STEFAN CHE

My story

Full text of my website, including the expanded speaking cards.

Explore the visual website · Read as Markdown

Stefan Che — Long story short

Hi, I'm Stefan. I'm 22.

LONG STORY SHORT:

Age 8: Started a YouTube channel. Five years and 70 videos later, at 13, it paid my bills.

Age 14: Hitchhiked to Moscow alone with $60. Six weeks later: 1M subscribers. Peak: 2M, $0 on ads.

Age 15: Dropped out of high school. Took a friend from zero to 1M subscribers in six months; 17M followers today.

Age 16: Spoke to 10,000 people. Some of them later named their kids Stefan.

Age 17: Four Vipassana retreats. Nearly moved to the Himalayas — chose to build instead.

Age 17: Moved to Dubai and co‑founded WOL: 21 people, 5,000+ trades. Closed it at 21, still profitable, by choice.

Age 19: Regulars named a salad after me. Five menus in two countries; 10% feeds kids in Malawi.

Age 22: Between companies on purpose. Next: San Francisco.

Let me take you to the inception

my youtube career

I grew a Youtube

channel to 2M subscribers,

140M views, $0 on ads.

at 14

At 8, I started my Youtube channel

My first YouTube series was a 13-episode treehouse build.

My friend and I built a three-story treehouse with zero pocket money, waking up at 5 a.m. all summer. PS: It even had a woodstove!

Over the next 5 years, I gained 6,000 subscribers. All the money I earned reselling things and editing went straight back into my channel.

Image captions and sources

Links

Origin — Learning by making

Here are a few videos from that life-defining period

This is my origin story: things I’ve tried, stories I’ve filmed.

my base. part 2 8 years old

I had zero idea how to shoot or edit videos and learned all of it on my own.

From age 8 to 13, I filmed, edited, published, and promoted over 70 videos.

My first YouTube series

70 videos

5 years

my base. part 2 8 years old

A full-time passion

YouTube turned into a full-time passion. I just couldn’t believe I had the chance to bring my ideas to life and share them with the whole world.

If there was a skill to learn, YouTube had all the answers I needed.

Between classes, clubs, and sports, I squeezed filming into every spare moment, often followed by 8-hour editing sessions.

By 12, I’d mastered Premiere Pro, FCP, and After Effects. At the same time, I started taking on paid projects.

Five years in, my content reached a new level, and I fully realized what it took to succeed on YouTube.

I stopped creating content that revolved only around my interests. I knew what people wanted, and how to deliver it like a pro.

The first milestone

At 13, I reached 100,000 subscribers.

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Making a living

#Independence

That’s when I started landing brand deals and earning ad revenue on YouTube. I made my first $15k.

I have been financially independent ever since.

The summer I turned 14, I begged my mom to let me go to Moscow alone for two weeks. I ended up staying there for over three years...PS: I got up 4am and hitchhiked with a camera and $60 in my backpack.

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Moscow

At 14, I moved alone

From Minsk

To Moscow

10-hour hitchhike

Moscow was a city of opportunity and my launchpad to the international stage.

I couch-surfed at the place of a friend I’d met online, spending every waking hour working on my videos.

Six weeks later, I reached 1M subscribers

Channel analytics, November 2026 · videos still up. 14.2M hours of human attention = 1,620 years. Roughly everything since the fall of Rome. Peak in 2019: 2M subscribers.

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An audience across the CIS

My popularity spread across the CIS. People everywhere, in malls and in the street, asked for photos and autographs. Even taxi drivers!

Every video hit No. 1 on YouTube Trending, attracting top creators and entrepreneurs.

They couldn’t figure out how a kid was getting that kind of reach without spending a dollar on ads.

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Producing

Producing

Then I did it for someone else.

Behind the camera

I know how to generate buzz

I quickly realized one thing: my friends were becoming popular through my videos, even without social media accounts of their own.

My Ship has come in…

I made a deal with the top two: I kept all rights, and we split each channel’s revenue 50/50.

SUBSCRIBE

Growth

I launched their YouTube channels and used my own videos to drive traffic to theirs.

Production

I managed the entire process from content creation and production to casting, editing, brand outreach, and closing deals.

+100k

Impact

It has happened more than once that a single video of mine brought them 100,000–200,000 individual, active subscribers.

One of them became a star

Egor Ship

Just six months in, I helped grow Egor Ship’s YouTube channel to 1M subscribers.

singer, blogger

egor ship video 2019

Building a creator’s career

Egor Ship

Just six months in, I helped grow Egor Ship’s YouTube channel to 1M subscribers.

singer, blogger

egor ship video 2019

egor ship video 2020

egor ship video 2021

egor ship video 2022

1,000,000 subscribers

30th

Artist to sign with the label in its 20- year history

black starThe most popular Russian music label

Soon after, I sold my share in his social media accounts, and he signed a contract with Black Star, Russia’s top music label.

His audience kept growing long after our partnership ended. Today, he has 17M followers across all his social media.

YouTube 2.4 m Subscribers

TikTok 12.1 m Subscribers

Instagram 3.3 m Subscribers

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Stage — The first talk

01 — The challenge

At 16, I faced a major challenge: sharing my life story with 10,000 adults at The Monk Who Bought a Ferrari, Crocus City Hall.

What could a kid tell them they didn’t already know?

02 — The talk

My talk was titled “The ambassador of conscious conception”.

03 — The message

I traced the roots of my success to my parents’ physical and mental preparation for conscious conception, pregnancy, and childbirth.

Translated from Russian

Stefan, I want to express my admiration! Bravo! 👏👏👏 as a mom of three sons, I’ll say that I’d like them to have qualities like yours. Now I have a great example to follow, an idea of what to aim for! Thank you for that. You were wonderful! Your parents’ pride and joy 💪💪 wishing you inspiration, stability, and more awesome achievements! 👍 you really made me happy and inspired me! So cool!! 🔥

Stefan 🙌❤️ I’m so impressed, so thrilled by your performance! You’re an incredibly strong person on the inside with a big heart. One love ❤️

04 — The panel

I didn’t yet know how to command a stage. Despite sharing the panel with some big names, more of the questions from the audience were for me.

05 — The mission

My story inspired people to conceive consciously. Years later, some of them thanked me and even named their children Stefan after me.

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Stage — Talks and experience

06 — The confidence

That talk gave me my voice. No stage has felt big since.

Inspiration

Audience members and followers told me my story had inspired them to become parents—and to prepare for it the way mine had.

Legacy

Then came Instagram messages thanking me and announcing births. Some parents even named their children Stefan after me.

Confidence

That talk helped me find my speaking style, engage audiences, and feel at home on stage. Every talk since has felt easy.

23k People attended my talks

12 Hours on stage

10 Talks given

Speaking on stage has become a major part of my life.

5 conferences

2 conferences

1 conference

Finance Forum, Moscow 1,400 people 2023

Crocus City Hall, Moscow 10,000 people 2021

Private talk, MIPT · MSU · HSE 100 students 2026

Sibur Arena, St. Petersburg 5,000 people 2022

Kazan Expo, Kazan 2,500 people 2021

Invest Forum, Dubai 1,000 people 2023

Business Stand-Up by Oskar Hartmann, Dubai 800 people, two days 2025

Business Cruise, Peru 200 founders 2026

BitWay Forum, Minsk 600 people 2024

Business Stand-Up by Oskar Hartmann, Minsk 1,000 people 2025

Moscow 3 conferences

Saint Petersburg 1 conference

Kazan 1 conference

Dubai 2 conferences

Private cruise 1 conference

Minsk 2 conferences

800k+ Total Views Across My Podcast Guest Appearances

I’ve appeared on podcasts and in interviews, sharing my story, experiences, and ideas with a wide range of audiences.

Experiments

Finance Forum

Moscow, Russia

September 23, 2023

Money Is Overrated. The Age of Decadence.

My view of money and the principles I use to handle it — told at a finance forum.

People: 1,400

Minutes: 60

My age: 18

Crocus City Hall

Moscow, Russia

September 11, 2021

Ambassador of Conscious Conception

The same talk for 10,000 people: my story, and the conscious conception behind it.

People: 10,000

Minutes: 30

My age: 16

Sibur Arena

Balance People 3.0 Forum

St. Petersburg, Russia

December 14, 2022

Ambassador of Conscious Conception

My path as an entrepreneur so far — and where I believe it started: with conscious conception.

People: 5,000

Minutes: 40

My age: 18

Kazan Expo

Kazan, Russia

June 25, 2021

Ambassador of Conscious Conception

Ninety minutes of my life story, ending where it began: how my parents prepared for my birth, and why I trace the foundation of my success to that.

People: 2,500

Minutes: 90

My age: 16

Invest Forum

Dubai, UAE

March 17, 2023

Real Estate vs. Blockchain

A panel debate. I took the blockchain side.

People: 1,000

Minutes: 60

My age: 18

Business Stand-Up

Forum by Oskar Hartmann

The Lana, Dubai

October 17, 2025

The Happy Entrepreneur’s Wallet

The same talk in Dubai, split across two days.

People: 800

Minutes: 2 × 50

My age: 20

Business Cruise

Closed event

Peru

April 16, 2026

Ambassador of Conscious Conception

Conscious conception, health, and raising children — for 200 founders, as one of the headline speakers.

Founders: 200

Minutes: 90

My age: 21

BitWay Forum

Minsk, Belarus

October 27, 2024

Notes of a Crypto-Anarchist

Where the crypto market stands, what stage it is in, and what is actually happening in it.

People: 600

Minutes: 90

My age: 19

Business Stand-Up

Forum by Oskar Hartmann

Minsk, Belarus

October 10, 2025

The Happy Entrepreneur’s Wallet

My keys to staying happy, healthy and full of energy while running business through constant difficulties.

People: 1,000

Minutes: 90

My age: 20

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Experiments

Experiments

Stefan Shop

$0 price per item

$20K earned

$20 shipping

The model

In 2019, at 14, I adapted a U.S. business model for my Russian-speaking audience: up to 20 novelty products from China listed at $0 — customers paid a flat $20 shipping fee.

Unit economics

Product and shipping costs totaled $4 per order, leaving roughly $16. All traffic came from my YouTube channel, and the shop earned around $20K.

Why I moved on

Once my most loyal followers had bought, I had no alternative acquisition channels — and my interest in content creation was declining.

What I learned

I’m glad I didn’t build a larger business around a product I didn’t find meaningful.

Marketing

$1M campaign budget

$180K net profit

Influencer marketing agency

In 2019 I started brokering ad deals between brands and creators. Within a year, it grew into a small agency leveraging my network of leading CIS creators and celebrities.

The full cycle

I matched creators to each brand’s budget, goals, and audience, negotiated and booked placements, managed clients, and handled bookkeeping. Being a creator myself, I could spot inflated statistics.

The biggest campaign

In 2021, at 16, a client entrusted me with a $1M budget. I booked leading CIS creators, delivered results that met the client’s expectations, and generated around $180K in net profit.

What came next

I wound down the agency as I left entertainment to explore other industries.

Studio Vastness 77

The idea

In 2020, at 15, after renovating my first apartment with YouTube earnings, I co-founded a joint venture with a real estate broker, splitting ownership 50/50: turning large, neglected Moscow apartments into affordable studios.

How it worked

We converted five rooms into five studio units, each with its own bathroom and kitchenette, accessed via a renovated shared hallway. Buyers acquired ownership shares, and purchase agreements gave us several months to consolidate ownership before closing.

My role

I led marketing, built the brand and website, animated the logo in After Effects, and produced YouTube property tours.

Result

We completed and sold two of three properties and earned extra on interior finishing. I personally earned around $10K before transferring my 50% stake to my partner and focusing on technology ventures.

YouTube ↗

Instagram ↗

DexDox

In early 2022, at 17, I wanted to take blockchain beyond finance: a decentralized alternative to Google Docs and Sheets, with no single server as a point of failure.

What I did

With Vlad Martynov, a former Ethereum Foundation advisor, I pitched the idea to Vitalik Buterin, who was willing to provide resources if we built on Ethereum. I self-funded a month of research and ran the project’s Twitter.

Why I stopped

Decentralized storage needed substantial upfront R&D, and demand was too limited to make fundraising straightforward. With my experience at the time, the risks were too high.

It showed me my limits at that stage. Some ambitions need time.

Twitter ↗

BABF Capital

Early initiative

In 2021, at 17, I co-founded BABF with three partners, pooling $1.1M of our own capital to back early-stage Web3 startups and liquid tokens.

Investment strategy

$200K was invested in 17 startups and $900K in liquid tokens, focusing on DeFi, decentralized data infrastructure, and some GameFi.

Building operations

I built our scout network and deal pipeline: three analysts and up to four scouts covering events and hackathons worldwide, our own scorecard, and a weekly investment committee.

Outcome

We wound down in early 2025. Roughly $500K in trading gains was reinvested, and around $500K remains in tokens. Most venture investments did not succeed.

Conviction in a technology isn’t evidence of demand. First, I needed to build businesses to offer founders more than capital.

SAO Wallet

In 2023, at 18, I partnered 50/50 with blockchain investor Oleg Ivanov on SAO Wallet, a consumer-facing wallet built on multi-party computation (MPC), with no seed phrases to manage.

I led marketing and UI/UX. We evaluated existing infrastructure and began integrating our custom interface with wallet code for an MVP.

Why we paused

After two and a half months, interest in crypto seemed to be cooling, and both of us had competing commitments. We never resumed development.

I still believe in the idea. At least one founder needs to make the venture their primary commitment and take full ownership of execution.

TTM Academy

The deal

In early 2024, at 19, I bought a 10% stake in TTM Academy for $100K and joined as a marketing advisor. The academy offered courses in crypto, trading, and blockchain development.

Over roughly a year, I shaped the launch strategy, made key business introductions, and worked on creator and ambassador partnerships. Our Telegram mini-app attracted millions of players.

Demand was declining, and the academy ceased active operations in late 2025. Distributions roughly recouped my initial investment, and I still hold my 10% equity stake.

Clarify responsibilities, time commitments, and expectations before buying into a company. I do my best work building my own ventures.

Website ↗

Telegram ↗

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Links

Silence & writing

Spirituality

Personal Reflections

Over the past five years, I’ve written about my worldview, and the lessons life has taught me.

Audience Shift

My account once had 800,000+ followers. Over time, 500,000 younger followers left, while 120,000 adult readers joined.

Global Influence

My philosophy attracted entrepreneurs and senior executives worldwide, turning my posts into a small cultural phenomenon.

Lasting Impact

Around the world, readers tell me how my posts helped them to expand their outlooks.

A place for my thoughts

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stefan_studio

J.T. Peterson · Vers L'avant

For many years, I had dreamed of visiting this incredible place. Even though autumn isn't the best time to visit Mont Saint-Michel Abbey, I decided to finally make it happen on my birthday!

So today, I'm sharing the most fascinating facts about this place, along with some of my slightly acrobatic photos taken there! 🤣

The Most Mind-Blowing Facts About Mont Saint-Michel

1. It stands on a living granite island that rises and breathes

Mont Saint-Michel is not just a rock but a massive granite monolith that is over 500 million years old.

Under the influence of tides and geological movements, it slowly rises — by just a few millimeters per century.

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Aaron Dolan · Highland Spirit

Vipassana.

The most perfect tool for self-knowledge and inner growth for a modern person, out of all I have come across. Every other practice and tool is either white noise, preparation, or a gentle supplement. Vipassana is not the chest — it is the key that opens the chest of eternal knowledge about life. Or rather, even knowledge about eternal life.

It is also very important to learn Vipassana — or any other practice — from the right teacher. One of my main rules: don't even try to listen to what a teacher or master is saying until you have figured out what inner state they are speaking from. What state they live in, and whether it resonates with you. Whether they themselves are the inwardly desirable fruit of their own philosophy and teaching. If a master doesn't have the state you need, they will never lead you to it, however beautiful and logical the nonsense they tell you.

Masters differ. What matters is understanding whom you yourself serve — light or darkness — and then finding the right person for that request. And yes, hiding behind bright knowledge, a great many teachers, masters and monks actually serve darkness: I mean that their personality has been swallowed by base motives and ambitions. That isn't so hard to see either, if you look closely enough, paying attention to details and indirect signs and trying to see the true motives, often not even fully conscious. Or rather, to feel them, switching off excessive logical reasoning.

Yes, practice isn't the most natural thing, I'm in. But how natural is the life we live now?

Practice is a wedge that helps correct the distortions technocracy has inflicted on us. But there's a nuance. True naturalness is nature. By practising away from nature, we deprive ourselves of most of the effect and of the precious time of our lives.

The MAIN practice and book of life, the window to the source of infinite knowledge, is……

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Judah Earl, BRANDON BLACK · Softly

I love this life.

It is so intricately made, and precisely because of that, the love I feel for it — and the happiness I live through it — at moments simply floods my consciousness and moves me to love and forgive everyone.

For me, one of the main signs that I'm heading the wrong way is when these regular surges of love and happiness towards everything that exists disappear from my life.

It can mean different things: my body has become polluted, somewhere I acted against my conscience, I made decisions out of line with my higher mission, life around me has become mostly unnatural to my original genetic and evolutionary needs, and much more.

In my view, such states of pure love are the most important indicator of harmony and inner purity in almost everything that makes up a human being.

Their long absence always makes me reconsider everything happening in my life and make serious corrections — in any area of life that could, one way or another, create inner disharmony and keep me from reaching this wonderful oneness with the universe.

June 9

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Cozy Rabbit · Messy (Piano Version)

Beauty. What an enormous burden it is.

As far as I know, our brain judges the beauty of the person in front of us based on deep genetic information about what the signs of a healthy body look like. Facial features, build, the colour and quality of the skin literally tell it that this person is the best and safest fit for continuing the family line.

And of course, beyond general standards of health and fertility, the brain can also tell, from a complex set of the subtlest signals, how well a particular person's genetics suit creating new life together. Especially if the brain itself is more or less healthy and harmonious :)

So the sense of beauty doesn't come out of nowhere. It has a clear cause and effect, again shaped to raise our chances of survival as individuals.

But here's the catch. Physical health doesn't always mean mental health, just as mental health is still far from guaranteeing high morals, virtues, love for people and the world, or the wish to build a strong, whole family. And that is unique.

So why did I say that outer beauty is an enormous burden?

I have probably been thinking about beauty my whole conscious life. For about as long, I have been watching girls, women and grandmothers, as well as men of all ages. So many incredibly beautiful girls — and absolutely empty, callous, shallow, uninteresting, undeveloped inside.

It's astonishing when you touch someone's inner world and suddenly understand the metaphor our ancestors tried to pass on in Russian fairy tales about mermaids. Good young men see them as indescribable beauties, but in fact they are terrible underwater monsters that drag them under and drink their blood.

By the way, the essence of this metaphor transfers perfectly to men, who often buy girls' attention with money and other tools, presenting themselves as knights on the outside, then sucking out all the life and turning out to be terrible monsters inside…

Continued in the comments

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Otros · Renewal

Pain.

And what I've understood about it.

Pain is an astonishing concept. A spectrum of special sensations, a facet of how we perceive outer or inner reality.

Pain comes in different forms: physical, emotional, mental.

By nature I'm quite a freedom-loving person, and in life I always try to choose the path of ease, acceptance, gratitude and love.

I'm deeply convinced that you can and should spend most of your life in these states. But here's what's interesting.

Over the past year, a very deep understanding of pain has ripened in me.

As you grow up and develop, life brings far more responsibility than before.

And sometimes — I'd even say often — we humans start making mistakes that make us feel painful things: shame, disappointment, sadness, fatigue, losing the meaning of life and much more.

Ever since childhood, as bedtime stories, I listened to my parents tell wise parables from different countries and sages, and all my life I've been drawn to the spiritual side of human existence.

I know a lot of powerful tricks that, in any situation, can greatly or even completely numb the mental pain of a loss or of a mistake made in any area of life.

Of course, such tools keep working only if you live by your conscience.

When your conscience isn't clear, switching off the pain of a loss — in my case, at least — is very hard.

For many years I've watched different people, entrepreneurs in particular, who have managed to build very strong inner beliefs that "everything happens for the best", that "it will all be fine anyway", that "this too shall pass", that "on the scale of the universe this situation means nothing".

And many other amazing and, truly, effective plasters and painkiller shots that, like an ambulance in a crisis, can greatly or almost completely bring the pain down.

But here's the catch…

Read the rest in the comments 🔱

May 9, 2025

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Bare Jams · Cold Treats

The absurdity of what is happening on planet Earth

2024. Humanity, or so it believes, is at the peak of its development in all of its history.

People live so long and so comfortably that it would once have been hard even to imagine.

Countries calmly count their GDP, make new goods, extract resources and try to make the people in their cities happier. Some more, some less.

At the very same moment, between Hawaii and the US floats a garbage patch the size of eight Belaruses: 2,200 km long, 800 km wide and 10 metres deep. It's also called the seventh continent.

In this patch of floating junk, new kinds of viruses regularly emerge, which birds then carry across the planet, along with new kinds of terrible, even repulsive animals whose diet is 90% plastic.

Hundreds of millions of fish and sea creatures are poisoned, and then die or mutate. Algae that produce up to 50% of the oxygen on Earth are dying, and the water is rapidly being contaminated and changing its composition.

And this is only the best-known patch, 1.5 million km² according to official data. There are countless smaller patches like it all over the world.

This year I was on uninhabited islands in Papua New Guinea. A place where there had never been anything man-made.

When we arrived on one of the islands, eight of us spent about an hour clearing a small stretch of beach of plastic, filling whole bags with all kinds of non-biodegradable waste.

What is this? I came to a place called one of the most beautiful dive spots on Earth. And even here the plastic has reached?

And at that moment tears well up. Plastic went into mass production less than 100 years ago! And it was discovered as a chemical compound 169 years ago!

Has humanity really managed to soil a vast ocean in such a short time?

Meanwhile, society is built so that continuing to pollute our home is encouraged, welcomed and pushed on us with the lure of good profit.

Continued in the comments 🍁

September 12, 2024

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Generosity.

Generosity expressed in money is only a small part of what makes a person generous.

Do we try to be generous with wisdom, generous with knowledge, generous with purity, generous in understanding people, generous with sincere love for people, generous with happiness, generous with forgiveness?

It often happens that I gather positive, bright energy and then share it generously with people.

Sometimes I take on the role of a lightning rod that, with full understanding, accepts any negativity or dark energy from other people and, passing it through itself, makes it cleaner.

Often this even changes the course of a person's life: they feel the purity, notice that it feels good to be near this clean energy, and start reaching for it on their own. Meanwhile, I sometimes have to wash all kinds of dirty deposits out through myself.

You could call it "Energy-Laundry".

And this, too, is generosity, and charity of its own kind.

Money doesn't exist in nature; it exists only in our heads. It's a simple agreement between people, and an illusory one. The dialogue of generosity happens at the level of energy, one way or another.

I'm generous with my energy and see no point in not sharing it. Why else am I here?

Generosity with money alone can never buy off all the rest.

Especially if the donation comes from the mind.

More importantly, financial help can sometimes spoil a situation and a person's life, unlike investing your energy in their destiny. Investing knowledge, wisdom, vision and opportunities that they must put to use themselves.

Can't give your energy? Unfortunately, then it's often better to give nothing than to give money.

May 2, 2024

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Papua New Guinea

A dish is a whole synthesis.

No, it's far from just food on a plate, cooked a certain way.

Every year I'm amazed at how colourful and many-sided a picture dishes start to paint for me.

Like many vegans, I suppose, I'm a big fan of delicious dishes made from plants that are no less tasty than versions with meat, dairy, fish, bread and even eggs.

But here's the question: does our perception of a dish stop at taste alone? The answer is no.

A couple of minutes ago, flying on a plane, I started recalling the tastiest vegan cafés in Bali, knowing I'd be in them in a couple of weeks.

I'm quite hungry and have barely eaten today, though it's already 4 pm.

At some point I caught myself realising I felt no desire or craving for them at all. I immediately asked myself: how so?

I had realised before that 99% of tasty vegan dishes aren't all that healthy, or all that nourishing. They're empty. And often they're even cooked in a way that harms the body.

If we're saying meat needs to be replaced somehow, vegan restaurants don't think about that at all.

Or rather, they've learned to replace meat in terms of taste. But real, quality replacement of micronutrients is almost never on the table.

It's as if it doesn't matter to them at all what you'll be digesting, or whether it will do you any good beyond the table of the restaurant where you're enjoying the meal.

Traditional cuisine works the same way, actually.

A Michelin restaurant never asks itself:

— In what proportion will I fill my guest's stomach with energetically valuable and energetically empty food? 70/30? 50/50? 20/80?

— Do I want my guest to have only something tasty? Or something good for them?

— Is food the meaning of human life?

Then why cook what shortens it and takes time away from life's other delights?

What mostly matters to restaurants is that their ingredients are edible on paper, audited and fresh. And of course they look for the most surprising combination of these substances to amaze their guests and win their love…

Continued in the comments 🐚

February 4, 2024

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Sahara Desert

The road to happiness

Happiness is born in synthesis. Of the body's movement and the thinking process. At the meeting point of the spiritual and the material. In the fusion of masculine and feminine. In the golden width of wisdom and simplicity.

Break all this into parts and you won't get happiness. Society so passionately teaches us to live in our heads.

We exercise separately in the gym, and then think separately, sitting at a school desk or a work desk. We create a new layer of reality that lives only in our heads and has nothing to do with the real world.

Like a game, this layer is full of levels, statuses and labels: what is good and what is bad, what is happiness and what is not.

Only the thought born in movement is real; everything else is an illusion of reflection and of connection with reality.

All because any thought is a recorded image of some aspect of the material world, which we built on the sensations of the body.

Tear the thinking process away from the physics of the body, and you end up in a world of illusion and non-objectivity.

And it is precisely the world of illusions that makes us suffer, being the direct opposite of happy objectivity.

In just the same way, we're driven into a fake spiritual world or psychology, made to spend such precious minutes of our lives unravelling tangles and pointlessly picking at ourselves.

Oh, come on.

99.9% of psychological illnesses and disorders exist only in the absence of movement and fresh air.

Any attempt to solve psychological problems inside yourself is doomed to fail.

It treats the effect, not the cause.

Our body is the subconscious turned inside out. To remove the cause, you need to change something in your way of life and in how you treat your body.

I recognise the value of being born on Earth and treat with equal respect both the spiritual path of enlightenment and the material path of becoming.

I see myself in balance, at the meeting point of these two worlds.

That's how it has been since childhood: I'm both this and that.

I belong here and there.

And in both packs I have a name and a word.

photo by @tebenik

October 19, 2023

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Fame and money came early. I wanted out of entertainment, and I tried several other industries in quick succession.

In Search of My Self: My First Existential Questions

Around 15, I found myself in an existential crisis. Who was I? Why was I here? Why had I been born into this family?

I changed what I ate, who I spent time with, and how I lived. I devoured books on business, personal growth, and spirituality.

Between 16 and 17, I completed four full Vipassana courses in the Goenka tradition — silent retreats with ten hours of meditation a day.

I’d always wanted to make a difference. I began questioning progress that seemed to prioritize speed, efficiency, and convenience over health and happiness.

I started to worry about the world around me: microplastics, ocean waste, processed food, and how modern life had drifted from the conditions that shaped us.

At one point, I wrapped up all my projects and seriously considered moving to the Himalayas to find a spiritual mentor and deepen my practice.

At 17, Nathaniel Popper’s Digital Gold sparked my fascination with blockchain and opened my eyes to a world beyond the centralized systems I found so limiting.

At the time, blockchain reminded me of nature’s own structures — from molecules to DNA.

I realized that financial systems, data storage, news, and social networks could all be decentralized. I began to see the possibilities this could unlock.

I realized my place was in the world, building things. I could contribute more that way than by retreating to the mountains.

Meditation taught me focus, patience, and persistence — skills that became invaluable in business.

Later, my spiritual mentor invited me to guide his students through meditation.

For two years, I volunteered as a speaker and meditation guide at global retreats for entrepreneurs, mostly via Zoom.

Total attendance across my sessions exceeded 20,000, including repeat participants.

At 17, after I spent 6 months traveling across Asia, I moved to Dubai.

The experience reshaped my worldview. Building successful projects is no longer enough for me. What matters now is whether they make people’s lives better.

Early awakening

Chapters: Early awakening · Awareness · Rethinking · Insight · Teaching · Purpose

Image captions and sources

Stefan Salad

Stefan Salad

A salad that put itself on the menu

Stefan

Famous

Mine

Mission

By 2024, one of the best-selling salads at L’ETO on Bluewaters Island in Dubai wasn’t on the menu. Waiters rang it up ingredient by ingredient; guests asked for it at other L’ETO branches, where nobody knew what they meant.

It was my salad. I never pitched or named it. Other people did.

At fifteen, I got serious about one question: what goes on my plate and what it does to my energy, skin and brain. I’m no scientist, just someone who’s spent a lifetime learning from his own body. Years of experimenting left me with a short list of foods that align with the way our bodies evolved. Together they became a dish — my daily source of stability, health and growth.

The paper cup. Hemp hearts, pine nuts, flax — the rest is classified.

Seven years. Same breakfast. A board and a knife. That’s it.

Because You’re Part of Nature

Image captions and sources

The story of the salad

For a year, the staff at L’ETO — where Dubai’s founders breakfast daily — were kind enough to make the salad to my recipe; whatever ingredients the kitchen didn’t have, I brought in a paper cup. Friends who had tried it started ordering it without me. They’d say two words: ‘Stefan’ and ‘salad’. The name stuck. After a month of working with the chef in 2024, it was on the menu at L’ETO and Secret Garden — now with every ingredient, the secret mix served on the side as a nod to the guy with the paper cup. Since I switched to clean eating, this had been the dream: a restaurant dish that actually meets the body’s needs.

The month with the chef.

Followers added it to UAE must-visit lists; some flew in just to try it. It spread on its own from there: fans across countries, people making it at home or handing the recipe to their chefs.

Translated from Russian

Coming from Moscow to try a salad by @stefan_studio at Leto on Bluewaters 😋

Starting the day with Stefan Salad.

Founders’ kitchens. Every morning.

Stefan, we’re about to try your salad.

Stefan Salad

The Luxury of Feeling Good

Their stories, not mine.

Then Moscow: private launches, founders and bloggers among the guests.

Cynics, Moscow. Real soil on the tables, wildflowers from fields outside the city.

SAPIENS, Moscow. Fifteen friends, three hours, one bowl.

One ingredient per guest. To learn the whole salad, you had to talk to strangers.

Today: two locations in Dubai, three in Moscow, with more countries to come.

5 restaurants

2 cities: Dubai & Moscow

~6,000 bowls

What If You Started Small?

Then came the idea: 10% of the salad’s revenue to a cause chosen by each region. L’ETO has sold over $27,000 of it; $2,700 went to Malawi. One Dubai salad = 21 school lunches in Malawi.

Malawi, the first delivery

The first delivery. Maize for a nursery of 48, 40 kg each for 25 families, a hot meal for 80 children. Next: wells.

$27,000+ sold at L’ETO

$2,700 to Malawi

21 school lunches from one Dubai salad

One Bowl. Whole World.

Next: a nonprofit, so every restaurant joining sees where the money goes. I take no cut and fund it myself.

Good Feeds Good.

Less Hacking. More Hugging.

The most profitable food brands exploit the brain’s oldest part: the craving for sugar, salt, and fat — right here and now. I’m building for that part of us that thinks beyond the moment and can say no.

Caesar can be found everywhere, but it does nothing for you. I want Stefan Salad to be just as common — but to leave you better off, physically and mentally. A conscious life can take many forms. This salad is just one of them.

I never set out to build it. It found me, and I’m grateful. The purest form of good I know. It gives me energy and meaning.

SALADbrate Your Life.

@stefansalad ↗

Website Coming soon

Image captions and sources

Links

Web3 — WOL

Early awething

Wol

Co-founder & CEO 2022–2026

View on GitHub

At 17, I co-founded WOL, a bootstrapped OTC crypto desk, and soon became CEO.

Inspired by Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer idea, we matched private buyers and sellers of crypto for direct trades, without a centralized exchange. We earned commissions or acted as the counterparty.

Marketing, sales strategy and brand positioning were on me. I attended 100+ events across Dubai, Singapore and beyond, securing our first clients.

Networking turned out to be one of my natural strengths, and I sharpened it at every event. I trained our BD team to listen deeply, make a friend before a client and never pitch first.

Assembled a team of over 20 people

As our team grew to 21 people, I hired every key person except in AML and KYC, which my partner ran. My interviews could run three or four hours. I asked how people grew up and where they were headed, to see who owns their life.

I’m not an engineer, but I worked out the process logic with our developers and made the security calls. Our DevOps engineer built our server infrastructure under my lead, and the team shipped a processing system with automated wallets and AML screening, and a range of internal software tools.

Bootstrapped Growth

$450,000

The Cost of a Mistake

$100,000

The End of WOL

5,000+

Conclusion

Being trusted with other people’s money changed how I approach responsibility and risk.

I put in $60K from my entertainment career, my partner about the same. We grew on reinvested profits and $450K in liquidity loans I raised, all repaid with interest.

An FX error in our books cost us $100K. I studied financial controlling at CA Controller Akademie, hired a controller and a CFO, and we moved to a daily close with solid management reporting.

The desk ran on people, didn’t scale and carried AML risk. For years we planned a pivot: a VARA crypto license in Dubai, then a neobank. In 2026, as we prepared to apply with lawyers, war broke out in the region and demand fell. In August, after 5,000+ trades for 1,500+ clients, we closed WOL while it was still profitable. It wasn’t an easy call.

Image captions and sources

Links

Now

Since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with two things: people and technology. I’d interview anyone — at 4, on a walk with my mom, a man in a manhole: who he was, where his wife was, what he did and how much he earned. The rest went to Kickstarter and dreams of inventing things. Apple and YouTube were made ten thousand kilometers from my childhood — and somehow for me.

Four years of a growing pull toward the Valley, I had decided to move to San Francisco before I ever heard about the Academy.

Where I come from, the game is scaling what exists. I’m built to start things. Going deep into completely different fields — media, blockchain, finance, nutrition, meditation — helped me see I was born into the right era: AI is made for people with range.

I intend to build a billion-dollar company — and now I know what for.

A year among builders — some of them future partners — learning from the best. I can’t remember the last time anything inspired me this much.

Writing this made me look at my own life again — and I enjoyed every hour. Thank you for reading.

Receipts

Receipts.

Every claim on this site, with its source. Last checked November 10, 2026.

Identity

Instagram — @stefan_studio · 419K followers ↗

YouTube — @stefanlifetv · 1.9M subscribers ↗

X — @stefan_studio ↗

Email — stefanfamo@gmail.com

YouTube

The counter hits 2M , 2019 — live video · unlisted ↗

Three most-viewed videos:

Legendary Vlog with Egor Korablev and Violetta Chikovani · 2019 · 14,333,697 views ↗

The Most Unexpected Vlog from Stefan, Wake Up Fast, and a Meeting with Top Bloggers · 2019 · 4,821,445 views ↗

Surprising My Friends with My Girlfriend Who Looks Just Like Ariana Grande · 2020 · 2,640,549 views ↗

Channel analytics, 2026 — screenshot

Silver and Gold Play Buttons , YouTube letters — photos

Producing

Egor Ship — YouTube, 2.4M subscribers ↗ · Instagram ↗ · TikTok ↗

Black Star , label artist page ↗

Speaking

Kazan Expo · Kazan · June 25, 2021 · 2,500 people · 90 min · Ambassador of Conscious Conception · I was 16 — recording ↗

Crocus City Hall · Moscow · September 11, 2021 · 10,000 people · 30 min · Ambassador of Conscious Conception · I was 16 — poster, photos

Balance People 3.0, Sibur Arena · St. Petersburg · December 14, 2022 · 5,000 people · 40 min · Ambassador of Conscious Conception · I was 18 — recording ↗

Invest Forum · Dubai · March 17, 2023 · 1,000 people · 60 min · Real Estate vs. Blockchain (panel) · I was 18 — poster, photos

Finance Forum · Moscow · September 23, 2023 · 1,400 people · 60 min · Money Is Overrated · I was 18 — poster, photos

BitWay Forum · Minsk · October 27, 2024 · 600 people · 90 min · Notes of a Crypto-Anarchist · I was 19 — poster, photos

Business Stand-Up by Oskar Hartmann · Minsk · October 10, 2025 · 1,000 people · 90 min · The Happy Entrepreneur's Wallet · I was 20 — poster, photos

Business Stand-Up by Oskar Hartmann · The Lana, Dubai · October 17, 2025 · 800 people · 2 × 50 min · The Happy Entrepreneur's Wallet · I was 20 — poster, photos

Private talk · Moscow · August 28, 2026 · 100 students, MIPT · MSU · HSE · 90 min · Ten Principles · I was 21 — closed event, no recording

Podcasts & shows (8.9M+ views across 13 appearances)

Podcasts

Headliners · Nikita Anufriev · July 28, 2023 · 269k views (RU) ↗

Polza s Dushoy · February 29, 2024 · 4.8k views (RU) ↗

Schastlivy Investor · December 14, 2025 · 8.7k views (RU) ↗

Marina Egorova TV · March 25, 2025 · 2.3k views (RU) ↗

Who is in Dubai · May 1, 2023 · 10.5k views (RU) ↗

Headliners · Nikita Anufriev · December 8, 2022 · 187k views (RU) ↗

Emil Panakhov Podcast · October 27, 2024 · 17.1k views (RU) ↗

Vladislav Utushkin · June 23, 2023 · 5.7k views (RU) ↗

Alexey Busov · January 19, 2024 · 3.3k views (RU) ↗

Shows with Egor Ship, 2019

Tsuefa · Molchanka #9 · October 9, 2019 · 2.6M views (RU) ↗

TinTok Lab · Poshazamim · November 21, 2019 · 2.6M views (RU) ↗

TinTok Lab · Poshazamim · November 28, 2019 · 1.8M views (RU) ↗

Tsuefa · Po Sharam · October 26, 2019 · 1.5M views (RU) ↗

Writing

Three posts:

The Absurdity of What’s Happening on Planet Earth · 2024 (RU) ↗

The Art of Observation · 2022 (RU) ↗

Great People · 2025 (RU) ↗

Messages from readers — screenshots, names hidden

Meditation

Guided online meditations for entrepreneurs — recordings not published, participants’ privacy.

Stefan Salad

Instagram — @stefansalad ↗

L'ETO, Bluewaters, Dubai — menu, Bowls ↗ · launch post ↗

Secret Garden, Dubai — post ↗

Cynics, Moscow — reel ↗ · reel ↗ · launch post ↗

Sapiens, Moscow — launch post ↗

Letters from the restaurants — originals

Malawi — partner's letter with expense breakdown · PDF · delivery video ↗

Mentions and reposts — Instagram highlight ↗

WOL

Financial controlling — two CA Controller Akademie diplomas · photo with the Akademie's CEO

Code — tron-cleanroom on GitHub ↗

Experiments

DexDox — X ↗

Studio Vastness 77 — YouTube ↗ · Instagram ↗

TTM Academy — website ↗ · Telegram ↗ · YouTube ↗ · Instagram ↗

BABF Capital, influencer agency, Stefan Shop, SAO Wallet — private, no public footprint

Press

Onliner · July 1, 2021 · A Wealthy Schoolboy’s Monologue (RU) ↗

Belarus 24 · TV interview · August 3, 2020 (RU) ↗

An Inside Look · Interview · February 5, 2023 (RU) ↗

Onliner · Interview · July 1, 2021 (RU) ↗

Not here

Closed companies have no live sites; licenses and archives are linked instead. Private deals, client names and financials are not published.

Links

A life in motion

8 years Started a YouTube channel.

14 years 2M subscribers, alone in Moscow.

16 years Spoke to 10,000 people.

17 years Nearly moved to the Himalayas.

19 years Regulars named a salad after me.

21 years Launched a Web3 startup

22 years Ask me in a Year.

A life

inLast updated November 2026

motion.

Text version ↗

stefanfamo@gmail.com

Links