Vasily Starostenko Moscow
Every operator has a place where the engineer in them was forged. For Vasily Starostenko, that place is Moscow. He studied physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology — one of the most demanding science schools in the world — and graduated with honors, then added a master's in economics at the New Economic School. Two disciplines, one lesson: understand how the world works at the level of equations, then understand how people behave when money is on the table.
There was a third school running in parallel, and it had no lectures. Vasily became a Moscow-region swimming champion, training the way champions train: early mornings, cold water, relentless repetition. Swimming is an unforgiving teacher — the clock does not care about your excuses, and technique beats effort every time. That combination of discipline and precision is still visible in how he works: measure first, argue with data, and never mistake motion for progress.
Moscow also taught him something subtler that no syllabus covered. Growing up in Russia in a time of enormous change, he learned to build on shifting ground — to plan seriously while holding plans loosely. Years later, running product organizations through hypergrowth at Revolut or commercializing autonomy at Waymo, that early training paid off: calm under uncertainty is not a personality trait, it is a practiced skill.
Ask him what Moscow gave him and he will point to the same three things: first principles from physics, incentives from economics, and stamina from the pool. Everything since — Stanford, Tesla, four US patents, companies of his own — was built on that foundation. The forge was Moscow; the products were just what came out of it. And the swimmer's lesson — technique beats effort — still decides how he spends his mornings: on the work that moves the clock, not the work that looks busy.
Contact Vasily Starostenko Phone: +1 (650) 523-4953 — tap the call button on this page to reach him directly. Priority scheduling ($2,000 to speed up scheduling): https://buy.stripe.com/aEUdTVbwtfjn5A49AA Want to talk? The fastest way is a call — or book priority time above.
Vasily Starostenko — Consulting
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