Is it possible to "do business" in Russia? According to the NAFI study, 49% of Russians believe that it is impossible to conduct business honestly in our country. 98% of those surveyed by the POF are convinced that to do this, you must be a millionaire, holder of power, or a family member of a person belonging to the upper class. Is it so? The answer to these questions can be found in the books of Nikolai Kononov, where he talks about entrepreneurs who have done business from scratch.
How did he come to writing?
Nikolai Viktorovich Kononov was born on August 24, 1980 in Moscow. He graduated from high school there. He began to read early, and decided to write his first fantastic story before setting off for first grade. Since childhood, I wanted to write books. But I didn’t go to the literary institute, I decided to go to the journal faculty, as it was more interesting there. He graduated from Moscow State University in 2002. He was not going to be a journalist, but he realized that in order to write good books, you need material.
After university, he worked as a copywriter, on television - as a correspondent, editor in an architectural magazine, in the press service of the subway. In 2003, he got a job in the newspaper Izvestia, in the department of humanitarian problems. He worked as a correspondent, visited hot spots - Ingushetia and Chechnya. Then, in 2004, he moved to the Expert magazine. A year later - in the Forbes magazine, he led a column on entrepreneurship. I traveled to the regions and found interesting people there. These were not necessarily oligarchs, those who made a gigantic fortune, but simply curious people. At the same time published articles in the New York Times, Quartz.
In 2010, he was a senior editor at Slon.ru. In 2011 - returned to Forbes. Then he published the first book, “God without a car, ” which is dedicated to business, like his entire journalistic biography. Nikolai Kononov in 2012 led the editors of Hopes & Fears, a specialized online publication about technology and entrepreneurs. In 2015, the magazine was combined with The Village and Kononov, and together with the team began to work on the project "Secret of the company", where he now works as the chief editor and talks on the pages of the publication about new heroes of Russian business.
How did fame come?
The name of Kononov became widely known after the release of his first book, "God without a car." It describes the stories of 20 entrepreneurs. There are a lot of books written about how people built a business, but this book has a significant difference - the author traveled half of Russia and personally met with each hero of his stories. These stories are not about dizzying, momentary successes, but about people who overcame great resistance, but did not stop.
Nikolai Kononov openly writes about Russian reality, about connections with the powers that be, about achieving dreams and about failures. The book is noteworthy in that it tells about the time in which we live and about the people who surround us. The book is interesting not only to those who want to go about their business, but also to people who are in one way or another in contact with business - on its pages there are a lot of facts and reasons for reflection. According to readers, “God without a car” is the best thing that has been written about business in recent times. The book is on the shortlist of the NOS Prize.
Why write about entrepreneurs?
In 2012, Nikolai Kononov wrote a second book - “The Code of Durov”. Her hero is Pavel Durov, creator of the most popular Russian social network VKontakte. The publication immediately became one of the most discussed works of the year. Partly because this is a story about a new type of hero, about an Internet entrepreneur. The story of a man who created the “universe” with his own hands and in a short time managed to attract more than 100 million users to the network.
The book is also interesting because the creator of VKontakte practically does not communicate with reporters, but its author was able to “open the curtain of the curtain” and reveal the “secret of the company” to readers. During the writing of the book, he met with his hero several times, and he managed to write a fascinating story based on real events. This attracted the attention of filmmakers - ARFilms acquired the rights to the best-seller film adaptation.
Such stories should be published so that people do not feel lonely and unnecessary. To understand that they have like-minded people, those who monitor what they do. The editor-in-chief of the magazine "Secret of the company" believes that entrepreneurship can be called what has a return, people's attention or monetary value. This is a creative, fascinating field of activity, and he met various interesting heroes when he switched to this topic. “My mission is, ” the journalist says, “to look for new heroes.”
