operates in Ukraine as a business portal, and Mas's column appeared there on a day when the author was one of the most prominent figures in the local internet business. In the header he is identified as an internet entrepreneur, and in the lead he is named head of the Ukrainian Banner Network and host of the Internet Business track at iForum. He founded the banner network in 1999 together with his classmate Ruslan Dmitrakovich, and the first iForum took place in 2009. In 2015 Mas joined Kyivstar as IT&Digital adviser to president Petr Chernyshov. In April 2016 the company announced the telecom accelerator VDNH-TECh-Kyivstar, and it was with its applications that the author worked.
The Team Matters More Than the Idea
The main thesis of Mas's column is unexpectedly far from the usual talk about technology. In his observation, a project's prospects can be judged by its team almost immediately, and this surprises those who look for the secret of success in the idea itself. He wrote: "You'll be surprised, but the very reason to consider a project successful at the start is the team." This yields a practical rule that funds apply without exception: they don't give money to teams of one person or to teams where one of the founders is a relative.
Mas named the typical mistakes of applicants quite bluntly. The first, he said, is "fakes" in presentations, when people are listed on the team who have done nothing for the project. The second is long work "for the drawer," that is, months of product development without market testing. The third is fear of sales, and the fourth is deafness to the consumer. Western startups, he noted, start selling immediately, without waiting for a perfect product, and that is what distinguishes them from Ukrainian applications.
The Recipe and the Formula of the Moment
Mas packed his recipe into five words: concept, listen to the market, prototype, team. All these steps, in his view, mean nothing without constant work. The phrase with which he ended that section sounds harsh: "Only work will turn a startup and an investor's money into a working business." In this logic, the investor's money becomes not seed capital but a way to accelerate work already begun, not to replace it.
Only work will turn a startup and an investor's money into a working business.
The current moment, according to Mas, is described by the formula "2B+VR": big data and bots plus virtual reality. Big Data, that is, the processing of large data sets, and bots, which automate communication with users, were the main topics of industry conferences at the time, and virtual reality in 2016 was just entering the consumer market. Mas believed that the combination of these directions offers the most notable opportunities for new projects.
Ukraine's Place in the New Economy
The author's assessment of Ukraine's position in big data is restrained. According to him, the country still supplies mid-level specialists to Europe and works mainly on outsourcing. He sees more chances in applied software, automation, and artificial intelligence. He named mathematics and the ability to structure data as strengths, that is, qualities that allow work on applied tasks rather than just fulfilling other people's orders.
He backed up his arguments with two examples. The first project, Cardiolyse.me, analyzes cardiograms, and this direction, as Mas wrote, attracted interest at Oxford. The second, Augmented Pixels, creates content for virtual reality and, according to him, raised a million dollars a year earlier. Both examples confirm his thesis: a strong team with a clear task attracts attention even if the country is not among the market leaders.
Mas himself in those years was on the side of the Ukrainian internet business, where experience often boiled down to selling projects and finding investors. Mail.ua, created together with Alexander Olshansky, was sold to Mail.ru in 2012 for about $0.5 million. That experience, apparently, is what stands behind his demand that teams think about sales from day one.
The author's recipe was tested in practice quickly. In December 2016, four startups from Kyivstar's telecom accelerator went into production, that is, they moved from presentations and prototypes to real work with users.
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