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Projects rarely become profitable right away, but if one learns from their mistakes and does not give up, success is sure to follow. In its six years of existence, the Timepad project has had its ups and downs, but in the end it became a market leader. Timepad’s creators – Ludmila Pavlova, Daria Ustyuzhanina, and Artem Kiselev, all HSE alumni – told Success Builder about the advantages of the Russian market, how to avoid spending money on advertising, and how to earn over 100 million rubles without selling your idea.

The Recycle project began as an online journal about living an environmentally friendly lifestyle in the city, but in less than a year it went offline into real life. Now its staff members organize recycling collection points, give lectures at large companies and battle the myth that sustainability always has a tinge of craziness. In this edition of ‘Success Builder’, Recycle cofounder Elena Barysheva tells about people’s willingness to change, Wi-Fi enabled recycling centres and inexpensive environmentally friendly products.

Is it easy being a Russian clothing designer when factories cost, China sews, and discounts on cheap foreign brands can reach 70%? Everything is in authorship. HSE alumna Luda Nukishina tells Success Builder why business must be done in Moscow, how a Russian designer is better than H&M, and how to make things that people will definitely buy.

Urban studies is a new field of study for Russia that is devoted to the sustainable development and use of city space. As part of the Success Builder project, Egor Korobeynikov, who is the creator of UrbanUrban and an HSE alumnus, talks about how he turned into an urbanist from a bank teller, and also about why Moscow should not be made into Europe and what officials need to be told.

January 28 saw the launch of a Kickstarter project developed by graduates from the HSE’s International College of Economics and Finance (ICEF).

In November, Ilya Azar, a journalist and graduate of the Higher School of Economics, won the HSE Alumni Awards in the category ‘Fourth Estate’. In this edition of Success Builder, Ilya speaks about how to get a job in the media, what journalistic ethics are, and how to survive in the hot spots without body armour.

A great idea is not enough for a startup; you have to be persistent in your search for investors, never give up, and find talented engineers ready to solve random technical issues for the sake of an ‘idea.’ Grachik Adjamyan, who is a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM) and the creator of the projects Budist.ru and Wakie.com, tells Success Builder how he overcame a number of hurdles in building his startup and headed to Silicon Valley to find investors.

According to Maxim Chernin, director of Sberbank Insurance and HSE graduate, you need to be a good psychologist when proposing life insurance to a client. He tells us what it's like to work in the business of 'human life', whether creativity has any place in insurance work and how to inculcate a culture of medical check-ups.

In November 2014 the film 'The Son' about the problems of choice in a typical life and death existential situation went on general release in Russia. It is independent filmmaker Arseny Gonchukov’s third full-length feature film. In the 'Success Builder' series he talks about how to shoot and promote auteur cinema on a minimal budget and win film festival prizes.

'Success Builder' is a section about what happens with HSE alumni after graduate — how they build their careers, how they gain recognition in their field, how they handle failure. Katya Bermant, HSE graduate, is working to develop the charity industry in Russia by using Western models and adapting them to the Russian context. She gives lectures, teaches specialist classes, conducts educational activities, and invents and implements creative fundraising methods.