Yaroslav Maxymovych
Solo founder of AI Advisory Board
I am the solo founder of AI Advisory Board. Over my lifetime, I have been involved in creating several dozen companies, and I know well what business looks like "from the inside" - from an idea on a napkin to a sale for over $1 million.
Who I am now
- Founder & CEO of AI Advisory Board
- Serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience
Experience in numbers
Throughout my career, I:
- 1participated in launching several dozen companies;
- 2brought about half of them from the prototype stage to the real market;
- 3made 5 companies leaders in their regional market segments (Complex.ua, Auction.ua, Banner.ua, MySchool.ua, 2Event.com);
- 4sold 4 companies, the largest of which - Complex.ua - had more than 100 employees;
- 5still saving one company, which I grew 16x in 4 years, and then it was on the brink several times, first due to quarantine, and then due to the war;
- 6became the first IT startup founder in Ukraine who sold a company for over $1 million.
I am used to thinking in numbers: market, conversions, revenue, unit economics. But behind every number, there are always real people for me - teams, partners, clients.
How this project was born
All these years, I saw the same problem in different businesses: teams work a lot, but there is no clarity on what exactly; plans live in heads, messengers, and random files; meetings take hours, and the "trace" from them often equals zero.
I wanted a tool that: forces plans and reports to be written down, not kept "in words"; collects daily updates from the entire company into one clear picture; is useful for the owner, managers, and employees.
This is how AI Advisory Board was born. First - as a solution for my own teams. Now - as a product that other companies can use.
Education and background
I have always combined entrepreneurship with a technical base:
- two higher educations: applied mathematics; finance and banking;
- PhD in materials and mechanics.
This gives me three important things:
- 1Systems thinking - the ability to see a product and business as a holistic system.
- 2Respect for numbers - decisions are made based on data, not just intuition.
- 3Engineering approach - first logic and architecture, then interface and marketing.
Publicity and media
My projects and approaches to business have been covered by Ukrainian media, including Forbes Ukraine (two interviews).
I love sharing what works in real business: how to launch products, how not to bury teams in meetings, how to build a service that holds up not only on the founder.
My approach to products and teams
- A product must solve a specific pain, not "be innovative for the sake of innovation."
- Numbers are more important than opinions - we test hypotheses in the market, not in presentations.
- A team works better when there are transparent plans and clear expectations.
- Long-term relationships with clients are more valuable than a one-time sale.
- The founder must be close enough to the product to hear users, but not micromanage every step.
If you want to talk
If you want to talk about partnership or product implementation in a large company - let me know, contacts are at this link.