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Sergey Galitskiy
Co-founder & Strategic Partner
At the press conference announcing the sale of Magnit, Sergey Galitskiy trembled and asked for water. Managing 300,000 employees had made morning phone calls unbearable—'I started dying,' he confessed. The $2.5 billion exit freed him for passion projects: a football club that won the 2025 championship and a winery that achieved ₽399M profit despite cancer and his wife's death.
Transformation Arc
At the February 2018 press conference announcing the sale of Russia’s largest retailer, Sergey Galitskiy trembled. He asked for water. He barely completed his remarks. The man who built Magnit into 16,000 stores and 300,000 employees was finished—and about to become a winemaker.
In ancient Rome, they believed every gladiator must die at the right time and with dignity.
The Weight of Three Hundred Thousand #
Sergey built Magnit from a single grocery store in 1998 to Russia’s largest retailer by 2013. Peak valuation: $30 billion. 16,000+ stores. 300,000 employees whose lives depended on his decisions. The achievement was extraordinary; the psychological cost proved unbearable.
“7 AM. A call from work—immediately clear something happened,” Sergey later confessed to Forbes Russia. “I look at the phone, but I can’t pick up—I already understood this was psychologically very difficult for me. Then, of course, I answer, they explain haltingly: a tragedy happened next to our store, we’re not involved at all, they’re just asking for help. Only by the end of the phrase did I understand that we, Magnit, are not involved. Each time it became harder and harder to endure this.”
The morning phone calls weren’t the only symptom. “Every new store, distribution center, every new truck reduces peaceful sleep by one more minute,” he explained. “When you’re constantly under pressure, you sometimes think that a terrible end is better than endless terror.”
By 2017, Magnit’s stock had lost half its value. Revenue growth slowed to 6.4% from historic 20-30%. External markets saw declining performance; Sergey saw something different—the gap between his capabilities at 50 and his memories of himself at 35.
The Gladiator Principle #
“With time, I began to slow down,” Sergey told interviewers after the sale. “Business is a game of intellect, and you have to admit that what you can do at 35 or 40 you simply can’t do at 50. It’s really difficult to face.”
He reached for Roman history to explain his decision: “In ancient Rome, they believed that every gladiator should die at the right time and with dignity. I couldn’t reconcile with myself at 50 knowing myself at 35.”
On February 16, 2018, at the Sochi Investment Forum, he announced the sale of his 29.1% Magnit stake to VTB Bank for ₽138 billion—approximately $2.5 billion. The press conference footage shows a man visibly struggling: trembling voice, request for water, sentences that trail off. This wasn’t triumphant exit. This was psychological survival.
Passion Without Terror #
What Sergey sought wasn’t retirement but different stakes. Within months of the Magnit sale, he had committed fully to two ventures: FC Krasnodar (Краснодар) football club, which he had founded in 2008 and built a $200 million stadium for, and the winery his brother-in-law had been developing since 2015.
The contrast was deliberate. “I organized everything so that neither the club nor other assets are connected to me,” he explained. “If something happens to me, everything will continue to work.” The 51/49 ownership split at the winery, his daughter Polina overseeing the football club’s fund—these weren’t estate planning details but psychological architecture. He was building ventures that could survive him, unlike Magnit which had required his constant attention.
The winery offered particular appeal. Decisions measured in vintages, not quarterly earnings. Competition against French and Italian terroir, not quarterly same-store sales. Staff of 56, not 300,000. Results that took years to reveal themselves, providing natural insulation from the anxiety of constant evaluation.
Crisis Upon Crisis #
The peace Sergey sought proved elusive. In September 2021, he publicly disclosed serious illness—later confirmed as cancer. “I am ill, and unfortunately I have such a period in life that I cannot attend home games in large numbers and cannot communicate with the club to the extent a club president should,” he told a YouTube interview. “But this is life—you are often not the master of your own fate.”
In June 2023, his wife Victoria died in Italy. The woman whose family name he had taken upon marriage, whose brother had become his winemaking partner—gone during the years when the winery was finally approaching profitability.
The crises could have justified retreat. Instead, Sergey structured both ventures to function without his constant presence. The winery achieved its first profitable year in 2023: ₽78.5 million. In 2024, profit reached ₽399.3 million—a 5x increase—while Cosaque won Wine of the Year. In May 2025, FC Krasnodar won its first Russian championship.
The Accidental Winemaker #
The vineyard project began as his brother-in-law’s dacha dream. Sergey Galitskiy Jr. (the wife’s brother, also named Sergey Nikolaevich due to the surname adoption) wanted a small plot for weekend grape growing. Two years of helicopter reconnaissance across Krasnodar Krai (Краснодарский край) revealed 200 hectares at Krasnaya Gorka (Красная Горка)—Russia’s coolest terroir at 250-300 meters elevation.
When the brother-in-law presented the opportunity, Sergey agreed “without a second’s hesitation” to the scale that would eventually absorb unlimited capital. The response revealed something the Magnit years had obscured: his willingness to commit to passion projects exceeded normal investment calculus.
“The bar we’ve set for ourselves in architecture makes it impossible to recoup,” he acknowledged about the planned gravity winery. The statement would have been unthinkable from the Magnit-era executive who built an empire on ruthless efficiency. From the post-exit Sergey, it was confession of purpose: legacy over returns.
What Scale Teaches #
Sergey’s trajectory offers a counternarrative to founder mythology. The capacity that builds empires isn’t permanent. Psychological bandwidth depletes. The skills that create value at one scale may become liabilities at another. Recognizing this isn’t failure—it’s wisdom that most founders discover too late.
“I started dying,” Sergey said of his final Magnit years—not metaphorically but describing the experience of managing 300,000 lives while unable to answer morning phone calls. His exit wasn’t weakness. It was honest assessment that Roman gladiators understood better than modern business culture: dignity requires knowing when to leave the arena.
The winery and football club represent a different relationship with scale. Deliberate constraints on volume. Structures designed for founder mortality. Succession embedded from inception rather than scrambled together in crisis. These choices reflect lessons that $2.5 billion couldn’t have taught without the psychological cost that preceded it.
For founders evaluating their own bandwidth, his example suggests uncomfortable questions: Is the morning phone call still tolerable? Does the scale that created success still fit current capacity? And if not—is there courage to exit with dignity before the arena demands everything?