You have had experience of working for both corporations and startups throughout your career. What are the biggest differences? And why did you choose the latter this time?

Here, a lot depends on the product or project itself — a corporation may be developing a new direction or service, which is quite like a startup essentially.

All in all, in a big company, a lot of things are already formed and predefined — meritorious people, established processes, corporate culture, a set of successful practices and a system of dos and don’ts. There’s longer term business planning and generally some kind of overall structure. Normally, your task is to integrate into this system as quickly and effectively as you can and build on the existing success. Whatever is going on in a corporation is often quite large-scale, which is another huge plus; besides, being a «part of something bigger than yourself» is a great motivating factor. On the other hand though, it is much more difficult to make substantial changes or modify individual procedures due to a certain level of rigidity which in its turn is determined by the fact that existing structure performs well and brings results already. That is why we need more discussions, approvals, and following the internal policy is a must. Moreover, risk tolerance is much lower, since the cost of a mistake is very high. There are many upsides, however, such as good infrastructure and internal services that help you focus on the work at hand. Generally speaking, it’s less stressful and much more comfortable.

In a startup, on the other hand, there is a whole lot of unknowns, but also many opportunities. You have to make right decisions within tight time frames, you can act unconventionally, experiment, test bold and offbeat hypotheses and progress much faster. Yes, things are not so predefined, the structure is not so large, but there are often no common guidelines for you to use, and everything is decided on a case-by-case basis. On the one hand, there is less bureaucracy and internal policies in a startup, everything is much more transparent, and decisions are made faster; on the other hand, however, you have to do several jobs at a time, which significantly increases the average amount of work. Young companies that are just starting their business do not yet have a lot of inertial mass (in a positive sense), they don’t have a lot of users or a developed brand. Thus, there is a lot more individual responsibility, and every team member’s contribution makes a difference and is critical for the future success of the company. If you don’t give it your best, everyone can easily see that.

To sum it up, there is no clear answer. In fact, I don’t think it matters. What really does is the team, the product, and the reporting line. In the past I really enjoyed working for Wargaming, which is a rather big corporation. For the last few months, however, I’ve been working at a startup.

You have worked at a variety of companies, but it was still mostly gamedev. How fast did you manage to adjust to a new sphere? After all, it has different business models, approaches to monetization etc.

Gamedev can be different as well. Huge MMO projects for PC — that’s one thing, while mobile casual and hyper casual games are quite different. Different marketing, different growth strategies, different tricks.

I joined Prisma Labs not so long ago, and I can say that the photo and video app market is, without a doubt, different from the gaming market — there are relatively fewer segments and serious players. Fortunately, we are one of those players.

Customer needs and behavior are different as well. We have a completely different task to solve and help them liven up or edit photos in a comfortable way. Which is entertainment in a sense, though of a different kind.

Subscription, however, is an absolutely new approach to app monetization compared to in-apps with ads. The business model works in a completely different way here, and so do KPI, analytics and communication focus.

Did your passion for professional photography influence your decision to work for Prisma Labs? Does your hobby help you work on the products?

Totally yes! My passion for photography was one of the key reasons why I joined the company.

I think it helps me better understand the market and the customers, communicate more effectively and actively participate in developing the company’s products.

This said, every one of us is a bit of a photographer these days. At least a little bit, at least on Instagram. So, this is something a lot of people can relate to.

Prisma was a real sensation in its time, the app went viral in a matter of days. Were the installs during the rapid growth stage purely organic, or did the UA team also work at that time?

Even in 2020, Prisma stays a strong, game-changing and, most importantly, relevant product creating extremely high-quality and eye-catching filters. And its success was purely organic, without any paid promotion. In 2016, it became the App of the Year in its category in both App Store and Google Play. In fact, the number of subscribers is only growing now.

And I’d like to answer a very popular question right away: «What’s up with Prisma and the company?». We have one more product — Lensa, an A.I. powered editing app for portrait photos and selfies. At the moment it’s the main one for the company, and is growing quite well, too.

My great respect to the founding team, most of which still continue to work for the company.

By the way, what paid promotion channels are you currently using?

Right now, we’re doing quite a lot of performance marketing (Facebook, Google, etc.) and working with influencers. We would really like to keep developing in the same direction. We have a lot of expansion plans, we want to go on improving product brands and work closer with the current community.

I’d like to use this occasion to mention that we have a lot of open vacancies in both product and marketing. Drop me a line, I’ll be glad to talk :)

Your apps have an extremely simple and intuitive interface, yet feature powerful technologies «under the bonnet». Could you tell more about them? What are you working on at the moment?

We use state-of-the-art A.I. methods to achieve quality results with minimal user actions. At the same time, we optimize the neural networks and other algorithms, so that everything launches on the user device without sending data to the server.

We are constantly working on new features, yet don’t forget to improve the existing ones. It’s all carried out through cutting-edge approaches to ML & A.I.

What is your view on the future of A.I., in particular, machine (computer) vision technologies?

The future is now. We see it thanks to virtual assistants, for example: Siri, Google Assistant, Alice. I’m sure that they will be able to perform more and more complex tasks, and will develop a much better and clearer understanding of the context. Similar assistants will appear in the workplace. Like Iron Man, we will all have our own J.A.R.V.I.S (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System) to help with working issues and housekeeping.

Look at what Elon Musk is doing at Neuralink. Besides recovering damaged brain functions, it’s also a potential possibility to have augmented reality and a virtual assistant right inside your head and communicate with other people without having to speak.

Self-driving cars, I think, will become much more feasible thanks to computer vision technology.

Of course, the picture would be incomplete without anti utopian surveillance systems — cameras and human tracking. In Moscow, a lot is done in this sphere. During the lockdown, citizens are fined for leaving their homes — it all happens automatically and is becoming a part of our life.

What instruments and services are a must-have for you while working from home? What do you use? What helps you simplify and improve the working processes?

The undeniable leader is Zoom. All collective work and a ton of discussion happen there. You can criticise it, but in my opinion, the guys are improving very quickly and roll out updates almost every day. Besides, virtual backgrounds can add fun and diversity.

Of course, Slack for internal communications. Notion for documentation and project management. Telegram for the outside world. And a bit of Gmail, Calendar and Docs.

In addition to that, I set up a stationary workplace at home — bought a large monitor, a 4K webcam and a good microphone. I think we heavily underestimate the importance of sound quality during the calls. Low-quality video with good sound works fine, but not the either way round. Even though I can’t hear it myself, I hope my colleagues and other people I have calls with, are happy and can feel the difference.

How do you feel about mentoring? Do you have a mentor?

I’m all for it. However, I have never had a mentor like this myself. But I do know people who worked with a mentor or a coach and were quite happy. For me, such a person may well appear in the future.

Over the years spent in marketing you’ve seen a lot, if not everything. Maybe, there’s a case or situation that you have remembered for the rest of your life?

I often recall working on the NARR8 interactive comics platform at Game Insight in 2012. The tempo was unbelievably fast, and the amount of successfully delivered projects was immense. We had gathered a great team over just a few months, were launching new platforms, broke into new markets every month — South Korea today, Latin America tomorrow. Then came a new genre, then the launch on Windows 10. It was really cool, the product was surely ahead of its time! And it seems to me that the niche is still free.

I spent the last three years in Berlin. There, I worked for a game company Wooga and was quite deeply involved in creating one of their new games, from developing the concept and market analysis to prototype validation, a small release, calls with the players and further work on the brand, visual identity and primary marketing. This was pure creativity with constant product-market fit checks and receiving positive feedback. At that time, we were planning to release in 2020. I hope it will happen this way — and I’m looking forward to it. Innovative mechanics and high quality, just as Wooga does it.

2016 rivalry between The World of Tanks and Armata by Mail.ru was rather heated. All these provocative moves like top newspaper headings saying «Make Love, not War» or billboards on Cyprus. Every day felt like playing chess with a serious opponent.

Now for our traditional question. Where do you draw new ideas, knowledge and inspiration? Do you have a pool of must-visit events or meetups? What resources, in your opinion, are marketer’s must-have kit?

If to focus on marketing, I read three media on a regular basis.

It’s Mobile Dev Memo by Eric Seufert, which has a lot of useful information about mobile marketing, analytics and app trends.

Mark Ritson’s columns in the Marketing Week on strategy, marketing in general and brand-management.

And finally, Tom Fishburne’s articles at Marketoonist have funny, often ironic sketches about marketing and marketers.

There is also an incredible number of YouTube interviews with specialists from various industries from all over the world.

For those of you interested in gamedev events, there are a huge number of great conferences from global GDC and Gamescom to our DevGamm and White Nights.

In comes without saying that vc.ru can always offer something interesting in terms of various cases.

However, the most useful insights I ever get come from my friends and acquaintances from the industry. You may just meet for lunch or simply call to ask how things are and get a whole lot of useful information and ideas! It is so pleasing when people are open and ready to share their expertise.

My photo project #lunchmeout where I meet with different people over lunch and take pictures of them with a brief overview of our conversation really facilitated such an exchange. I hope to resume this activity after the lockdown is lifted. I also try to respond to such requests myself, and help others with my advice and expertise.