Hello, world!

My name is Nikolay, although most people call me Nick. I love life and all experiences it has gifted me. My journey to Silicon Valley has been anything but ordinary.

I studied in Moscow, where I earned a master in engineering while working 40+ hours a week at the TGIF Fridays as a waiter. Those years taught me lessons that I will never forget: that discipline, curiosity, perseverance, an open heart, and genuine belief in the power of shaping your own reality can take you to places you never imagined.

My professional life began in the world of numbers. I joined Ernst & Young (EY) in 2006, where I quickly got introduced to the world of accounting principles, nuances of professional judgments, differences in interpretations (of US GAAP and IFRS), and managing disagreements with clients over representation of their financial health. My clients’ portfolio included the largest oil company in the country that went through various stages of transformation, including going public on the LSE, acquiring assets of a competitor in a history-defining transaction, and navigating through the financial crisis of 2008. It was truly fascinating history period to be a part of and an absolutely incredible team to grow up with. From Moscow, the work took me to Abu Dhabi, UAE, where I got exposure to a rapidly growing economy while working with clients across nuclear, consumer, industrials, government, and private equity sectors. I was consistently recognized as a top performer, but I wasn’t chasing recognition. I was chasing rigorous, exciting, intellectually stimulating work, and there was plenty. EY gave me a foundation I still build on today.

Hungry for expanding my horizons, I moved to the United States to pursue an MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business that completely changed the way I think. Having debates with Nobel Laureates and high-ranking officials was intimidating and liberating at the same time. I concentrated in Entrepreneurship, Finance, and Statistics, made the Dean's Honor List more than once, and left with a conviction that the most meaningful impact on humanity lives at the intersection of capital, ideas, and human qualities.

Accenture brought me into the world of management consulting. I led large-scale finance transformations and operational redesigns for Fortune 500 clients, learning how big organizations move, how they get stuck, and how they get unstuck. I also learned the value of applying a human-forward approach to driving change. It is not the slides, the financial model, or the contract that make things happen and change reality. It is the people on the ground who have control over whether things move forward in an effective way. Strategy, I discovered, is only as good as the people who carry it.

Then came Uber. San Francisco. The center of the innovation economy. I joined Uber as a Global Business Process Manager and later moved into the FP&A org. I helped with a nine-figure sale of one of Uber's businesses, launched a global Finance hub in India in record time, and contributed to the company's IPO readiness leading projects with a wide variety of problem statements. Uber gave me the first taste of building something from scratch while navigating ambiguity in a hyper-growth environment. The pace was relentless, the culture was the one I had never experienced before, the people were top-notch, the stakes were very high, and I feel very lucky to have had Uber as my first insider experience with Silicon Valley.

Next was Canvas, a disruptor to the car ownership experience challenging the dealership model and its lack of flexibility and transparency. As the first strategic finance hire, I built the foundational finance infrastructure from the ground up, developed KPIs to manage profitability, and drove a 60% reduction in customer acquisition costs. It was the first time I understood what it feels like to create a strategic finance layer in the organization when there was no playbook, just a vast field of opportunities to build an internal engine for the generation of strategic insights backed by financial science. I was hooked.

Cruise came next, giving me exposure to the commercialization of a frontier tech. As Senior Finance Manager for Product and Engineering, I primarily dedicated time to managing a $1B+ annual R&D budget for the development of autonomous driving technology. Among other contributions, I designed frameworks to assess the financial impact of commercialization timelines for a new-generation robotaxi platform, influencing change in architecture that allowed for monetization of data, and launched initiatives to evaluate the economic impact of recycling the e-batteries powering the future fleet. One of the key discoveries I made was the power of finance to guide decision-making around capital deployment and resolve conflicting situations by anchoring conversions on the reality of capital scarcity. I realized that finance is one of a few horizontal functions that interact with every other function, acting as a force uniting people over common financial objectives. What I also picked up from Cruise was how finance shapes conversations to guide the transition of the company from the R&D to the commercial stage, introducing technology that pushed humanity to new frontiers of human experience.

From autonomous ride-hailing at Cruise, I moved to autonomous trucks at PlusAI to build the Strategic Finance function from the ground up. Building finance intelligence at an AI-native company that disrupts a multi-trillion-dollar industry globally kept me busy. I substantially expanded my portfolio of skills, while developing the long-range plan for the company, defining the path to profitability, shaping go-to-market and pricing strategies alongside the CEO, CFO, CTO, COO, and CRO, evaluating the economic potential of commercial opportunities, championing international expansion into Japan and Australia, assuming the Controller role to guide the company through PCAOB audits, generating investor-grade financial materials, defending unit economics and projections in conversations with investors, and turning finance into an advising function. I myself eventually stepped into an advisory role to the CEO while pursuing new frontiers.

Throughout my journey, I never stopped learning. Stanford's continuing education programs have kept me close to the frontier of AI, leadership, and the philosophy of AI and consciousness. I think about these things not just professionally but personally. I am genuinely fascinated by what technology is capable of doing to our world and what it means for humanity.

Outside of work, I like skiing, hiking, philosophy, and photography. I have been doing photography over 20 years now, capturing the geometry of architecture, the emotions of streets, the expressions of people, the calming effect of nature, and the beauty and diversity of the world. I occasionally write poetry when inspiration finds me. Ever since I became a father, I started looking at the world and my place in it through a different lens. I see it as my obligation to experience it fully and contribute to it. I am endlessly curious about finance, about technology, about consciousness, about the world, and about the future of humanity.

I created this site to share my voice and experiences with the world.

San Francisco, 2026