Oleg Tumanov and the price of pressing play

A person sits down to watch a film and spends the next twenty minutes choosing one. Streaming has supplied the entertainment and, with admirable efficiency, invented another chore. Oleg Tumanov has spent much of his working life on the business behind that small domestic predicament. His answer, expressed in a 2025 interview, is pleasingly severe: the ideal service might offer you just one film. It would, of course, have to be the right film.

There is a banker's economy to that thought. Tumanov came to online video after working in international finance. There is also something of the composer in it. He writes music, with a catalogue that travels through Brazilian and Italian collaborations. Selecting, arranging, removing what gets in the way: these are useful habits in either occupation. A viewer, like a listener, would prefer the machinery to remain backstage.

Ivi, the streaming service he founded, launched in 2010. Making the machinery work required more than films and an internet connection. Tumanov had to help build a business around people who were accustomed to finding entertainment free. Then he had to adjust it as the screens, competitors and financing conditions changed. The play button was the simple part.

The long route to the living room

Born in Moscow in 1965, Tumanov graduated from the Moscow Financial Institute in 1986. His professional itinerary subsequently included Mosbusinessbank, Ladenburg Thalmann in New York, Banque Unexim Suisse in Geneva and Alfa-Bank. In 1996, he undertook executive education at Wharton and a financial management programme at Harvard Business School. These were programmes for an established career in finance, rather than an undergraduate detour into cinema.

He later led Access Industries in Russia and the CIS. The work brought him into an investment group with interests extending across industry, telecommunications and media. In his account of the move toward entrepreneurship, the desire to build something of his own sits beside a practical interest in technology. Digital distribution was already changing the businesses around him. He wanted to take part in making the change.

A conventional account might make the banking years a preamble to the interesting bit. They deserve more room. Streaming asks someone to balance rights, distribution, software, capital and uncertain demand. Financial experience does not answer those questions automatically. It does provide an appreciation of how many separate promises must hold before a business can deliver one apparently effortless service.

A music venture changes the programme

The venture that led to Ivi began with music distribution. Tumanov described assembling a company involving Warner, Sony and Russian partners. Getting the parties together took time; agreement on how to sell their catalogues proved troublesome afterward. An impressive list of participants could still produce a business that struggled to move.

There was, however, a team worth keeping. Working with investor Leonid Boguslavsky, Tumanov helped redirect the company toward online video. That sequence matters. Ivi emerged from people and relationships already assembled for another purpose. Its origin contains negotiation, frustration and a change of programme, rather than a perfectly illuminated moment when everyone suddenly saw the same future.

Music remained in the business's early orbit. An October 2010 announcement for iviMusic described a service with roughly 30,000 licensed music videos and agreements involving the four major music groups of the time. Users could build playlists and share them. The release also anticipated access through phones and tablets. Distribution was already becoming a question of which device people would reach for.

“Entrepreneurship is constant composition.”

Oleg Tumanov, 2022 interview
Translated from Russian

The metaphor is his, and it is useful without being mystical. A composition has an arrangement; a company does too. When the parts fail to work together, another arrangement may be necessary. Keeping the team while changing the business gave this particular revision something concrete to build on.

The expensive business of competing with free

Ivi initially used advertising to make legal viewing available without asking every viewer to pay. The American service Hulu offered a reference point for that approach. This was a practical response to the market Tumanov described: audiences were used to free access, and a licence agreement was unlikely to change an evening's habits by itself.

There were two difficult sales to make. Viewers had to find the legal service worth using. Rights holders had to find the developing market worth supporting. In a 2017 interview, Tumanov argued that demanding too much income immediately could restrict the growth that would produce future returns. He wanted the owners of films to think about the market they were helping to create.

His account of early production experiments was similarly measured. Ivi had participated in two projects in 2016, entering late in their development. He described those investments as a way to learn how privileged digital rights and earlier release windows might work. The company was testing an economic relationship with films before assuming a larger creative role.

That is a less glamorous version of the entertainment business than the premiere photograph usually allows. Someone has to decide when a film becomes available, what access costs and whether enough customers will arrive. The red carpet is pleasantly straightforward by comparison. It rarely requires a spreadsheet.

The sofa had different economics

The payment story became more interesting when the company looked beyond an average customer. In his 2025 recollection, Tumanov described early paid-content results that missed the business plan by a factor of ten. Breaking the audience down by device revealed an uneven picture. Smart TV and iOS users were more willing to pay; web and Android viewers were much less so.

Ivi adapted the product and its commercial approach to those environments. Tumanov also recalled separate development and marketing plans for devices, and efforts to make the service easy to find on televisions. A button on a remote control belonged in the same discussion as the catalogue. So did the distance between opening an application and actually watching something.

The lesson has an agreeably domestic setting. One film can be the same file across several screens while belonging to different customer routines. A television, a phone and a browser are different entrances into the evening. Treating them as interchangeable can hide the very behaviour that makes the business viable.

Personal recommendations fit into that concern with effort. The customer who already knows the title needs access. The customer who wants something enjoyable needs help choosing. A catalogue can serve both, but the second task requires more judgment from the product. Tumanov's one-film ideal takes that judgment to its logical, slightly unnerving conclusion.

Money for the next episode

By 2019, Ivi's financing was explicitly tied to expanding the offering and making more original content. A $40 million round brought together existing and new investors, including RDIF and Mubadala. The company was moving further into a business where viewers might subscribe for something they could associate with the service itself.

A larger financing decision followed in 2021. Ivi had prepared for a public offering, but a proposed restriction concerning foreign ownership of streaming services disrupted the plans. It turned instead to a private round of $250 million. The financing route changed while the need to fund technology, programmes and audience growth remained.

That year, Ivi reported revenue of 11.9 billion rubles, up 35%. TMT Consulting put its share of Russia's streaming market at 26%. Those numbers describe the scale reached during Tumanov's tenure. They also make clear how far the company had travelled from the problem of introducing legal video to reluctant paying customers.

Scale brought company. Ivi faced services connected to larger groups, including Yandex's Kinopoisk and Sber's Okko. In a 2021 interview, Tumanov likened the work to running up a downward escalator. The image captures an awkward feature of this business: improvement can be necessary simply to keep your position. Buying another film does not persuade a competitor to take the afternoon off.

Two exits, a month apart

On April 15, 2022, Nikolay Vasilkov succeeded Tumanov as chief executive. Tumanov moved to the board chairmanship, explaining the value of separating operational and strategic responsibilities. The following month, the company announced his departure from that position too, saying he would concentrate on new projects.

The dates give the story a definite change of pace. A founder can remain closely attached to a company's identity after leaving its management. An introduction can preserve an old title for years. Tumanov's Ivi career needs both facts kept in view: he built the service, and he subsequently stopped running it.

A later public introduction by investor network VNTR placed him in New York and described angel investments, fund commitments and advisory work with Flashpoint. His July 2025 podcast appearance addressed starting again after Ivi, alongside interests in technology and artificial intelligence. The operating company had become one part of a broader professional history.

There is still music to write

The musical work supplies a different set of titles. His catalogue includes On the Way from Brazil, Forgotten Home and Italian Affair. His collaborators include Chucho Valdés, João Donato and Chiara Civello. In 2026, his composer site added Francesco Baccini's single Franco Califano, with music by Tumanov.

These are finished works people can hear, rather than an ornamental hobby added to a business biography. They give the career another audience and another kind of deadline. A song can move through performers, arrangements and recordings; a company moves through partners, products and customers. The resemblance is an appealing way to read his history, even if neither activity offers instructions for succeeding at the other.

The recurring decision is what to make next. Tumanov's career has already accommodated a banker's international itinerary, a music-distribution venture, a streaming service and a return to new projects. For the person still scrolling through films, his ambition remains refreshingly specific. Make the choice easier. Let the evening begin.