From Oura to ElevenLabs: Sergey Tokarev on His Approach to Investing
When investors use the products they back, they gain a clearer understanding of their practical value. First-hand experience reveals what the product actually does, whether it is worth using regularly and how it helps people make decisions.
While growing sales indicate customer interest, seeing a product become part of everyday routines provides a clearer picture of how long that interest might last. Investor and Tokarev Foundation founder Sergey Tokarev discussed the advantages and limitations of this approach, drawing on real-world examples.
How Personal Experience Helps Investors Understand a Product
According to Tokarev, using a product yourself can provide a better understanding of the role it plays in people’s lives. He gained this experience with an Oura smart ring.
“I invested in Oura before smart rings became popular. I started wearing one after becoming a shareholder, and today almost everyone in our group’s senior leadership team wears one too. The ring analyses my heart rate and body temperature, showing me every morning how well my body has recovered after sleep. Over time, I began to understand how travelling, intense training and late business meetings affect my recovery. I started taking this into account when planning particularly demanding days,”says Sergey Tokarev, investor and founder of Tokarev Foundation.
The same principle applies to the technology his team uses at work. For example, the group’s PR team actively uses ElevenLabs, an AI-powered service that creates voiceovers and dubbing for videos and podcasts in more than 70 languages.
Using this tool in real working conditions has revealed:
- How much time is needed to achieve the desired result.
- Where it genuinely saves time and resources.
- Which tasks still require manual intervention.
This information helps investors understand which parts of a workflow customers are willing to entrust to a service and what they are prepared to pay for.
“When you use a product yourself, you begin to understand how it becomes part of everyday life and what it actually changes. These are insights that no report can provide,” adds Sergey Tokarev.
Another example is Rollstack, a service that automatically transfers up-to-date data into slides and documents. It has helped the investor’s team save time on updating reports and presentations by eliminating repetitive manual work.
Tokarev believes that experiencing a problem first-hand makes it much easier to recognise the value of a new solution. However, understanding the problem does not necessarily demonstrate its market potential. Investors first need to establish how often other teams encounter the same issue, what prevents them from changing their usual workflows and what such a change would cost them.
Assessing a Product’s Financial Prospects
Even satisfied customers do not necessarily indicate business success. A product may be genuinely useful and popular while the company behind it is valued too highly relative to its potential earnings. Investors therefore need to understand why people are willing to pay for a product, how much it costs to acquire and serve customers, and whether profitability can improve as the business scales.
According to Sergey Tokarev, a lasting customer need does not guarantee the continued popularity of a particular product. People will always want to improve their sleep, for example, but more convenient and accurate ways of tracking it may emerge over time. Companies therefore need to understand what keeps their customers coming back, whether it is the clarity of the explanations provided, the quality of the information or ease of use.
As AI brings similar analytical features to more products, companies will need to give customers stronger reasons to stay. Useful technology alone may no longer be enough to stand out.