By spring 2015, Ukrainian IT was living in two realities at once. On the one hand, the industry continued to grow and seek new revenue channels. On the other, the war in the east of the country and mobilization had hit staffing, and business was feeling the pressure from the state ever more acutely. Mas, one of the most prominent figures in the Ukrainian internet, in this conversation spoke not so much about technology as about people and the conditions in which they work.
Moving to foreign markets and outsourcing
Mas named the movement of entrepreneurs into foreign markets as the first trend. As a clear example, he chose Petcube, a device for monitoring pets via smartphone. The camera was invented by a Ukrainian team, but it is manufactured in China. This scheme, where development stays in Ukraine while production and sales are built through partners outside the country, had by then become standard practice for startups. Outsourcing is also growing: Ukrainian developers increasingly work on commission for foreign companies, and for a market with limited domestic demand this was an important way to maintain turnover.
Mas mentioned technology separately. Everyone was waiting for 3G, that is, third-generation mobile internet, which provided faster network access and opened new opportunities for services. For Ukrainian companies this meant new products and new markets, and for users, more convenient internet from smartphones.
Corruption, the army and Crimea
Mas named corruption and a new circumstance, mobilization, as the main brakes. The example he gave was vivid: one company lost a top developer with a salary of five to ten thousand dollars a month because of two-month call-ups. For an IT team, where every strong specialist is worth many, such a loss meant disrupted projects and difficulties with clients.
Mas saw the solution in official interaction. He proposed assigning military units to IT companies so that they could help the army legally without losing their staff. The idea was met with interest in the industry, because in wartime many companies were looking for a way to combine obligations to the country with the work of their teams.
The topic of Crimea came up separately. After the peninsula's annexation by Russia in 2014, business was leaving there. PayPal, Apple and Google blocked user accounts in Crimea, and for local developers and entrepreneurs this meant losing access to familiar payment and service tools.
The forum program and its author
The Internet Business track at iForum featured Anton Nossik, Odesa native Yaroslav Trofimov and Felix Polyanskis, who spoke about electronic money from a Baltic perspective. An English-language section with consecutive interpretation was also being prepared, which for a forum aimed at a Ukrainian audience was a new step. Nossik was by then already a regular iForum speaker, while Mas put together the program and hosted the track.
Asked about the mood of the audience, Mas answered with optimism, and one of his points became the main quote of the conversation:
"The world will always defeat war, because killing each other is a tradition of the Stone Age"
The forum itself had a long history by 2015. The first Ukrainian Forum of Internet Figures was held on April 1, 2009, and was timed to the 10th anniversary of the Ukrainian Banner Network, which Mas launched in January 1999 together with Ruslan Dmitrakovich. In 2009, 1,280 people took part in the event. Since then the forum has become the main platform of the Ukrainian internet community, and in 2015 it was held for the seventh time.
Mas's path in the industry began long before the forum. In March 2000 he became director of the Ukrainian Portal (UAPortal), in 2008 he was the architect of the Mail.ua email service, which in 2012 passed to Mail.ru Group. In 2016 Mas became an advisor to Kyivstar on digital technologies and hosted the iForum-2016 program, and his conversations about mobilization, staffing and the export of Ukrainian products remained at the center of the industry's attention.
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