Chicago Business

Issue date: 2/8/07 Section: GSB Life

Having to live through the experience of his family losing virtually all of its life savings as Soviet Union was collapsing may have been the best thing to ever happen to the Pavel Begun. The experience prompted Pavel to start his entrepreneurial career at a very young age in his native Belarus, to excel at school for a chance to pursue his dream of building an investment business in North America, and after earning an MBA from the Chicago Graduate School of Business, to start a rapidly-growing hedge fund.

As his parents lost their nest egg, Begun who was then only 11 years old, realized that he had to rely on himself to secure his financial future. "I saw business as the fastest and the most logical way of accomplishing that goal," says Begun. He took the first stab at running a business by selling produce at a local farmers market, but quickly progressed to more advanced businesses. At age 13 Begun started a business selling ad space in newspapers to local businesses in his hometown of Minsk, subsequently venturing into building materials distribution business, and years later, into newspaper publishing business. The latter became the last and the most successful venture for Begun in Belarus, as he built his accounting newspaper into one of the leading trade publications in the country by catering to the underserved accounting community. Just as he turned 20, Begun won a scholarship awarded to top students in Belarus to attend a university in the United States. As this gave him a chance to pursue his long-time dream of getting into investment business, something that was virtually non-existent in Belarus, Begun decided to sell the newspaper and move on. He ended up in Western Kentucky University, where he completed the finance program in just one and a half years to graduate at the top of his class with a 4.0 GPA.

Armed with a track record of managing personal investments, which he built up in strict adherence to value investing principles laid out by Benjamin Graham, Begun was looking to start an asset management business shortly after graduation. However, transplanting free-wheeling entrepreneurial spirit to North American soil proved to be a tough task at first, and Pavel ended up working as a securities analyst for A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. "At that point I realized that to succeed I had to complement my entrepreneurial drive with more structural knowledge and broader skill set, and this was where the University of Chicago GSB came in," recalls Begun. In 2000, as he turned 22, Pavel started taking classes at the GSB commuting to Chicago by plane on a weekly basis, as he continued working full time in St. Louis while concurrently pursuing a CFA designation. This made life very hectic for Begun for three years, but if not for the flexibility of the school's schedule and curriculum he would have never been able to prepare himself for starting a business in a timely and efficient fashion, says Begun. He also praises the GSB for providing him with tools to create a clear and consistent business development process. "It was much more than just academics… the greatest part was being able to learn from your classmates who had extensive experience of starting and running successful businesses in North America and around the world. This definitely helped me reshape my thinking about how to develop a successful business and gave me confidence and skills necessary to succeed," he adds. Developing relationships with classmates would also help him with business development down the road, as some of them became investors in the private investment partnership that he started following his stint at the GSB. "From our frequent discussions on valuing businesses it was apparent to me that Pavel's investment philosophies were sound, and that he had the intellect, the drive, and the depth of knowledge to be extraordinary successful… so when Pavel started his own firm I didn't hesitate even for a second to invest with him," says Begun's fellow alumnus Michael Ketcham, a marketing manager for Roche Diagnostics in Indianapolis.

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools