Oleksii Mas went from the Ukrainian banner networks of the 2000s to the country's largest telecom project and launched several internet services that the industry still remembers. He was born in Kyiv in 1974 and attended physics and mathematics school No. 145, then studied at the radio physics faculty of Kyiv State University, now Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
From banking and banners to Mail.ua
After university he worked at NIIASS, then at Ukrainsky Kapital bank. From 1997 to 2000 he was a leading specialist at the National Bank of Ukraine, where he handled payment processing. In January 1999, together with classmate Ruslan Dmitrakovich, he founded the Ukrainian Banner Network (UBS), which Dmitrakovich left in 2006 after selling his stake. In 2000 Mas launched 'Tree of Friends,' the first social network on the Ukrainian portal UAportal, owned by investor Alexander Soroka. In 2007 the portal was sold to the holding.
In 2003–2004, together with investor Alexander Olshansky, he launched the photo hosting service Infostore.org. The project was short-lived: on December 4, 2008, police seized the servers and the service shut down. Another well-known project was Mail.ua, which Mas built with Olshansky. He was one of the founders, not the sole creator. In 2012 Mail.ru bought the mail portal for about $0.5 million. Nor should be attributed to Mas: that project was created in 2009 by Ivan Savchenko, a native of Infostore.
Kyivstar and iForum
In 2009 the first iForum was held, one of Ukraine's main internet business conferences. Mas was its co-organizer and moderated the 'Internet Business' track. The organizing committee was chaired by Olshansky, with Sergei Korzh also serving as co-organizer and Artur Orujaliev, former owner of AIN.UA, among the co-founders. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, iForum-2020 was postponed from March 2020 to the autumn.
In 2015 Mas joined Kyivstar as IT&Digital adviser to company president Peter Chernyshov, and later headed its innovation lab, Innovation lab. In April 2016 the company announced the telecom accelerator 'VDNG-TECh-Kyivstar,' and in December 2016 four of its startups went 'into production.' In May 2017 Mas became embroiled in a loud scandal: his post compared the blocking of VKontakte to deportation. On July 31, 2019, he left Kyivstar.
'Craft Social Networks'
In August 2019 Mas launched 'Craft Social Networks,' an investment syndicate with $100 contributions. In November 2019 it had about 280 members, later in an MC special project they were numbered 315. In a response to the 'Cringe of the Week' publication on August 7 and 9, 2021, he reported 411 investors and about $58,000 in funds raised. The project Mas created was later continued by Bohdan Hnatiuk and eventually became Chakloon. Hnatiuk also owns Maralles magazine, in which this text appears.
On October 8, the day the Fakty news was published, Mas's brother Viktor, who was the first to report the death, published a post, and a wave of obituaries appeared on social media.
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