5 successful entrepreneurs of Ukraine up to 25 years old
Ukraine has a mixed attitude to entrepreneurship: only every fifth Ukrainian would choose a career as a businessman. This is due primarily to the state – 8 out of 10 Ukrainians believe that it is an obstacle to business development or an enemy of entrepreneurs. In this article, we will tell about the top 5 successful entrepreneurs of Ukraine.
Furthermore, the reason we are choosing to talk about Ukraine specifically is that it seems to be one of the best countries for tech startups in Europe right now, and could be a very effective learning experience for any entrepreneurs trying to find mentors or influencers to follow. The market is so popular among the world’s businesses that even the largest blockchain companies are starting to hire Ukrainian freelancers or sign up locals as executive directors for European branches. The most notorious case was with the Bitcoin Billionaire scam that everybody believed in before a notable Ukrainian entrepreneur signed up to support the project’s back-end.
These young professionals are so trustworthy and efficient that even their names are enough to influence a company’s success.
Here we go, check out the top 5 successful entrepreneurs of Ukraine up to 25 years old.
Top 5 Successful Entrepreneurs of Ukraine up to 25 Years Old
Vlad Ivchenko, 24 years old
Interactive mind
City: Kharkov
Field of activity: marketing
Vlad Ivchenko began to earn as early as 11 years old. He sang and played guitar at concerts. Vlad remembers that for the first concert with Rosenbaum’s songs on the day of the physician in the district clinic he was paid 12 hryvnias – and was wildly happy about it.
After that, the guy started making speeches. In parallel with his studies at the university, he decided to find himself a “serious job”.
For 4 years he has gone from an SMM-specialist freelancer to the head of one of the largest agencies in the CIS at that time UpSale. The guy managed to try himself in different ways: he created the Brainches educational project (20 years old), the Fon Due School culinary school, and the production of Fon Due Store kitchen accessories (19 years old).
According to Vlad, at one point all the experience gained in advertising helped to move to a new level. Together with their partner, they created Interactive Mind, an Internet marketing agency, which made Vlad one of the most successful entrepreneurs from Ukraine. The young entrepreneur was then 21 years old.
Now the agency’s team employs 14 people. Over 3 years of work, it has implemented more than 200 projects in the field of marketing and is now implementing marketing solutions for more than 30 customers. Among them are companies such as Gameloft, WOG, Lenovo, as well as many representatives of small and medium-sized businesses.
One of the main obstacles to the formation of a business entrepreneur calls a lack of ability to play long.
He noted that the scourge of most young entrepreneurs is the ability to catch on with the idea quickly, but also to quickly burn out and switch to other activities.
Vladislav Urazov, 20 years old
Teleport Future Technologies
City: Odessa – Moscow
Field of activity: technology
We continue our list of Ukrainian entrepreneurs with Vladislav Urazov. Most recently, a 20-year-old Odessa citizen became a millionaire. Together with partners, he sold the startup Teleport for $8 million to American Snap.
While still a schoolboy, he earned thousands of dollars in traffic arbitrage – redirecting visitors to one site to another. After leaving school, Urazov moved to Moscow. He created the social network Spersy, a competitor to Instagram, which took off pretty quickly. It was listed with the Russian company Urazito LLC. Now there is no access to it.
The next project of Urazov is the Teleport application. It dyed hair in different colors, changed the background in the photo, and instantly flew into the network. 19-year-old Urazov assembled a team of 30 people from different countries who worked on image segmentation technology. And he attracted $1 million investment in the project, making him one of the best tech innovators from Ukraine.
The entrepreneur initially wanted to sell a startup for $30-50 million together with the team with an investor valuation of $3 million. In parallel, the team earned by selling the rights to its technology.
As a result, the startup bought the American Snap for $ 8 million. Five people left to work in the United States. And Vladislav Urazov became a dollar millionaire in 20 years.
Now he is developing a new project, which he has not divulged yet. This is why he made our list of 5 successful entrepreneurs of Ukraine up to 25 years old
Fedor Serdyuk, 23 years old
Fast
City: Odesa – Kiev
Field of activity: education
In 2014, against the background of the events of May 2 in Odesa and the hot phase of the war in eastern Ukraine, Fedor decided to become a volunteer of the Red Cross rescue team. There he was trained and trained with American retired military personnel in providing first aid and tactical medicine. And then he took up training with colleagues in APU, who needed such skills.
Since volunteering does not imply financial rewards, Fedor agreed with a friend Igor Korpusov to train Odessa citizens in civil first aid for money. So it turned out to support themselves during volunteer training at training grounds and in the ATO. Fedor was 19 years old.
The courses gained popularity and companies began to come to the guys with a request to train their employees, making Fedor one of the best entrepreneurs from Ukraine.
Since that time, Fedor’s company has trained more than 20 thousand Ukrainians in the skills of first aid. It is paid mainly by large corporations that want their employees to save lives. Among them: Metinvest, Ukrgasvydobuvannya, Metro Cash & Carry, Kyivstar, DTEK Energo, Kernel. Top management comes to learn.
Now the team has 25 people, including instructors.
The second project of Fedor Serdyuk is the development of modern Reskits first aid kits. The company also installs defibrillators and sells wholesale equipment to save lives.
The young businessman does not see insurmountable obstacles in his path “The main obstacle is in the head of the founder (and management). This is, first of all, about knowledge that is always lacking, especially at the beginning, and secondly – about the ability to change one’s view of things, when knowledge, for example, contradicts previous experience. He remembers, he had to learn a lot.
Lisa Voronkova, 25 years old
Emotion labs
City: Dnipro – Kiev
Industry: Gadgets
We should continue our list with one of the richest Ukrainian entrepreneurs. Working at the Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 19-year-old Lisa Voronkova became interested in research in the field of stress and biosignals and created the startup Force Emotion. At first, her team worked with wearable devices for the elderly. For one such guy, they raised $30,000 on Kickstarter.
In 2017, Force Emotion managed to enter the prestigious American business incubator Alchemist. The startup began working with giants in the United States such as Philip Morris, Analog Devices, RGAx, and a network of nursing homes.
Later, entrepreneurs decided to create a gadget that would help cope with stress. They decided to rely on corporate clients interested in the happiness of employees.
So there were watches that can show the user’s stress level based on 20 different parameters: sleep quality, amount of activity, indicators of cardiac activity, etc. Lisa was slowly becoming one of the most prominent entrepreneurs in Ukraine.
In 2018, the startup sold 2,500 devices at retail and signed a contract with several Japanese companies. Now the company is called Emotion Labs. She is working on a new product that will be sharpened only under B2B. All devices are assembled in Ukraine – near Kyiv.
The main advantages of entrepreneurship at a young age, the girl considers “burning eyes, activity and setting very ambitious goals.”
“Of the minuses is a lack of experience. During the Alchemist program in the USA, I noticed that the average age of the founders of successful projects is about 40 years. These are people who gained experience 10-15 years before starting their business. Yes, they already have less energy, but they know what to do and how, and most importantly – who to ask for help or advice from, “the entrepreneur notes.
Vladimir Nazarenko, 24 years old
KAI Software
City: Kryvyi Rih – New York
Field of activity: technology
Vladimir Nazarenko is from Kryvyi Rih. At the age of 20, he left for New York, not knowing the language, and founded the outsourcing IT company KAI Software, one of the most notable tech startups from Ukraine.
Back in the 9th grade, Nazarenko became interested in programming and began to earn extra money by making websites to order. So he collected about 40 000 UAH – about $5000 at that time. With this money, a young businessman rented an office in his hometown and hired several people. They made IT orders for Kyiv companies, online stores and carried out contracts for large projects for the Moscow office. In 2014, Russian customers fell off, the dollar rose 4 times, Kyiv companies cut budgets, and Nazarenko’s team lasted another year.
In October 2015, a 20-year-old guy left for New York, not knowing English. The entrepreneur recalls that when he ordered a latte for some reason, he was given water.
On the third day of his stay in the new country, Nazarenko started KAI Software, one of the most successful startups in Ukraine. And by the end of October, together with his partner, he began to look for customers.
A year ago, 12 people worked in the entrepreneur team while in Ukraine. They constantly led 6 projects. And sometimes their number reached 12 pieces. Mostly Nazarenko developers work on outsourcing for New York startups. So KAI Software made an application that helps New York homeowners reduce fines for various violations.
Our developers also created a system that monitors the well-being of bees in the hives of New York and other states on the order of the French company, which places these hives there. And there was a completely unusual project that helps to predict the likelihood of suicide according to data from iCloud.
To sum up, this is the list of Ukrainian successful startups and entrepreneurs. More innovations emerge from time to time, and people express interest in creating something extraordinary.
