Maelle Gavet Quotes

If you have drive and energy, everything is possible.

Consumers learn the value of being sure that what you want to buy is what you buy.

The biggest deficit in terms of gender equality at Ozon lay in our IT department. So we made a decision, along with our key IT leaders, to remove all filters and systemically interview all the women who apply.

From the consumer perspective, what happened in the U.S. 10 years ago and Europe five years ago is now happening in Russia. People are beginning to understand that e-commerce is easy and safe.

E-commerce is applicable to Russia, just as it's applicable to any other market.

The problem is Silicon Valley, which is an amazing ecosystem, also ends up being an amazing bubble, with white guys talking to white guys about white-guy problems. So it's great, but you kind of miss a lot of things around you.

A great deal of energy is spent daily on pushing the Russian e-commerce boom along while managing all aspects of growth and development along the way.

When online business first appeared, a lot of operations would take your order and then disappear.

After I completed the project for BCG, I was offered the position of Director of Marketing for Ozon.ru.

Money, while clearly helpful in solving myriad problems, can often conceal a business's real flaws. It can also risk rigidifying a company's business model at the very moment it should be in 'customer discovery' mode or iterating around market opportunities.

Investors have finally woken up to the fact that there is something called the 'Russian Internet' into which you can invest.

I think Russia is a difficult country, and it's very difficult for people to adapt here, especially if they don't speak the language well.

My advice to anyone would be to focus on your current job and be the best at it. The rest will take care of itself.

I do not like the idea that a Russian company cannot be successful without Western experience. I think that, at the end of the day, it is a question of bringing benchmarks from other countries. So far, the golden benchmark has been the West.

At Ozon, salaries are evaluated every year based on market benchmarks which are gender neutral.

Russians are not a very friendly people. It's hard to get them to speak nicely to the customers. It's just not in their culture.

It simply isn't acceptable for the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon and others, which amass data by the terabyte, to say, 'Don't worry, your information's safe with us, as all sorts of rules protect you' - when all evidence suggests otherwise.

There's always a fine line between being too focused and missing opportunities, or being too wide and taking on too many.

Russia is an amazing country to be an entrepreneur.

Competition is good because we need to educate customers, and Ozon.ru itself will not be able to do it.

There is very little room for relaxation, but as long as I capitalize on those brief moments of peace, I'm okay with that.

The general message would be to say to all these young people: If you have entrepreneurial aspirations, there is money, there are consumers, there is a huge market. The only thing you need to do is to go there and start doing things.

Not only is self-regulation largely a fantasy, but repeated scandals across multiple industries have proved that companies are fundamentally incapable of self-regulating for the greater good.

Ozon.ru is made up of four businesses. Ozon.ru is an online retailer, O'Courier focuses on shipping, Ozon.Travel, and our most recent acquisition, Sapato, the leading online shoe and accessory retailer.

I can tell you that when you're counting every penny, knowing that you are a single bad decision away from bankruptcy, you inevitably lose focus on what really matters for your business.

The Russian customers don't feel very comfortable with online transactions.

I have learned that I must take a holiday at least once each year if I want to survive!

I tell my colleagues that it is actually all right to make mistakes, and I am worried when they do not make them, because it means that they either hide them from me or are not trying hard enough.

When a handful of tech giants are gatekeepers to the world's data, it's no surprise that the debate about balancing progress against privacy is framed as 'pro-data and, therefore, innovation' versus 'stuck in the Dark Ages'.