About Me — Heorhi Talochka
Thinker, Startup Founder, Foreigner, Humanity Zealot
“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Foreword
Hey you, an occasional reader, thanks for joining my story :)
It has been 22 years since I was born, and I will try to break down my life, that excites me so far.
Hop on that train with me if you want to know how a guy born in Grodno, Belarus ended up in Berlin writing this article. Hopefully, everyone will find something helpful or reassuring for him-/herself — I don’t want to make it 100% about me.
Early Childhood — Moscow, Russia
Even though I mentioned that I was born in Belarus, my dad met my mom in Moscow. Shortly after, I moved to Russia and went to kindergarten, and school (only for 2 grades tho) there.
My father was born in Georgia, a beautiful country. Mom was born and raised in Grodno, Belarus, which happens to be my birthplace as well :)
To be honest, I don't quite remember this part of my life. I suppose, I was too young to remember + there wasn't anything significant happening in my life — I was simply transforming from an animal to a human being.
New Beginning — Grodno, Belarus
When I was 8 my father died and we had to move back to Belarus. We found a new school, new friends, new community — a huge reset, especially for my mom. That was unbelievably hard, I mean, how can it not be hard?
Well, I was a kid back then so didn't quite understand all the depths of grief, my mother, however, did. We continued living our lives: I was consumed by new friends, activities, in short — a new country.
In order to understand what I wanna do in life, my mom was sending me to all possible kinds of activities outside of school, eg.: swimming, playing chess, pottery classes, learning English and Polish, aikido, karate, comedy, and tons of others.
And it was great! I didn't feel that I was missing out on something, conversely — I felt positively overwhelmed by the number of people I got to communicate with and the things to learn.
The school was also great, I was a pretty smart kid, so it wasn’t that big of an issue to do the homework and not be a “pain in the ass” for my teachers (not always). Around the age of 15/16, I and my mom decided that after school I should study in Poland.
A small note: Grodno is a small town (450.000 people) on the very west of Belarus making it extremely close to the Polish border. My grandparents and further ancestors were Polish, but when the Soviet Union and all the repressions, border changes, and resettlement happened, they found themselves living on the other side of the “Iron Curtain”.
Since my grandparents and mom were Polish, we had to make some additional documents to prove it, so it would be easier for me to apply to Polish universities.
Paradigm Shift — Wroclaw, Poland
In 2018 I earned a chance to study in Poland and received a national polish scholarship for “Poles abroad” so I could sustain myself. From that point in my life, I was basically thrown into deep waters and was taking care of myself completely on my own.
Man, what an experience it is for an 18-year-old guy to live in a foreign country, having to do everything (budget planning, earning, cooking, cleaning, studying, etc.) by himself. If you wanna call it a life-changing experience I would totally agree.
Ewoste
Around that time I realized that I want to do something with my life, and this something happened to be entrepreneurship. We started building a website called Ewoste (which stands for an excellent way of spending time ever) where you could book a local tour guide in your city.
It has to be unique guide tours — unpopular places and activities that only locals were aware of. We just created a website and hoped that someone is gonna sign up — so naive… After a couple of days, some random guy Italian signed up and shoot us a message that he would be glad to use our services — what an excitement it was for us!
Long story short he was the first and the last user on our website :)
We were playing around trying to build something for the first time in our lives and it was a ton of fun!
Csquad.ru
A couple of months later, my friend came up with an idea to create an online school for youngsters that wanted to improve their computer gaming skills and become e-sportsmen. We developed various plans for all kinds of needs: solo, duo, team play, etc. — it was serious this time!
We built a website, and got our first paying! users simply via social media ads. My co-founder was a Head of Couches meaning he gave actual lessons on game strategy, team play, shooting, etc. and I was responsible for the rest: client acquisition, ads, and management.
After 2 months, it was generating around 300$ monthly so we hired additional couches to keep up with the demand (we didn't have that many clients, but they kept coming back). A couple of months later we stopped since my co-founder found a stable job and I had to study for my exams.
Even though the scale was small, it was my first real experience of building something people would pay for — and it was fascinating. From that moment on, I decided that I will try doing this for the rest of my life, and see how it unfolds.
Erasmus, Heidelberg, and Copenhagen
After all these entrepreneurship journeys, I went to study for an Erasmus program in Heidelberg, Germany. Small and cozy town, nothing special — the goal was learning German.
During my second semester, I get a position in Copenhagen as a Junior NeuroResearcher at Neurons. I was passionate about neuromarketing at that time so I learned so much!
Afterward, I came back to Poland, finished my bachelor's degree, and found a job as a Business Development Representative in Berlin — and here I am finishing up this article.
To give you guys and me an opportunity to take a short break here is a “chill pause”:
Here are 5 Facts about me:
- I speak 4 languages fluently: English, German, Russian, and Polish.
- The best way to start a conversation with me is to try to pronounce my real name — it will take some time but hell it would be fun (normally people call me George).
- I am ambidextrous. I am able to use both hands to do different stuff. Example: I wash my teeth, draw and hold my phone while speaking with my left; I write, hold an umbrella, or hold a gun (just kidding) with my right hand.
- The pillow that I am sleeping on and taking to literally every country I travel to, is 21 years old — I know, but I love it, and can't sleep without it.
- I have a cat which is the most beautiful creature in the world — miss her so much. Her name is Matriona.
My Thorny Path Isn’t Over — Goals
You have probably gotten a sense of what I love. Apart from my obsession with startups and entrepreneurship, I also read, watch and write a lot on the following topics: investment, productivity, health, languages, and writing.
My future goals are basically to adapt to Berlin’s culture, learn everything possible and be good at a new job, and startup a startup (obviously :)). One of the reasons I moved to Berlin in the first place was its extremely well-developed startup ecosystem.
When it comes to writing in general, I found myself actually enjoying it even though I don’t see insane positive feedback (which is actually a good thing for beginners). I tend to read and think about various stuff a lot, so writing is a perfect way to put my thoughts on paper, somehow structure them, and offload my brain.
Some topics I am researching actually resonate with other people which fascinates me and makes me only continue what I am doing. As time goes by, I am trying to put more and more effort into my articles so that it becomes unique and not just another article on X topic.
The dream scenario of my writing process would be the following: I start a company and share all the learnings I can along the way. Both mistakes and successes — everything without hiding any uncomfortable truths. I believe it’s awesome. I promise that soon that is going to be possible.
There is no version of me in the entire infinity of multiverse that hasn’t started a company — so stay tuned :)
Afterword
Thanks for clicking the article and taking the time for reading my story — hope you received any emotions from reading this. Also, please leave me any feedback in terms of what you think, whether it was easy and pleasureful to read, etc.
A small piece of self-promotion — if you loved this read there is a good chance you will enjoy reading similar content on my Telegram channel — feel free to join!
In case you didn't hear about Telegram — its a pretty popular messenger (800M users) and extremely easy to use, so I highly recommend using it and sharing it with your friends :)
For those who love rather professional connections, here is my LinkedIn.
And finally, follow me on Medium — that is the place you are reading this story after all.
Peace!
