Aleksei Zakharets

Founder & captain · 3 years · economics olympiad team, Gymnasium No. 22

If I can't find the environment I need, I build it myself.

›Persuaded the school to establish an economics major.
›Brought in the region's strongest coach.
›Brought 3 future winners of the All-Russian Economics Olympiad to the team.
›The team wins 20+ diplomas a year from Russia's officially listed national olympiads, which admit students to the country's best universities (HSE, MSU and others) without entrance exams.
›Received more than $30k in grants over 3 years.

Grant documents, with English translations: 2023 · 2024 · 2025

Aleksei at a lecture with the economics team, holding a phone and a stylus — At a lecture.

A full room of students at an open lecture on microeconomics — An open lecture on microeconomics, for every school in the city.

The senior squad of the club at a training session — The senior squad at a training camp before the national rounds.

The teacher explaining a solution, holding her dog — The teacher is explaining a solution as hard as she can, and her dog is calming her down.

President · UP! self-government team · Gymnasium No. 22, Kaliningrad

«Mom, who cares that I have a fever, there's an UP! event today, I'm going to school!»

Raised: $50k in national grants for the gymnasium.
Led: The team to Top 2 of the National Student Council, among 1,500+ schools. Brought in 100+ new members.
Ran: 100+ academic and entertainment events together with other schools.
Moved: Charity drive to 41% participation, the largest in the school's recent history. Students entering academic competitions: 20 → 43.
Founded: The gymnasium museum and a school-wide newspaper.

The UP! page on VK: vk.ru/upgymn22

The structure

At the top are two fully independent bodies: the gymnasium president and the Parliament. Below them, the president and the department heads together form the core, the steering body that designs the project work of the UP! departments.

Media and communications

Media centre
SPEAK UP! podcast
News page
UP! TO DATE newspaper

Publication design
Training event hosts
Event management
Visuals and media for events
Writing event scripts

Olympiad movement

Getting more students into olympiads
Running quiz games
Supervising the gymnasium’s olympiad team
Organising meetings and conferences

Student initiative

Accepting and reviewing student requests
Negotiating with the administration on the basis of those requests

The events

Students applauding at an open meeting with a student of the joint HSE and NES programme — An open meeting with a student of the joint HSE and NES programme, the best economics university in Russia.

Students and guests from Moscow State University, HSE and MGIMO on stage at the closing event of Prof Week — Prof Week, a week of career guidance for students, closed with a meeting with representatives of Russia’s best universities: Moscow State University, HSE and MGIMO.

Members of the media department taking a group selfie in the assembly hall before an event — The media department gets the hall ready for an event.

A student speaking at a lectern next to a screen with a video call, at an open meeting with winners of an MGIMO competition — An open meeting with the winners of a nationwide academic competition run by MGIMO University.

Players and organisers of the What? Where? When? game on the hall stage, some holding diplomas — The final of *What? Where? When?*, the Russian team quiz game, between the school’s strongest students.

Walking shelter dogs along a country track at sunset — A charity trip to a dog shelter.

The old gym for the younger classes: bare walls, wall bars and worn blue mats — Before: the gym for the younger classes, built in 1975.After: the school history museum.

The same room as the school history museum: lit display cases, trophies and a wall of panels on the school's history — Before: the gym for the younger classes, built in 1975.After: the school history museum.

The paper

Two members of the media department asleep at a desk next to a laptop with the newspaper layout open — The media department at school at 9 p.m. We took the school keys so we could stay the night and finish designing the paper.

The first printed issues of UP! TO DATE from December 2021 spread on a desk with red gymnasium wristbands — The first issues of the paper: still a bit ugly, but students took all 100 copies within the first 30 minutes.

The cover of the latest UP! TO DATE issue, titled Half a year of motivation, with the contents list — The latest issue. After it came out, we got more than 15 requests for design workshops and organised them. Students from 7 other schools in the region came to see the paper and pick up copies. 750 copies were gone in a single school day.

Co-founder · 2020–2022 · age 12–15

FutSafe — our goal is your safety.

Scale: ~800deals

#2in Google

5countries

~$8,500profit, above a local annual salary
Built: The pricing rules operators worked from

A playbook for keeping deals invisible to EA

Scripted replies and the site’s documents

Two mailing funnels
Status: Closed in 2022. futsafe.ru is down.

Read the full case study ›

Co-founder · summer 2026 – now

The short version of a book

To create a new reading medium
Equal to the full book in its quality

Results: −0.3%length error on an English narrative chapter; my first good version missed by 34.8%

47readers so far

79%of readers made a second book within a week of their first
Solved: Taught the AI to rewrite text the way a native speaker would.

Worked out how to make the AI know exactly how many words are in a book and how much to compress it.

Read the full case study ›

Livediple.ai/mvp

Founder · paused until it snows

Melt

My mother slipped on the ice and broke her leg, and because the diagnosis she was given was wrong, it healed badly: the fastest she can move now is a limp. The doctor was terrible, yes. But the real problem was that she never expected ice to cost her that much, and she is far from the only one who did not.

›Led a team of five.
›Mentored by the mechanical engineering lab at Polytech, the strongest teaching lab in the country.
›Designed a snow-removal robot that takes the ice off the ground before anyone walks on it.
›Built a working prototype out of a modular robotics kit.
›Wrote the firmware on the robot. It works two ways: you drive it from a phone over Bluetooth, so nobody has to walk next to it, or you set two points of a route and it covers the whole way and does the job on its own.

We drive the robot from a phone with GyverJoy (Android only for now).

The prototype on the test run.

3D render of the Melt robot — The first version.

The second version.

The Melt prototype: tracked chassis, front brush, reagent hopper — The prototype, built from a modular robotics kit.

A simulation of the robot working through snow.

A project for the soul · four of us · one summer

Loft

01I wanted a place to work, and the idea was to take over our garage — there would finally be room. My parents said the car wasn't going anywhere, and offered the loft instead. It was being used as storage.
02I got my friends together and we started throwing ideas at it.
03In the end, we had a clear plan.
04We started by painting the walls.
05Laying the floor.
06Putting up the board, the table and the shelves.
07Cutting and gluing the stencils.
08Final touches. The loft is now where all our projects and all our energy sit together, in one secret room.