Oleksii Mas was born in Kyiv in 1974 and studied at the radio physics faculty of Kyiv University. From 1993 to 1997 he worked at the Research Institute of Applied Information Technologies and the bank Ukrainian Capital, then from September 1997 to March 2000 he was a leading specialist at the National Bank of Ukraine, where he handled payment processing. His entrepreneurial biography began in January 1999: together with his classmate Ruslan Dmitrakovich, he launched the Ukrainian Banner Network (UBN). Dmitrakovich later sold his stake in 2006.
In 2000, UAportal appeared, a portal financed by investor Alexander Soroka. It hosted the Tree of Friends, the first social network on a Ukrainian portal. In 2007, UAportal was bought by the holding.
File-sharing and mail
The main project of the 2000s was Infostore.org, which Focus called the country's largest file-sharing service. According to Forbes, the photo hosting service was launched in 2003 with investor Alexander Olshansky, while according to Vector and 24 Kanal, the project announced itself in May 2004. On December 4, 2008, the police seized Infostore's servers, and the project closed. Mas is sometimes also linked to, but according to Forbes, that file-sharing service was created by Ivan Savchenko, a native of Infostore. Erroneous headlines about the creator of appeared in several publications, but they have no confirmation.
Another notable project is connected with Olshansky. The mail service Mail.ua, of which he was a co-founder, was sold to Mail.ru in 2012. According to Forbes, LIGA and Ukrainska Pravda, the deal amounted to about $0.5 million.
From internet projects to telecom
In 2009, the first iForum took place, a conference Mas co-organized with Sergey Korzh, and Artur Orudzhaliev was named co-founder. Mas led the Internet Business stream, and Olshansky was chairman of the organizing committee. The conference became one of the main venues of the Ukrainian internet industry, and in March 2020, due to the COVID pandemic, it was postponed to the autumn.
In 2015, Mas joined Kyivstar as IT&Digital adviser to the company's president, Peter Chernyshov. Later he headed the Innovation Lab. In April 2016, the company announced the telecom accelerator VDNG-TECh-Kyivstar, and in December 2016, four startups from the accelerator went into production. In 2017, his post comparing the blocking of VKontakte to deportation caused a scandal. On July 31, 2019, he left Kyivstar.
“Craft social networks” and investors
In August 2019, Mas launched the Craft Social Networks project, which was built on a syndicate: participants contributed $100 each. In November 2019, the syndicate had about 280 members. In August 2021, responding to the Cringe of the Week column, he wrote about 411 investors and about $58,000 raised for the project. In recent years he also consulted startups, and many of those who said goodbye to him had once received advice from him.
In a farewell post on Facebook, his brother Viktor wrote:
“You knew how to inspire and gather like-minded people to create something innovative and new.”
The same post ended with the words: “The illness did not let you finish what you started...” Mas left his story unfinished: some projects remained in syndicate status and awaited further decisions from investors.
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