Dasha Kroshkina is a 27-year-old ambitious entrepreneur with a hustling mindset. She became McKinsey’s Next Generation Women Leaders award winner in 2017 and the Seedstars’ global winner in 2020. She founded StudyFree — an EdTech startup that connects students with education opportunities abroad in order to make international opportunities available for everyone equally.

Can you tell our readers about your background?
I was born in a town where opportunities regarding ambitions are minimized. The desire to leave my comfort zone and explore the world drove me to attend one of the top universities in Russia. Then, I continued my educational journey by winning over $100k worth of scholarships and grants to study abroad in Spain, China, and the USA. At 27 I created StudyFree, which is now helping over 34,000 students worldwide to receive over $4m worth of scholarships and grants. In 2017, I became a McKinsey Next Generation Women Leaders award winner, and I started the company back in 2018. As the company grew, I was awarded the Seedstars Global Competition award in 2020 and became its first female winner. I was also selected to participate in two accelerators: Berkeley’s SkyDeck and TechStars New York.

What inspired you to start your business?

The idea came from my own personal experience since I have received international education from leading universities in three countries. Learning that other talented students all over the world do not have access to these international opportunities motivated me to build my startup so that I could help millions of students worldwide to fulfill their study dreams.

Where is your business based?

Our startup is based in the US, but our team operates all throughout the world. I’m based in the US whereas some members of our teamwork in Poland, Nigeria, Brazil, and Russia, just to name a few.

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

The first business idea came to my mind when I was studying at a business school in China: I realized that my experience with scholarships and grants could be valuable for many students who didn't even know about studying abroad opportunities.

I started my business journey as a mentor - as a freshman, I came to visit my hometown (a provincial Russian town) and held a small event where I shared my experience of studying in different countries with scholarships. Four people came to me straight after the presentation: they had a yearning too, but they didn’t know where to start. I was able to help them, and eventually, they all successfully entered Chinese universities with scholarships.

I realized that there was a demand so I created a webpage. Then, thanks to word of mouth, people started to visit it.

On April 25th, 2018, we held our first webinar - the applications started to come in, and we began to develop our startup. I believe that is the day when StudyFree was truly founded.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

We mainly focus on data-driven social media marketing (Facebook and Instagram). This approach proved to work best for our market and product. We start by reaching out to a wide audience and sharing information that education abroad is possible. In this case, we apply paid marketing tools. Then, this data is converted, and as a result, the more people receive the message, the more the organic traffic grows.

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

The main challenge has been the impostor syndrome. When you start something new and you start to recruit people who possess more expertise in the field, it seems like you’re not enough and that you’re not ready. If you happen to achieve great results, it almost feels like it’s not because you have good entrepreneurial thinking, but rather because it’s just luck. I haven’t found a way to overcome this syndrome yet, however, I find that self-appreciation is a great tool to address it step-by-step.

How do you stay focused?

Staying focused is one of the hardest things for me because I have a lot of energy. However, meditation (10 minutes in the morning) has greatly helped me in staying focused and organizing my thoughts.

What’s more, long term strategic planning helps me to prioritize the main goals for me and my business.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

Before StudyFree, the international education market was dominated by college-focused greedy companies. They consisted of expensive consultants who often didn’t connect students with the best opportunities in an affordable way.

I directed my expertise and passion to create the first student-centric scalable product that democratizes the whole international experience for students across the world and opened a whole new market with approximately 25 million students worldwide. From evaluating the admission chances to choosing the most relevant program according to the student’s academic performance, our platform also provides access to exam preparation materials, samples of documents, and a large community of mentors. We have truly digitalized the whole application process.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

Our main marketing tool is our automated daily webinar. When we created StudyFree, we started holding these daily webinars explaining the main concepts of studying abroad, the opportunities, and the product itself. Then, we found a way to do it automatically: we now have a special platform that simulates a live webinar — a presentation, a Livestream, and even live comments. Therefore, when a person joins the webinar, they think that it’s fully live. With this strategy, we now have more than 150 webinars running every day in different time zones.

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

Don’t let potential hurdles block your path to success. You already have what it takes and even more, so don’t be afraid to step up. What’s more, don’t be afraid of asking for help if you need it: you are not alone in this world.

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

My favorite apps are Headspace and Oura. Whereas Headspace helps me to stay focused and recharge my batteries, Oura helps me to track my activities during the day, my sleep, and my overall well being.

As for blogs, I’m fond of psychology and biohacking ones. During these last few months, I have had a really hectic schedule with only 5 hours of sleep, so I’m now trying to get to the roots of health, and how our body functions in order to improve this.

Book - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

My favourite business tool is Miro. It’s super useful for remote work, cross-functional projects, and also for brainstorming.

Who is your business role model? Why?

I am inspired by many different people (no one is perfect - everyone has their own strength). The first person that comes to mind is Elon Musk. His vision and ability to see beyond existing norms truly inspires me. It’s amazing to see how he has created everything he needs to rebuild the system, and in turn, reshaped the world.

I am also inspired by Jeff Besos's talent as an entrepreneur building one of the most efficient, competitive, and growing companies in the world. For me, the vision itself is not inspiring if I cannot create anything solid from it.

Sheryl Sandberg's people's oriented values are also a great source of motivation - though ultimately, for me, people are the core and their business is their resource, not vice versa.

How do you balance work and life?

Work-life balance? Seriously? Well, sometimes I have time to eat, and if I am lucky, I get time to sleep. That's my balance. But overall I have developed a daily routine that helps me to stay charged for the long-term.

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

The best way for me to decompress is to dedicate some time to morning outdoors functional training, or spending time by the water. I am an emotional and energetic person, so I need to find ways to let this energy out (especially the negative ones). For instance, I bought a mini punching bag last week - it has helped tremendously with coping with stress.

What do you have planned for the next six months?

We plan to demonstrate 10X growth till the end of 2021, as well as to strengthen our positions in the markets of Africa, India, and Latin America. We’re also thinking about a potential expansion towards the South-East Asia part of the world.

Furthermore, we will direct our efforts to go beyond traditional education programs, and build an ecosystem of partnerships to connect students with the best educational opportunities offline as well as online. As we build a student-centric product, we’d like to enhance our global community of students as well.

How can our readers connect with you?

Readers can reach out to me at:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/kroshkad?igshid=clzm8r856s2r

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dasha.kroshkina

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kroshkina_dasha?s=21

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/daria-kroshkina