Mas was born in Kyiv in 1974 and graduated from the Faculty of Radiophysics at Kyiv University. From 1993 he worked at the Research Institute of Automated Systems in Construction, and from 1995 to 1997 in the software department of Ukrainsky Kapital bank. From September 1997 to March 2000 he was a leading specialist at the National Bank of Ukraine, where he worked on payment processing. For a young programmer at the time, this was a rare opportunity to see how money works on a national scale, and the experience served him well later.
In January 1999, together with his university classmate Ruslan Dmitrakovich, he created the Ukrainian Banner Network (UBS). Banner advertising was then the main way to monetize Ukrainian websites, and the network quickly became one of the market's notable players. In 2000, Mas launched UAportal with investor Alexander Soroka, and the portal introduced “Tree of Friends,” the first social network on a Ukrainian portal. Dmitrakovich sold his stake in UBS in 2006, and in 2007 UAportal was sold to the holding.
Infostore, iForum and the first controversies
In 2003 and 2004, Mas developed Infostore, a photo hosting service with investor Alexander Olshansky of Internet Invest Group. The project operated for several years until law enforcement seized its servers in December 2008. After that, the service ceased to operate. During these years, Mas himself remained a prominent figure in the industry, and his name was often linked to other projects he did not create. For instance, was founded by Ivan Savchenko, a native of Infostore, not by Mas, although some publications later mistakenly credited him with its creation.
In 2009, the first iForum took place, one of the main industry conferences of the Ukrainian internet. Mas was one of its chief ideologists and had been on the organizing committee since its founding. He was a co-organizer of the event and moderated the “Internet Business” track. Along with him, Sergey Korzh and Artur Orudzhaliev worked on the organizing committee, and Olshansky chaired it. In the same year, 2012, Mail.ua, Olshansky's project, was sold to Mail.ru for approximately $0.5 million. This was one of the first major exits of Ukrainian internet projects into the Russian market.
Kyivstar and Craft Networks
In 2015, Mas became IT & Digital Advisor to the President of Kyivstar, Peter Chernyshov. Later he headed the company's Innovation Lab. In April 2016, the telecom accelerator “VDNG-TECh-Kyivstar” was announced, and in December of that year four of its startups went “into production.” Working at a major operator gave him access to data and audiences that independent projects lacked, and he actively used this.
Mas's prominence was not always calm. In May 2017, his post comparing the blocking of VKontakte to deportation caused a scandal. Around iForum in 2017, a fake “business-forum” also appeared, organized by PR agency PRavik of Yulia Pravik, with a copy of the conference website. In July 2019, Mas left Kyivstar.
In August 2019, he launched “Craft Social Networks,” a project in which participants pooled into a syndicate at $100 per person. In November 2019, the syndicate had about 280 members. The number grew: according to a special project by MC, it reached 315, and in August 2021 Mas reported that there were 411 investors and the total raised was about $58,000. He cited these figures in response to public criticism of the project, and they became one of the last high-profile episodes of his work.
On October 8, Mas's brother Viktor announced his death, and on the same day AIN.UA published an obituary. The cause of death was not stated in the reports. Following the publication, a wave of obituaries appeared in industry media and social networks, in which colleagues recalled his role in the formation of the Ukrainian internet: from banner networks and Infostore to iForum and “Craft Social Networks.”
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