finance partners withdrew. Sasha speaks openly about six months of chronic stress, therapy and what it cost him.
Key ideas
- A business partnership goes through stages resembling a romantic relationship: manager and subordinate, family system, equal union, and it needs constant maintenance.
- A healthy split of roles is built on each partner's zone of genius rather than on pulling up their weak skills: forcing a partner to do what they are bad at destroys the partnership.
- The collapse caused by the withdrawal of instalment finance partners showed how critical dependence on external infrastructure is, and the price of hesitating.
- Ways to survive a long crisis: strength training to clear cortisol, regular therapy including couples and family therapy, and a circle of entrepreneurs who have been through the same.
- Passive aggression is named the most destructive state for a partnership, while saying hard things directly, even bluntly, with the support of a therapist, keeps it alive.
- Selling a company to a large player is not signing papers and receiving money: it means hard targets on deadlines and revenue and a difficult team integration.
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