Bas Godska

Bas Godska (born 19 August 1975) is an e-commerce and digital marketing professional with 18 years of experience in worlwide famous companies (top positions in Lastminute.com, ebookers.com/Orbitz.com, Ozon.ru, Gloria Jeans, lamoda.ru, KupiVIP). He is also an investor and shareholder in several e-commerce startups, part of them are incubated in Acrobator.com. Bas is the author of C.A.S.H.C.O.W formula - the digital marketing key to succes for businesses. His media agency Gogolmedia.com works according to this paradigm.
Bas was born in Amsterdam, currently resides in Moscow and Kiev.
Early Years
After getting a classical education at the Barlaeus Gymnasium in Amsterdam Bas studied Law and Russian in The Netherlands at the University of Amsterdam during the 1990s.
As a young student he made a living working in various sectors.
As Russian-speaking assistant of clown Oleg Popov on his tour with the Russian State Circus;
as a drummer and singer in Bettie Serveert’s support act;
as a diamonds salesman (Russian VIP Department) at Coster Diamonds ;
as Chief Conservator of banker Bob Meijer’s private Kattenkabinet museum;
as Dutch office manager of the Russian Federal Investment Fund selling Short Term Government Bonds to the Dutch public;
as an antiques dealer in the Spiegelstraat;
as freelance prospectus copywriter for the Georgian Glass & Mineral Water Company’s investment roadshow, helping to revive Georgia’s Borjomi mineral water brand.
Lastly at stock broking firm Eduard de Graaff& Co B.V.
During those active years Bas cherished his literary friendship with a famous Barlaeus alumni, the Paris - and later Brussels-based Dutch writer “WFH”, Willem Frederik Hermans. Hermans’ creative nihilism became Bas’ preferred view on life.
In 1995 WFH died, which was a heavy blow to Bas, 21 years old, who actually sent WFH his first short novel a few days before he died.
After Hermans’ death Bas abruptly decided he would bury his writing ambitions and changed Holland for post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia helping companies from the East and West to achieve their international trade objectives. He tried attracting investments for Antonov's microsatellite project Oril (similar to Boeing's project Sealaunch) with Stork/Fokker Space and the Dutch Government).
Around 1999, successfully managing to mix mercantility with his passion for 15th-19th century books and manuscripts, Bas traded antique manuscripts and letters with the Louvre museum in Paris and Dutch local celebrities like Boudewijn Büch.
Then, at the turn of the Millennium, Bas decided to migrate to Australia. There he studied E commerce & Internet Marketing at University of Technology, Sydney, just after the millennium change. Bas set up his first e-commerce venture in Sydney selling memorabilia on- and offline. This Australian business became leading in its niche sector and won the Website of The Year award in 2003 Website awards.
Back in Amsterdam Bas opened the SnobShop - a mix of antiques shop, a residence and the hub of Bas' poetic Recessionist Movement in a 17th century house in the historic centre of Amsterdam.
Corporate Career Start
Later that year Bas closed the shop and joined the Benelux management team of Lastminute.com as head of commercial sales and shortly after as e-commerce and marketing director. Lastminute.com’s European sales soared to over 1 billion pounds sterling by 2005 and the business was sold to Travelocity.com/Sabre Holdings.
In 2006, Bas started two ‘venturing consultancy’ firms Gogol and VOC . Their mission: to help companies to define, manage or optimise the profitability of their e-business strategy. Some of Gogol / VOC’s blue chip clients: Sportingbet, Reed Business, TNT Post, Randstad, Postcode lottery, Okean Elzy. Simultaneously Bas became stakeholder in a number of innovating start ups in the mobileand online travel sector (among which Steape, Gekko, GVMachines, TravelFED and assisted raising several millions of euros seed capital for them).
Early 2007 Bas was invited, as European Marketing Director, to manage online travel company Ebookers.com’s nine digit marketing budget for Europe across 13 countries. Bas headed the digital strategy development of this billion dollar subsidiary of Orbitz.com/Travelport.
Bas then got headhunted (via EgonZehnder) to boutique VC company Index Ventures, whose successful early stage investment in companies like Skype, last.fm, MySQL, Yandex made them a leading fund in Europe. Early 2008 he was invited to be CMO and deputy CEO of their latest and at the time most sizeable investment: Eastern Europe’s nr.1 e-commerce company Ozon.ru. For this project Bas moved from The Netherlands to live in Moscow.
When Ozon.ru surpassed the $100 million turnover mark with a solid 55% annual growth rate, Bas left and spent some time traveling Turkey, India and Nepal and other places of interest, thinking of the right next move in the exciting Russian emerging online market.
Current Occupation
As a result Bas set up the Ukrainian/Russian branch of his Dutch Gogol focusing on performance marketing, online strategy and e commerce.
In 2010 Bas consulted Russia’s largest vertically integrated fashion retailer Gloria Jeans in order to develop their digital strategy. Gloria Jeans has over 12,000 staff, close to 430 own stores and 11 factories in Russia and Ukraine.
Afterwards, in 2011, Godska helped Rocket Internet's Russian Zalando clone Lamoda.ru, which went from zero to a number one position in six months. Godska is currently digital marketin director at KupiVIP, marketing consultant and active investor via his business accelerator Acrobator.com. ACRobator.com helps promising startups in the sectors: e-commerce, digital media, internet marketing and mobile. Among its portfolio companies in Europe, Russia, Ukraine and Kazachstan: Chocolife.me, Travelata, Zoo Shopping, .

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