His brother Viktor was the first to report the death but did not name the cause. Asked about it, he said: 'Which one — unknown.' According to the relative, Mas had been ill in recent months and had canceled even virtual meetings. As recently as early August 2021, he had publicly responded to a piece in the 'Cringe of the Week' section, where his project was analyzed, and at that time there were no signs of illness in the public sphere.
Ukrainian Pravda called Mas an IT specialist, inventor and founder of 'Craft Social Networks'. He was born in Kyiv in 1974, studied at physics and mathematics school No. 145 and at the radio physics faculty of Kyiv University. From 1993 to 1997 he worked at the Research Institute of Applied Information Systems, then at Ukrainian Capital bank, and from September 1997 to March 2000 he was a leading specialist at the National Bank of Ukraine, where he handled payment processing.
From banners to photo hosting
In January 1999, together with fellow student Ruslan Dmitrakovich, he launched the Ukrainian Banner Network. In 2000, investor Alexander Soroka backed UAportal, and the portal introduced 'Tree of Friends', the first social network on a Ukrainian portal. In 2003–2004, Mas developed Infostore.org, a photo hosting service supported by investor Alexander Olshansky. On December 4, 2008, police seized Infostore's servers, and the project closed. A year later UAportal passed to the holding, and Dmitrakovich had sold his stake in the banner network back in 2006.
In 2009 the first iForum took place, and Mas became its co-organizer along with Olshansky, Sergey Korzh and Artur Orudzhaliev. An important clarification: was created by Ivan Savchenko, a native of Infostore, not by Mas, although some publications mistakenly attributed the project to him.
Mail.ua and Kyivstar
The most famous deal involving Mas concerns the Mail.ua email service, which was sold to Mail.ru in 2012 for approximately half a million dollars. Users subsequently migrated to the Russian platform. One publication dated the deal to 2009, but Forbes, LIGA and Ukrainian Pravda say 2012.
In 2015 Mas joined Kyivstar as IT&Digital adviser to company president Peter Chernyshov, and later headed the Innovation lab. In April 2016 the company announced the telecom accelerator 'VDNH-TECh-Kyivstar', and in December of that year four startups from the accelerator went into production. On July 31, 2019, Mas left Kyivstar.
'Craft Social Networks' and the syndicate
In August 2019 the 'Craft Social Networks' project launched, built on a syndicate with a $100 entry fee. In November 2019 the syndicate had about 280 members, and in August 2021, after a public dispute, Mas reported 411 investors and a sum of about $58,000. In March 2020 the organizers postponed iForum-2020 to the autumn due to COVID-19.
On October 11 and 12, 2021, LIGA and Forbes published retrospectives on his life and projects. At the same time, numerous obituaries appeared on social media, and colleagues and former partners recalled his work in Ukraine's internet industry.
The dispute over the project's future began after his death. On November 29, 2021, Larisa Mas, Alexey's wife since 1995, who this year calls herself his ex-wife, declared the project closed. In the same period, Bogdan Gnatyuk, owner of Maralles and Chakloon, ran the syndicate. On November 30 the project was renamed Craf, and subsequently it became Chakloon.
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