Tell us about yourself?
3x founder, CEO at Uploadcare – the next-gen content delivery platform for web and mobile apps. Previously co-founded a web development agency Whitescape and mobile app RIDERS that helps hundreds of thousands of users to progress in action sports. Backcountry skier and mountain biker. I love explaining complex things in simple words.
What do you think is the single biggest misconception people have when it comes to startups?
Launching and getting to #1 on ProductHunt is great. But it doesn’t correlate with business growth. Or correlates very little if you’re super early stage.
If you could go back in time to any moment from your journey, and give yourself one tip, what would it be?
Learn to focus on one goal. Then on the next one. Don’t mess with this rule. Hire good VPs and expect a lot.
What makes you stand out as an entrepreneur?
Resilience and persistence that helped me to start from scratch and to continuously move at the same direction. Ability to understand and intertwine various engineering and UX concepts to build breakthrough products.
What are some of the best working habits you’ve gained over the past couple of years?
I’ve started using the HUNT method. There’s one most important task that I need to tackle every day. I can’t doing anything less important until I make sure that the elephant is out of building. This helps to move forward every day, step-by-step.
Give us a bit of an insight into the influences behind the company?
We’ve started by scratching our own itch: working with user-generated content is hard. There are tens and hundreds of small things to think of when you need to get images, videos or docs from users and then distribute them to many-million audience. We solved this, other engineers loved it, that’s how it started.
Where do you see your business in five years?
Building content-heavy websites is still hard: terrific amounts of traffic that grow every week, complicated data-safety protocols, new devices and formats. We want to allow every engineer to focus on other things while we make sure that every website and app achieve sub-second loading time.
What do you think the biggest challenge will be for you in getting there?
Continue uniting the best engineers in the world. It became easier due to recession but still, can’t underestimate how important it is.
Talk to us about your biggest success story so far?
Investing to and then building a product that is used by thousands of companies across the world with hundreds of millions of end-users. Building something that has never existed before is exciting.
How do clients and customers find you? Are you much of a salesperson for yourself?
Our marketing is mostly inbound: we write content that is interesting to read. We write tutorials to help solving common problems. That’s how people find about Uploadcare. I participate in sales calls but mostly for customer development.
What one tip would you give to fellow startup founders?
Allow your team to work. Help them but don’t do their work. Share feedback instead of directives. Give advice when asked. Have high expectations.
And finally, what do you hope the future brings both you personally, and your business?
I’m excited to see the next chapter after COVID and then the current recession. But at the same time I enjoy every day and very happy about it.
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