Date and place of birth?Moscow, Russia, January 26, 1964.

Greatest professional success? Starting Uniscape. It was a real leap of faith to leave the security of a successful company and start from zero against great odds, but it was the best professional decision I have ever made. Of course it is just the beginning—the best is yet to come.

Greatest professional mistake? There have been so many it is hard to pick the best one. Making mistakes has never been a worry for me, not learning from them is. Also, I feel that if I am not making mistakes, I am not trying hard enough. In some ways it is true that in order to increase our rate of success we must dramatically increase the number of our mistakes.

Most embarrassing professional moment? A presentation I did at the Oracle CODA Conference. It was about a month after I started there and was just learning about the subject of enterprise level internationalization, so I was not as well prepared as I could have been. Also, at that time I had a horrible fear of public speaking. I read the whole presentation verbatim off the page without looking at the slides that I later found out that they were not synchronized with the presentation. You could see that the audience was extremely uncomfortable because they sensed my discomfort. It was an unforgettable experience and motivated me to improve my public speaking skills.

Most likely to say? Something funny. (Although it may be only funny to me.) I think a sense of humor is a must in the high stress environment of a startup company. Recently I have also been learning how to say “no” to things that defocus our company away from building our core technology and business model.

Least likely to say? Something that could be considered diplomatic. What do you like most about the business? The ability to improve global communication and human understanding and to bring people together. That is a power very few industries have. I am very proud to be a part of this industry.

What do you like least about the business? Raising capital. Enough said.

Who do you most admire in the business, and why? That is a hard thing to say, since I admire so many people in the localization industry. I think that we should all be very thankful to the pioneers of this business such as Jaap Van Der Meer and Claudio Pinkus. They have defined and promoted the industry in its early years to make it what it is today—a recognized multibillion-dollar powerhouse with a great future.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out? There has never been a better time to start a business than now. As Henry Ford said, “100 years ago there were 1,000 men for every opportunity now there are 1,000 opportunities for every man.” To make that statement current, all you need to do is multiply the opportunities by a factor of 10 and make it gender non-specific.

One key thing to remember is to make sure that you are solving a real problem and that you do it better then anyone else. If you stick to solving problems you are going to do well.

What is your favorite industry fantasy? My industry fantasy has come through already. We are now in the mainstream of computer industry. It’s about time!

Where will the industry be in five years time? Management of global content is a growing problem that is going to drive our industry to higher and higher levels of growth and valuation and squarely into the mainstream of information technology. Consolidation within the industry will continue to occur at an accelerating pace. Additionally, Web development companies and content management technology companies will purchase many of the localization and internationalization technology firms. So in five years, the localization industry will not be the same industry we see right now. It will either be a lot bigger and stronger then it is right now or it will be absorbed into the content management and Web site development industries.

If I had my time over again I would… Worry less.

How would you like to be remembered? I certainly don’t expect to be remembered. It is not about ego for me. We are working to change the industry for the better. But we can’t expect nor do we want to have memorials built to us. All we can do is to do our best.