Ruslan Kogan (born November 1982) is a serial entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of

Kogan.com Kogan.com is an Australian portfolio of retail and services businesses including Kogan Retail, Kogan Marketplace, Kogan Mobile, Kogan Internet, Kogan Insurance, Kogan Travel, Kogan Money, Kogan Cars, Kogan Energy, Dick Smith, Matt Blatt and Migh ...

as well as several other eCommerce-related companies in Australia. He was Australia's richest person under the age of 30 from 2011 to his 30th birthday in November 2012. In 2020, Kogan's net worth was estimated by the ''Financial Review'' 2020 Rich List as . Kogan holds several publicised controversial views regarding the consumer technology industry, expressing his opposition to the Australian Government's proposed internet filter as well as lambasting the government for their handling of the

Set Top Box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of si ...

Scheme. He was also the only executive from a consumer electronics vendor in Australia to campaign against the introduction of 3DTV into homes around the world. He has written articles as both a guest and regular for several large media outlets, including a guest article for ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' giving his views on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

, a guest article for ''

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...

'' about the importance of social proof in business, a guest article for

VentureBeat ''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. It publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. History The ''VentureBeat'' company was founded in 2006 by Matt Marshall, ...

about

affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to outsource part of the sales process. It is a form of ...

, a guest post on Gizmodo outlining his opposition to the filter and ''

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory ...

'' regarding the future of TV. He was also a guest columnist for business magazine BRW throughout 2011, and has on several occasions provided guest opinions on the world's largest technology blog,

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...

. In 2015, he was interviewed on the

Bloomberg Television Bloomberg Television (on-air as Bloomberg) is an American-based pay television network focusing on business and capital market programming, owned by Bloomberg L.P. It is distributed globally, reaching over 310 million homes worldwide. It is hea ...

series '' High Flyers''.

Early life

Ruslan Kogan was born to Belarusian-Jewish parents, and moved with his sister Svetlana and parents to

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

, Australia in 1989. Kogan grew up in the Elsternwick Housing Commission flats, and started his first business at the age of ten by finding lost golf balls, cleaning them and selling them for $0.50/each to golfers at Elsternwick Golf Course on Saturday mornings. Kogan was interested in technology from an early age, building his first computer at the age of nine. He has started approximately twenty businesses since the age of ten, with Kogan.com being his most recent and most successful venture. Kogan attended

Brighton Secondary College Brighton Secondary College is a year 7 to 12 co-educational public secondary school, located in the City of Bayside, Brighton East, Victoria, Australia. The college was established in 1955, where until 1988, it was known as Brighton High Sc ...

and

Melbourne High School Melbourne High School is a government-funded single-sex academically selective secondary day school for boys, located in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra, Victoria, Australia. Established in 1905, the school caters for boys from Year 9 ...

before graduating from

Monash University Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university h ...

with a Bachelor of Business Systems (Information Technology).

Career

By the age of 23, Kogan had worked at the IT departments of Bosch, GE, Telstra, and was a management consultant at Accenture, until 2006.

Kogan.com

Kogan started

in his parents' Melbourne garage in 2006, aged 23 years. The company rapidly expanded to a broader range of products such as Digital Radios, GPS devices, netbooks, tablets, and video cameras, and in September 2011 began selling complementary products from a range of brands including

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

Canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

Nikon (, ; ), also known just as Nikon, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging products. The companies held by Nikon form the Nikon Group. Nikon's products include cameras, camera ...

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorol ...

and others. Kogan achieved 3 million in sales in its third year, followed by 8 million in year four, 22 million in year five, 70 million in year six, and over 200 million in the seventh year. In 2013 ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' speculated that Kogan was worth over 400 million. More than two million products were delivered by Kogan.com, with daily sales of more than 1 million. Having started with no external funding or capital, as of 2011, Kogan.com has grown to become one of Australia's fastest-growing businesses in any industry.

Open source

Kogan has been a strong believer in open-source solutions for many years, telling Computerworld: "We are huge believers in cloud computing and open-source software. The reasons are simple: open-source software is usually faster, better and has more features." Kogan believes that open-source tablets like Android present a significant challenge to the Apple iPad's dominance of the tablet market, and was the first to launch an open-source tablet in the UK for under £100. In Australia, he launched a laptop running the open-source version of Google's ChromeOS before multinationals like

and Acer could launch their own products.

Criticism

Kogan is known for using social media to take a swipe at his competitors and has been accused of making 'outlandish statements' through his company's blog about giant retailers like JB Hi-Fi. At Kickstart Forum 2008, in Gold Coast Australia, Kogan was called a 'loudmouthed punk', when he said the future of retail was heading online. On International Transgender Day of Visibility in 2018, Kogan was asked to apologise after a transphobic tweet referencing the

2018 Australian ball-tampering scandal The 2018 Australian ball-tampering scandal, also known as the Sandpapergate scandal, was a cricket cheating scandal surrounding the Australian national cricket team. In March 2018, during the third Test match against South Africa at Newlands ...

and Caitlyn Jenner.

Personal life

Kogan was the first Australian to register as a passenger on Richard Branson's

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The compan ...

sub-orbital spaceflight, having paid a deposit on the 200,000 ticket. Kogan and his wife, Anastasia, reside in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Personal wealth

Kogan's net worth was estimated to be 575 million, listed on the ''

Financial Review ''The Australian Financial Review'' (abbreviated to the ''AFR'') is an Australian business-focused, compact daily newspaper covering the current business and economic affairs of Australia and the world. The newspaper is based in Sydney, New Sou ...

'' 2020 Rich List. Kogan did not reach the threshold for inclusion on the 2021 Rich List.

Achievement lists

Kogan and his company Kogan.com have been listed on the following: *''

'' Top 100 most influential people in 2008 *BRW 2009 Fast Starters list at rank 37 *BRW 2010 Fast 100 at rank 15 *BRW 2010 Fast Starters list at rank 17 *Charter Security Retail Innovator of the Year 2010 *Anthill Top 30 under 30 entrepreneurs for 2010 *''

'' Top 100 most influential people in 2011 *BRW 2011 Fast 100 at rank 27 *SmartCompany 2011 Hot 30 Under 30 in 2011 *

Virgin Australia Virgin Australia, the trading name of Virgin Australia Airlines Pty Ltd, is an Australian-based airline. It is the largest airline by fleet size to use the Virgin brand. It commenced services on 31 August 2000 as ''Virgin Blue'', with two ...

Top Guns in Tech in 2011 *BRW 2012 Fast 100 at rank 14, valued at A$75.2M *Men's Style Magazine 2012 Men of Influence *Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 Southern Region Winner *Deloitte Technology Fast 50 - 4th fastest growing technology company in Australia in 2012 *BRW Fast 100 2012 - Ranked 14 *Top 50 Most Influential People in Tech in 2012. He joined Mark Zuckerberg and

Mike Cannon-Brookes Michael Cannon-Brookes (born 17 November 1979) is an Australian billionaire, co-founder, and co-CEO of the software company Atlassian. Cannon-Brookes often carries the epithet of ''accidental billionaire'' after he and his business partner Sco ...

as the only Gen Ys on the list *SmartCompany Hot 30 Under 30 CEOs in 2012 *''

The Australian ''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition, ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964.Bruns, Axel. "3.1. The active audience: Transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatew ...

'' Top 5 Young Chief Executives in 2012 *T3 29th most influential person in the technology industry in 2012

Notes

* : Net worth drawn from the '' BRW'' Young Rich List in that year.

References

External links

Ruslan Kogan page at Kogan.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kogan, Ruslan Australian chief executives 1982 births Living people Businesspeople from Melbourne Belarusian emigrants to Australia People from Babruysk 21st-century Australian businesspeople People from Elsternwick, Victoria People educated at Melbourne High School Monash University alumni Australian people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Businesspeople in technology