Ruslan Kogan (born November 1982[1][4]) is an Australian entrepreneur known as founder and CEO of Kogan.com, as well as several other ecommerce companies in Australia.[5][6][7] 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 Review2020 Rich List as A$575 million.[8][9]
Kogan holds several publicised controversial views regarding the consumer technology industry, expressing his opposition to the Australian Government's proposed internet filter[10][self-published source?] as well as lambasting the government for their handling of the Set Top Box Scheme.[11][self-published source?] 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.[12][13]
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,[14] a guest article for Fast Company about the importance of social proof in business,[15] a guest article for VentureBeat about affiliate marketing,[16] a guest post on Gizmodo outlining his opposition to the filter[17] and The Age regarding the future of TV.[18] He was also a guest columnist for business magazine BRW throughout 2011,[19] and has on several occasions provided guest opinions on the world's largest technology blog, TechCrunch.[20][21] In 2015, he was interviewed on the Bloomberg Television series High Flyers.[22]
Early life
Ruslan Kogan was born to Belarusian-Jewish parents,[23][24] and moved with his sister Svetlana and parents to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in 1989.[25] 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[25] to golfers at Elsternwick Golf Course on Saturday mornings.[26] Kogan was interested in technology from an early age, building his first computer at the age of nine.[27] He has started approximately twenty businesses since the age of ten, with Kogan.com being his most recent and most successful venture.[28]
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.[30][31]
Kogan.com
Kogan started Kogan.com in his parents' Melbourne garage in 2006, aged 23 years.[32] The company rapidly expanded to a broader range of products such as Digital Radios, GPS devices, netbooks, tablets, and video cameras,[33][self-published source?] and in September 2011 began selling complementary products from a range of brands including Apple, Canon, Nikon, Samsung, Motorola and others.[34]
Kogan achieved A$3 million in sales in its third year,[35] followed by A$8 million in year four,[36]A$22 million in year five,[37]A$70 million in year six,[38] and over A$200 million in the seventh year.[39] In 2013 The Wall Street Journal speculated that Kogan was worth over US$400 million.[40] More than two million products were delivered by Kogan.com, with daily sales of more than A$1 million.[41]
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.[30][42][43][44]
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."[45] 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.[46] In Australia, he launched a laptop running the open-source version of Google's ChromeOS before multinationals like Samsung and Acer could launch their own products.[47]
Criticism
Kogan is known for using social media to take a swipe at his competitors[48] and has been accused of making 'outlandish statements' through his company's blog about giant retailers like JB Hi-Fi.[49] At Kickstart Forum 2008, in Gold Coast Australia, Kogan was called a 'loudmouthed punk', when he said the future of retail was heading online.[50] 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.[51]
