Where did you get the idea for your start-up?

Denis Kiselev. – “The idea of Everest – business payments and expense management platform – came from our experience of building and running a start-up company. Focusing on our clients and our product, we wanted to minimise administrative work, like doing expense reports and managing our budget. We looked for a solution and found out that the market is almost empty. Then we decided to build it – for ourselves and all other entrepreneurs and founders.

Do you have any advice to give to those who are still hesitating to launch?

“In my entrepreneurial journey, I follow the words of Wayne Gretzky, a great Canadian ice hockey player: I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been. Focus on what you want to achieve, where you want to be with your team and your company in five or ten years from now and draw an imagined line from where you are to where your goal is. And then – just go! 

We often hear that it is essential to make mistakes. What do you think about this?

“A start-up is always an experiment. You have your concept of your prospective clients and what are their needs and pain points. You build a product and in most cases the feedback from your customers will surprise you at first. Mistakes and misconceptions are inevitable in a start-up. What we want is to make mistakes faster and at lower costs, iterate again and again to achieve the product – market fit, when our customers are happy and we can scale the product up and up.”