The 'Liverepair.com' Internet venture is the latest in Paul Waters' Ukrainian saga.
Paul Waters says he`s just plain lucky.
The 60‑year‑old Los Angeles native and 10‑year ex‑pat says that long before he set foot on Ukrainian turf, his career and personal life had taken one odd twist after another. Each one, he says, has been profitable.
Waters’ adventure has run the gamut from importing used clothing to trading metals with Donbas regional bosses. Presently, his imagination has been captured by his newest endeavor, an Internet‑based business that helps individuals and small companies solve computer and software problems.
Laid‑back and loquacious
Waters, who claims to be descended from a long line of successful businessmen, says his family’s history provided him with great business contacts that proved far more valuable than the modest inheritance he received.
In a country where many businessmen are tight‑lipped, Waters speaks freely – even exuberantly – about his past and present business. Waters’ torrents of loquacity make it easy to doubt the veracity of his claims. While attributing much of his success to a bountiful supply of luck, Waters also credits his success to an easygoing nature and an ability to bond with trustworthy, influential partners.
Ukrainian partners like Oleksy Shevchenko describe him as a reliable associate with valuable worldwide contacts and great ideas.
Waters had few contacts but lots of ideas when he came to Ukraine back in 1991, after a friend had introduced him to a group of Ukrainian immigrants in the United States. The Lviv natives were looking for partners to launch a business in Ukraine.
Luck takes a holiday
Soon, Waters and some Ukrainian partners were importing clothing and shoes to test the market.
“There were no clothes in the stores and no shoes in shoe shops. We imported container‑loads of new shoes from India at $5 per pair and resold them at $15 a pair. They were not large shipments. It was just a trial run.”
Then it appeared, for a moment, that Waters’ luck had abandoned him. His Ukrainian partners charged him $400,000 for a shipment of clothing worth $50,000.
That partnership ended, and Waters turned his attention and skills as a middleman to Ukraine’s metals industry, where he helped international steel trading companies, like Luxembourg’s Arbed, buy Ukrainian steel.
The job brought him into close contact with the influential businessmen from Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region who control much of Ukraine’s steel business.
“Arbed, for example, would place an order suggesting they want a certain product from a certain metallurgical plant at a certain price. I was the gopher that would wine and dine the steel businessmen in Ukraine and make the deal,” he said.
Trust‑building
Winning the trust of his Ukrainian associates wasn’t easy.
“It took over four months to close the first deal,” Waters said. “The last couple of days before the first deal went through was full of shouting matches. The Ukrainians didn’t believe that they would get their money.”
But they did and grew to trust Waters. Soon, he was closing up to four multi‑million dollar deals each month.
“I spent a lot of time hanging out with the Ukrainian businessmen and building a relationship with them,” he said. He said that corporate “big shots” who didn’t take time to build relationships didn’t fare as well as a result.
Waters continued to export Ukrainian metal until 1996.
“I didn’t make a huge amount of money, but I didn’t miss any meals,” he said. “It gave me a chance to keep working here, come up with ideas and find good partners.”
It was during his metal‑trading days that Waters met his current partner, Oleksandr Dubrov. Dubrov is president of Keros‑Kyiv, a holding company that owns stakes in industrial plants.
“I found him a reliable guy who had integrity and knew what he was doing,” said Waters.
The two have joined forces in a $2 million project that Waters believes will be “much, much bigger” than his previous ventures.
Liverepair.com helps its Western clients solve common hardware and software problems over the Internet. As customers “chat” with Liverepair’s technicians, they have no idea they’re being aided from an office in Kyiv.
The company, officially launched a few months ago, offers 24‑hour computer and Internet technical support for a flat $99 annual fee.
Only a handful of competitors exist, and Waters said liverepair.com already has about 1,000 customers.
“This is going to be a real big success,” he said. “There are more than 500 million people online. If only a fraction of them sign up, we will be making real good money.”
Waters claims to have invested $500,000 of his own money into the company. He said half of the investment was raised from Ukrainian partners and the rest from Western partners.
Waters probably never would have imagined he would wind up doing business in Ukraine back in the 1970s.
After a six‑year tour of duty in Vietnam with the U.S. Air Force, Waters enrolled in Eastern Illinois University. He graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1971, then rejoined the Air Force for a four‑year stint.
“[The military] was a place to hang out till I found out what I wanted to do,” he said.
Parlaying a fortune
Then, Lady Luck stepped in.
“I won $10,000 in a radio contest, and immediately went to Reno [Nevada], where I won an additional $15,568 at the slot machines. Then I went to a ski resort and won $4,309 at their slot machines,” He said. “All this happened within 10 days.”
Waters said that after leaving the military he bought a house in California at a bargain price, renovated and sold it six months later for a $250,000 profit.
The real estate transaction was Waters’ first business deal.
“I didn’t know a damn thing about real estate so I took a six‑week cram course then began buying houses, renovating them and selling them,” he said.
Waters said his success was noticed.
“By 1981, I was appointed the Saudi Royal Family’s exclusive real estate buyer in California,” he said. “It was incredible.”
“[The Saudis] would call me at 2 a.m. and tell me to find them a $2 million house. Sometimes they wanted a $5 million home,” he said.
“It was a really good time,” Waters said.
But Waters, as time would show, was not accustomed to life‑long careers.
“My cousin Jim Middleton, who was president of Arco, a major oil company, helped me get a job as a private oil trader in Belgium in 1983. I spent a year there selling shiploads of oil. I think I was the only person trading oil as a private individual.”
Cellular pioneer
A year later, he was back in California helping a friend launch a cellular phone company.
In 1986, Waters signed on as director of marketing at World Digital Corporation, a Mumbai, India, firm that digitized maps. Waters said old friends at companies like Chevron and AT&T helped him to land millions of dollars worth of sales for the firm.
Waters claims to have spent the late 1980s making money doing “all sorts of funny little odd things.”
“By then, I had an enormous amount of contacts in the business community,” he said. “A friend from Asia, for example, called at one point and said, ‘I have 5,000 Toshiba laptop computers to sell.’ So I called up a friend interested in buying them and brokered the deal,” he said.
Waters fell into the role of middleman, one he would exploit later in Ukraine.
Idea man
Liverepair.com partner Oleksy Shevchenko, who met Waters in Lviv and assisted him during his metal trading days in Donetsk, said Waters is full of ideas.
“He is like a pioneer,” Shevchenko said. “He has many great ideas, understands our mentality and serves as our interface with our Western partners.”
“[Waters] has proven that he can live under any conditions, adapt and become successful without becoming aloof. He is the same person I met 10 years ago,” Shevchenko said.
One of Waters’ former metal trading associates, however, was not as enthusiastic. The associate said Waters was “not a true businessman” and even denied knowing him.
Waters is unfazed by the criticism.
“I’m a really lucky man,” he said. “I’ll probably stay in Ukraine forever. I love the place.”
