What specialty did you study at the Academy? What year did you graduate?
I studied at the Small Computer Academy, a three-year program. There we learned everything from Photoshop to robotics and programming. It was thanks to this that I realized in which direction I should move.
Graduated from the academy in 2018 or 2019.
Was it your conscious choice or did your parents push you to do it?
I didn't know anything about the academy at all, my mom found out through her friends. Then we looked at the academy's website, got acquainted, and came for a consultation.
Then we hesitated for a long time, thinking whether it was necessary or not, but I was convinced that I wanted to develop in this field, because I realized that my life would be connected with IT.
I was interested in IT since the sixth or fifth grade. I convinced my parents that I should go there and got in.
Did studying at the academy help you decide on a career path or did you already know what you wanted in IT before entering the academy and knew which direction you wanted to go?
Since IT Step helped me to try myself in different areas a little bit, because there are different programs in a small academy, I realized that being a programmer was my thing.
Then I started programming, learned Java, went for an interview, I was 14-15 years old at the time, and was told to pass the external independent evaluation, go to university, and then you can come to us.
I also tried to create websites on my using constructors, and I started to get good at it.
Then I realized that coding is not my thing, and I decided that I am a manager, a project manager, a salesperson. I'm good at communicating with people and I'm good at selling.
Could you tell us about your path after graduating from the academy to starting your own company?
I took various courses, including marketing, digital, sales, and sms, and I had the skill to create websites.
I worked on my own, then I started a small training program, and from this training I hired people to join my team, and everything gradually started to work out.
Now I have 12 people in my team, we work for the Ukrainian and foreign markets.
By the way, we have so far earned $20,000 on UpWork. This is not a lot in general terms, but for us it is a success because we did it in 8 or 9 months.
Isn't your higher education related to IT?
I studied computer science in Warsaw. At the beginning of the war, I dropped out, stayed here, and entered management.
Can you compare studying IT in a small academy with studying in Europe?
Education in Europe is not much different from Ukrainian education. I wouldn't say there is a huge difference.
You still need to learn everything on your own, do your own work, and if you don't want to, then no matter what country you are in, no matter how cool the training is, you won't be able to do it.
If you compare studying at the academy with studying at a university, it is clear that the academy is better, because it has a more individual approach, you are played with, you are helped, you are given more time, you have a good environment. All this together gives you a better result.
What does your company do?
We create websites on no-code platforms, which is our main focus. But we are also developing the creation of websites on pure code. We currently have about 28-32 clients. Of these, 60% are Ukrainians and 40% are foreign.
Could you tell us about your projects? What was your most challenging and successful project that you are proud of?
We have created about 120 websites. If we talk about the most complex one, it is also our most successful one - a crypto project for investment. It is a rather interesting area.
In Zakarpattia, they grow hectares of vegetables in greenhouses, and in order to attract investment, they have created their own crypto coin, i.e. a token.
And we made them a multi-page website for this area, with a very cool design, animation, and everything at a high level. Accordingly, the check for this work was high.
So this is both a complex site and the most successful one. Next week we are going to complete it.
As the owner of the company, you hire people. What do you look for when hiring candidates for your team?
First of all, it's skills. I don't care where a person studied, the main thing is that they have good work skills and cool cases.
I have noticed a trend that there are many people who do not know the theory. Their practical skills are not bad, but they have a problem with the theory, which is essential to know.
I had to retrain people “for us” and teach them the basic theory from the very beginning.
In general, hard skills - what a person can do - come first, followed by soft skills - how a person interacts with others.
What advice do you have for ITSTEP students?
First, you need to get the most out of everything. You need to study more, extract more information from your studies. Because when you graduate from IT STEP, you will no longer have this opportunity.
Second, networking. You need to communicate more with everyone. I still have many friends with whom I studied at the academy.