Name Ruslan Kogan Nationality Australian Role Entrepreneur | Net worth A$349 million (2014) | |
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Ruslan Kogan (Kogan) at Startup Grind Melbourne
Ruslan Kogan (born November 1982) is a serial entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Kogan.com as well as several other eCommerce related companies in Australia. He was Australia's richest person under the age of 30 from 2011 to his 30th birthday in November 2012. His wealth has multiplied more than 20 times in half a decade, making him number 162 of the richest 200 in BRW Australia's Rich List 2014, and one of the top 10 richest in Australia's Young Rich List 2014, with a personal wealth of $349 million.
Contents
- Ruslan Kogan Kogan at Startup Grind Melbourne
- Sbs world news profiles entrepreneur ruslan kogan for australia day 26 01 2015
- Early life
- Starting Kogan
- Awards
- Open source
- Criticism
- Personal life
- References
Kogan holds several publicised controversial views regarding the consumer technology industry, expressing his opposition to the Australian Government's proposed internet filter as well as lambasting them for their handling of the Set Top Box Scheme. He was also the only executive from a consumer electronics vendor in Australia to campaign against the introduction of 3DTV into homes around the world.
He has written articles as both a guest and regular for several large media outlets, including a guest article for Forbes giving his views on Facebook, a guest article for Fast Company about the importance of social proof in business, a guest article for VentureBeat about affiliate marketing, a guest post on Gizmodo outlining his opposition to the filter and The Age regarding the future of TV. He was also a guest columnist for business magazine BRW throughout 2011, and has on several occasions provided guest opinions on the world's largest technology blog, TechCrunch. In 2015, he was interviewed on the Bloomberg Television series High Flyers.
Sbs world news profiles entrepreneur ruslan kogan for australia day 26 01 2015
Early life
Ruslan Kogan was born to Belarusian parents, and moved with his sister Svetlana and parents to Australia in 1989.
Kogan grew up in the Elsternwick Housing Commission flats, and started his first business at the age of 10 by finding lost golf balls, cleaning them and selling them for $0.50/each to golfers at Elsternwick Golf Course on Saturday mornings.
Kogan was interested in technology from an early age, building his first computer at the age of nine. He has started approximately 20 businesses since the age of 10, with Kogan.com his most recent and most successful venture.
Kogan attended Brighton Secondary College and Melbourne High School before going on to complete a Bachelor of Business Systems (Information Technology) at Monash University.
By the age of 23, he had worked at the IT departments of Bosch, GE, Telstra, and was a management consultant at Accenture.
Starting Kogan
Kogan left his job at Accenture in 2006, and started Kogan.com at the age of 23 in 2006 from his parents' garage in Melbourne, Australia.
When he was asking factories to provide quotes for the manufacturing of the first production run of Kogan TVs, he claims the factories laughed at him and would not accept his small order.
He realised he was able to create a business benefit for the factory beyond the small initial order. He noticed that the organisations he was dealing with had poorly laid out marketing material, with incorrect spelling and grammar, and so reworked all of their material. After he sent them the work, they replied to him and accepted the initial order, and even gave him a better price. A week later, they told him that they had just won a large contract with a US customer because their documentation was the most professional.
When Kogan began to sell TVs on eBay, the TVs were in full production and he needed to pay the supplier, but eBay shut his account down because he was yet to receive any feedback. He had no way of paying the remaining amount for the first production run. He was forced to apply for many credit cards, ask his friends to do the same, and take cash advances on all of them.
Following this, he travelled to China, where he took charge of the whole container load of TVs and personally inspected each one. Kogan watched the TVs get loaded onto the truck, got in a taxi and followed the truck driver to the port to make sure the container made it on to the vessel safely. Kogan began several other businesses around this time, including a furniture retailer, Milan Direct, based on a similar model to Kogan.com. Milan Direct was later purchased by rival company, Temple & Webster.
The company rapidly expanded to a broader range of products such as Digital Radios, GPS devices, Netbooks, Tablets, and Video Cameras, and in September 2011 began selling complementary products from a range of brands including Apple, Canon, Nikon, Samsung, Motorola and others.
Kogan achieved $3 million in its third year, followed by $8 million in the fourth, $22 million in the fifth, $70 million in the sixth, and over $200 million in the seventh year. The Wall Street Journal speculates Kogan is worth over $400M. More than 2 million products have been delivered by Kogan, with daily sales of more than $1 million.
Having started with no external funding or capital, Kogan.com has grown to become one of Australia's fastest-growing businesses in any industry.
Awards
Kogan and his company Kogan.com have won the following awards:
Open source
Kogan has been a strong believer in open source solutions for many years, telling Computerworld: "We are huge believers in cloud computing and open source software. The reasons are simple: open source software is usually faster, better and has more features."
Kogan believes that open source tablets like Android present a significant challenge to the Apple iPad's dominance of the tablet market, and was the first to launch an open source tablet in the UK for under £100.
In Australia, he launched a laptop running the open source version of Google's Chrome OS before multinationals like Samsung and Acer could launch their own products.
Criticism
Kogan is known for using social media to take a swipe at his competitors and has been accused of making 'outlandish statements' through his company’s blog about giant retailers like JB Hi-Fi.
At Kickstart Forum 2008, in Gold Coast Australia, Kogan was called a 'loudmouthed punk', when he said the future of retail was heading online.
Personal life
Kogan purchased a BMW Z4 in 2010 and is training for a pilot's licence. He rents an apartment on St Kilda Rd, Melbourne, overlooking Albert Park Lake.
Kogan was the first Australian to register as a passenger on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic sub-orbital spaceflight, having paid a deposit on the US$200,000 ticket.