Ruslan Kogan


Ruslan Kogan is a serial entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Kogan.com 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. His wealth has multiplied more than 20 times in half a decade, making him number 162 of the richest 200 in BRW Australia's Rich List 2014, and one of the top 10 richest in Australia's Young Rich List 2014, with a personal wealth of $349 million. in 2020 Ruslan Kogan was valued at $667 million by the Rich List research team.
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 them for their handling of the Set Top Box 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 giving his views on Facebook, a guest article for Fast Company about the importance of social proof in business, a guest article for VentureBeat about affiliate marketing, a guest post on Gizmodo outlining his opposition to the filter and The Age 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. In 2015, he was interviewed on the Bloomberg Television series High Flyers.

Early life

Ruslan Kogan was born to Belarusian parents, and moved with his sister Svetlana and parents to Australia in 1989.
Kogan grew up in the Elsternwick Housing Commission flats, and started his first business at the age of 10 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 20 businesses since the age of 10, with Kogan.com being his most recent and most successful venture.
Kogan attended Brighton Secondary College and Melbourne High School before going on to complete a Bachelor of Business Systems at Monash University.
By the age of 23, he had worked at the IT departments of Bosch, GE, Telstra, and was a management consultant at Accenture.

Starting Kogan

Kogan left his job at Accenture in 2006, and started Kogan.com at the age of 23 in 2006 from his parents' garage in Melbourne, Australia.
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, Canon, Nikon, Samsung, Motorola and others.
Kogan achieved $3 million in its third year, followed by $8 million in the fourth, $22 million in the fifth, $70 million in the sixth, and over $200 million in the seventh year. The Wall Street Journal speculates Kogan is worth over $400M. More than 2 million products have been delivered by Kogan, with daily sales of more than $1 million.
Having started with no external funding or capital, Kogan.com has grown to become one of Australia's fastest-growing businesses in any industry.

Awards

Kogan and his company Kogan.com have won the following awards:
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 Chrome OS before multinationals like Samsung 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 and Caitlyn Jenner.

Personal life

Ruslan Kogan was the first Australian to register as a passenger on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic sub-orbital spaceflight, having paid a deposit on the US$200,000 ticket.
Kogan and his wife Anastasia reside in Melbourne, Australia.