George Gogolev is a general manager at Severstal Ventures, Russia-headquartered and UK-listed steel producer and mining company Severstal’s investment vehicle.
Gogolev said: “The company has the highest earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation margin of all steel producers and understands that it needs to find new growth points from innovation rather than from efficiency, so it established Severstal Ventures and hired me in February 2018.”
Early in his career, Gogolev worked for numerous startups and made personal investments. From that experience, he realised how important it was “for tech companies to have a good interface to connect with large business”. Prior to joining Severstal Ventures, he had several roles at state-owned fund of funds Russian Venture Company since 2012 before becoming director of corporate innovation and technology transfer in August 2017.
As Severstal Ventures is a new unit, Gogolev said in the first six months, it made a few limited partner investments and started two tests with startups in the company. In addition, the unit became involved in deep transformation projects inside the corporation and is now leading open innovation program creation. His goal is “turning a large old-school industrial steel corporation into a modern materials company”.
Gogolev joked that his biggest challenges at Severstal Ventures had been “getting his computer running and printing business cards”, as the unit had already made its first investment before he had managed to surmount these obstacles.
