Yaroslav Kaplan. Birth, Growth and Death of a Startup

•

0 likes•134 views

Yaroslav has a background in education and entertainment, ex-CEO FunLight, a startup focused on immersive attractions for amusement parks. Last year FunLight took part in a Startup Alley at IT Arena and advanced to the final round of startup competition. Currently Yaroslav is a head of VR/AR studio.

Technology

1
BIRTH,
GROWTH,
and DEATH
of a startup
Yaroslav Kaplan
ex-CEO FunLight

MY GOALS
4
1. Share experience
2. Help to avoid mistakes
3. Inspire
Idea Team
MVP Fundraising
Events
Product Traction
Attitude

LESSON LEARNED #1
8
Ideation starts with a real-life
problem
Make sure it's huge*
Check for current solutions

TEAM
9
Share risks
Combine skills
Reach more
VCs do not invest in solo
entrepreneurs

LESSON LEARNED #2
10
The co-founders’ skills must be complementary
Most preferably tech+sales
Sign a memo on-shore

LESSON LEARNED #3
12
Cheap and fast prototype
Test for feedback ($)
Improve

FUNDRAISING
13
FFF
Angel
Seed
Series A, B, C
● Make sure you want to
do this for a long-time
● Find great co-founders
● Identify the market and
a need
$5k
$20k
$100k
$500k+
● Create the MVP
● Validate it on early
adopters
● Conﬁrm the TAM can be
huge
● Hire qualiﬁed professionals
● Build scalable tech/process
● Find scalable strategy

LESSON LEARNED #4
14
Identify target angels/funds
Grow your network
Look widely

PRODUCT
15
The goal of a startup is
to solve a customer’s problem
like no one else does
so effectively that a customer
is ready to pay for that

LESSON LEARNED #5
16
Customer ≠ User
Users don't care about
technology. Value rules
Observe, interview, iterate

TRACTION
17
A heartrate of a startup
#1 interest for investors
Exit vs Dividends

LESSON LEARNED #6
18
Set KPIs
Growth > Proﬁt
Control burn rate

EVENTS
19
Poor content
Networking
Time and money

LESSON LEARNED #7
20
Value your time
Do your homework
Stick to your daily job

ATTITUDE
21
Uncertainty
Dedication
Internal energy & optimism

LESSON LEARNED #8
22
Much harder than expected
A tree, not a child
Failure > Reﬂection > Growth

XR STUDIO
Interactive
Projections
Augmented
Reality
25
Virtual Reality Video 360°

29
WORKFLOW
3D scan
video 360°
3D models
VR app
AR app
edit

What's hot

How to fundraise and how to impress investors (Launcher @MobCon 2016)

Launcher / Startup studio

Funding 101 - or why an idea is not enough

Alexander Marten

The 101 of the corporate startup relationship

Alexander Marten

Startup Bootcamp - Session 4 of 8 - How to get your Startup Going

Amit Seth

Mr. Anthony Pash (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-pash-582603aa), a core member of Proseed’s mentorship team and avid investor for 40 years, shares his insights into what makes a startup worthy of seed investment: 1) INNOVATE – NO MATTER WHAT 2) MULTIPLE (BALANCED) FOUNDERS 3) BE A GREAT FOUNDER – PARTLY “NUTS” 4) BUILD GREAT TEAM(S) 5) SEEK OUT SYNERGISTIC INVESTORS – 6 DEGREES 6) INTEGRATE SWEAT EQUITY 7) BUILD THAT TRUST RELATIONSHIP – ITS CRITICAL After spending 20+ years in the corporate world, Mr. Pash now reviews and invests in startup for a living

How to Secure Seed Funding for Your Startup

Vimi.co Ltd - Bangkok Web Agency

Startup Camp Berlin, April 7th

Joerg Rheinboldt

START-UPs or STAY-UPs?

Silvija Seres

AIA2019 - Matt Kuppers - Team Build Dreams

European Innovation Academy

Nathan Jacob

Hilary Ip

Evolving a strategy for Emerging and startup companies

guest716604

START Summit Axel Springer Plug and Play; April 17th, St. Gallen

Joerg Rheinboldt

Computer Society Conference 2018 - Startup Studio

Green Tomato Limited

Succeed eyond Success Presentation

Wouter Gheysen

Leveraging on scalable technology to expand regionally

Michael Smith Jr.

Building a High Performance Team: Ariba Built-to-Last Playbook: Keith Krach

Keith Krach

Start your Business

BPlan Experts

Escape velocity from singapore aws '17

Michael Smith Jr.

Infographic of how to increase your startups chance of success.

Co-founder Ignitor

The Incubators of Future

Silvija Seres

Timeless Principles of Building a Category King

Keith Krach

What's hot (20)

How to fundraise and how to impress investors (Launcher @MobCon 2016)

Funding 101 - or why an idea is not enough

The 101 of the corporate startup relationship

Startup Bootcamp - Session 4 of 8 - How to get your Startup Going

How to Secure Seed Funding for Your Startup

Startup Camp Berlin, April 7th

START-UPs or STAY-UPs?

AIA2019 - Matt Kuppers - Team Build Dreams

Nathan Jacob

Evolving a strategy for Emerging and startup companies

START Summit Axel Springer Plug and Play; April 17th, St. Gallen

Computer Society Conference 2018 - Startup Studio

Succeed eyond Success Presentation

Leveraging on scalable technology to expand regionally

Building a High Performance Team: Ariba Built-to-Last Playbook: Keith Krach

Start your Business

Escape velocity from singapore aws '17

Infographic of how to increase your startups chance of success.

The Incubators of Future

Timeless Principles of Building a Category King

Similar to Yaroslav Kaplan. Birth, Growth and Death of a Startup

Adam Jackson, Co-Founder & CEO ,Braintrust - Raising a Seed Round: How to Win...

Techsylvania

The New Venture Team M3

Graham Royce

About UCI Applied Innovation: UCI Applied Innovation is a dynamic, innovative central platform for the UCI campus, entrepreneurs, inventors, the business community and investors to collaborate and move UCI research from lab to market. About the Cove @ UCI: To accelerate collaboration by better connecting innovation partners in Orange County, UCI Applied Innovation created the Cove, a physical, state-of-the-art hub for entrepreneurs to gather and navigate the resources available both on and off campus. The Cove is headquarters for UCI Applied Innovation, as well as houses several ecosystem partners including incubators, accelerators, angel investors, venture capitalists, mentors and legal experts. Follow us on social media: Facebook: @UCICove Twitter: @UCICove Instagram: @UCICove LinkedIn: @UCIAppliedInnovation For more information: cove@uci.edu http://innovation.uci.edu/

Entrepreneur Boot Camp | George Kenney | Lunch & Learn

UCICove

Startuplandia Unplugged - How to do a Startup

Neal Dikeman

3 Golden Rules for a Bigger Business Profits

Leik Hong, Leow 廖翊翃

Startup Founder 101 - Dave Parker

Dave Parker

Sourcing Tools & Hacks For Finding Top Talent

RecruitingDaily.com LLC

Raising Capital from a VC

William McQuillan

Sustainability after School: Imperative of Entreprenueship and Professionalis...

Godwin Emmanuel Oyedokun MBA MSc ACA ACIB FCTI FCFIP CFE

Efactor - Pitching and Presentation

EFactor Global

From Corporate Research to Startup

LucaMarchesotti

Do you really want to change the world?

Joao Perre Viana

ED Presentation Slides

Tan E mul Adnan

High Ticket Sales - How to Sell Large Client Retainers

Ryan Stewart

Cn 5 Day Presentation

deidredutcher

Marketing Strategies for Business Success by John Madayese

John Oluwashola Madayese

As a founder or startup employee do you find your 24 hours-a-day too short ? After 5 years growing Toucan Toco we do too. In the end there is only one solution : prioritize ! “But what should I focus on when we are 2 founders in a garage ? A 10 people team with no fundings ? A structured team of 50 ? I heard about OKR, 360 Reviews, Squads, BSPCE, Wiki, core values… But what should I do in the next weeks among those actions, process and strategies ?” To help you answer these questions, we’ve created an easily consumable documentation, full of ressources, to share our learnings and documentation efforts. Looking for the right process at the right stage ? This slideshare is for you.

Startup Playbook for founders & employees, written by toucan's founders

Toucan Toco

Growing your business can be hard work. But, it becomes even harder when you continually focus on “areas for improvement”… There is an alternative; it is called a “Bright Spots Approach”. In this presentation you will learn: - Why you should focus more on bright spots - How other companies are successfully using bright spots to grow faster - Why bright spots focus will also help you fix the weak spots in your company - How you can get started quickly

Bright Spots for Growth

Bryan Cassady

9 Tips to Boost Your Innovation Project

Innovation Excellence

Boost innovation project

Huu Nguyen Tat

Similar to Yaroslav Kaplan. Birth, Growth and Death of a Startup (20)

Adam Jackson, Co-Founder & CEO ,Braintrust - Raising a Seed Round: How to Win...

The New Venture Team M3

Entrepreneur Boot Camp | George Kenney | Lunch & Learn

Startuplandia Unplugged - How to do a Startup

3 Golden Rules for a Bigger Business Profits

Startup Founder 101 - Dave Parker

Sourcing Tools & Hacks For Finding Top Talent

Raising Capital from a VC

Sustainability after School: Imperative of Entreprenueship and Professionalis...

Efactor - Pitching and Presentation

From Corporate Research to Startup

Do you really want to change the world?

ED Presentation Slides

High Ticket Sales - How to Sell Large Client Retainers

Cn 5 Day Presentation

Marketing Strategies for Business Success by John Madayese

Startup Playbook for founders & employees, written by toucan's founders

Bright Spots for Growth

9 Tips to Boost Your Innovation Project

Boost innovation project

More from IT Arena

Shalini Agarwal is the Senior Director of Engineering at LinkedIn, responsible for building Sales Intelligence Enterprise product-Sales Navigator. Before this, she was responsible for delivering scalable Search and Data Applications while managing a global team at LinkedIn. Shalini spent nearly a decade at eBay where she shaped buyer experience. She is passionate about building great software and creating opportunities. In addition to her day-to-day role, she is leading LinkedIn’s REACH apprenticeship program since its inception, a program to hire non-traditional talent to LinkedIn’s engineering team. Speech Overview: Building good software is difficult, especially when there are competing priorities on craftsmanship and time to market. There is no magic bullet for achieving excellence, it requires focus and continuous improvement to make it sustainable. In this talk, Shalini will share how an engineering team at LinkedIn built world-class technology foundations across availability, product quality, and developer productivity.

Shalini Agarwal, LinkedIn. Engineering excellence: marathon, not a sprint

IT Arena

Dave has three decades of experience in developer tools, developer communities, and evangelizing sustainable software delivery practices. He has held programming, product management, and product marketing roles at Sun Microsystems, Gupta Technologies, Remedy Software, Marimba, Keynote Systems (Dynatrace), SOASTA, and BlazeMeter. Dave’s current passion is demystifying progressive delivery, especially the ways it enables better outcomes by removing constraints and building-in feedback loops. Speech Overview: We build pipelines to automate processes and minimize human toil. Have you applied this same approach to how you expose new features to users and measure the impact? Progressive delivery may be relatively new as a term, but the underlying practices of progressive experimentation (where features are gradually rolled out to users and statistical engines are used to detect impact during the rollout instead of after) are not. We’ll discuss the layers, and benefits, from the foundation up.

Dave Karow, Split. Powering Progressive Delivery With Data

IT Arena

Ihar Mahaniok, Angel Investor. Hunting unicorns for early stage investments

IT Arena

One of the top-250 lawyers in Ukraine at the age of 25. At the age of 27 quit well-paid job at a top law firm to start a legal document automation company (AXDRAFT) with his brother. Got accepted into Y Combinator at 28. Raised $1.3 mln seed round in 3 weeks at 29. In 2020, at the age of30 sold AXDRAFT to Onit Inc. for a 16x multiple on revenue Speech Overview: A story of how we sold AXDRAFT in 3 months from term sheet to money in the bank and how to get your company ready for exit.

Yuriy Zaremba, AXDRAFT. How to sell your startup

IT Arena

John Griffin is currently paving the way for new explorative ways to bring Design to the forefront of the Ford Credit Europe products. With a background co-founding design consultancies Wolfcub and Pack, he’s spent the last 8 years honing his craft on clients including ASOS, HSBC, Diageo, and Google alongside helping a multitude of start-ups launch their ideas. When John’s not going deep on bringing product ideas to life, you can find him behind the mic podcasting, running the industry event Product Unleashed, or talking about his favorite 80s films to anyone who will listen long enough! Speech Overview: Why are we so afraid for our ideas to fail? Is failure just learning with a bad reputation? The idea of our ideas failing can not only hold us back from making a start on something but can also leave us in an endless loop of all-talk-no-action. For teams to truly be successful, failure needs to move from elephant in the room to engrained within your DNA.

John Griffin, Ford Credit Europe. Normalising failure and making way for succ...

IT Arena

Vitaliy Diatlenko, Uklon. Transforming your business with machine learning. T...

IT Arena

Chris Cassarino leads Global Business Enablement for SoftServe. Previously he spend over a decade leading various learning, leader, and organizational development initiatives and is the founder of boutique management consulting firm, Starling North LLC. As a certified strength and ICF accretited coach, Chris brings his passion about strengh-based leadership to his work daily. Speech Overview: Recent research shows that only 20% of the global workforce is engaged. As we face this global pandemic, the role of leadership has become more critical to an associate’s performance, morale, and overall well-being. In fact, recent research shows that managers account for up to 70% of the variance in their employee’s engagement. When leaders can help their associate’s leverage their strengths, organizations may see up to a 21% increase in profitability, 17% increase in productivity, and 24% reduction in turnover. This session will give participants an overview of the research with proven concepts and approaches to adopting a strength-based leadership approach.

Chris Cassarino, SoftServe. Stop Fixating on Fixing – Solving the global enga...

IT Arena

For the past 20 years, Michael Labate has helped organizations drive digital innovation and revenue for a global clientele across industries. From start-ups to Fortune 100 enterprises, Mr. Labate’s approach to developing an environment for success requires that everyone in the company is represented with equal opportunity. Michael Labate presently serves as President of North America at Intellias — a Forbes-ranked #1 Employer for IT Services in Ukraine, and Top Choice for Professionals by EY. Michael has an undergraduate degree in Business from Penn State University and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Speech Overview: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) is more than a policy or special program. Employers that truly adopt and commit to ED&I principals experience greater levels of innovation and creativity, broader access to unique skills, create an environment of success for their people and customers, and drive larger and more sustainable growth for the company. Intellias’ President of North America, Michael Labate, will share a data-driven approach to why ED&I must be deeply embedded in the corporate culture, and how to start taking actions today to adopt ED&I principles in the workplace.

Michael Labate, Intellias. EDI in the DNA: Why Equity, Diversity and Inclusio...

IT Arena

Beth Anne “Katzbe” Katz is an award winning mental health advocate and product manager at Microsoft, having worked on Windows, Microsoft Teams, and now, PowerPoint. Outside of work, Beth Anne founded Katzbe Fights Depression, an organization using content creation to combat the mental health stigma. Beth Anne has won awards for her work from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and the Society of Women Engineer. In 2021, Beth Anne was named one of the 100 most influential women in Silicon Valley by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Speech Overview: Mental health is becoming an increasingly critical topic in the workplace, but oftentimes employees don’t know how to navigate mental health needs at work and employers don’t know how to support employees’ mental health. This interactive workshop teaches participants how to self-monitor their mental health state, walks them through creating an individualized mental health action plan in preparation for times of decreased health, and informs employers on how they can create a supportive mental health environment that allows employees to thrive.

Beth Anne Katz, Microsoft. How to Product Manage Your Mental Health

IT Arena

Sally Foote, GoCompare & Look After My Bills. Magic Goggles: the tools you ne...

IT Arena

Colleen’s worked with B2B, B2C, and platform products over the last 15 years, including the last 5+ at Airbnb, and has a unique understanding of what is necessary to launch products that resonate with users, and of how to bring those products to market quickly. Colleen also teaches and coaches at both General Assembly and UC Berkeley Executive Education, and is passionate about helping teams use strong product development methodology!

Colleen Graneto, Airbnb. 3 steps to better product decision making

IT Arena

Vasyl has been working as an IT project manager, IT and operational consultant for 14 years. His specialization includes design, maintenance and optimization of the software process architecture, as well as process implementation monitoring and control. He has spent seven years in the Ukrainian IT-integrator “Incom” and then three years as an internal consultant in Luxoft. From April 2015 he started to participate in Ukrainian reforms as a volunteer by joining the team of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. On November 14th, Vasyl started to work at Prozorro as a CEO. During these almost four years, he managed to reinvent a state enterprise as a sustainable IT company. Prozorro completed system migration from Amazon to Ukrainian data storage, integrated with several government registers, implemented new procurement procedures, developed the first state-owned marketplace Prozorro Market and launched the Bug Bounty program.

Vasyl Zadvornyy, Prozorro. The Future of Governance: Can a Script Replace the...

IT Arena

Godard Abel is CEO of G2.com, Inc, a business software review website, which he co-founded in 2012. Previously Godard served as CEO of SteelBrick which was acquired by Salesforce in 2016 where he subsequently served as SVP/GM of the SteelBrick business unit until May 2017 when he left to refocus on entrepreneurial adventures. Godard previously co-founded and as CEO built BigMachines into a leading software-as-a-service provider which was acquired by Oracle in 2013. Before entering the technology industry, Godard consulted for McKinsey & Company and advised leading manufacturers in the U.S. and Germany on strategy development and business process improvement. Godard was named to the Tech 50 list by Crain’s Business Chicago in September 2014 and to the Chicago Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in 2011. He earned an MBA from Stanford University and both a B.S. and M.S. in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the 2016 Class of Henry Crown Fellows and the Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute. Speech Overview: Based on unique insights gained from g2.com software marketplace, exploring trends in the global software industry and how software innovators can overcome the crisis of customer trust.

Godard Abel, G2. The SaaS Trust Crisis

IT Arena

Zeb Evans, ClickUp. From $0 to $20M ARR in 2 Years: Bootstrapping to Natural ...

IT Arena

Namir Anani, ICTC. Economic Resiliency in The Face of Adversity

IT Arena

Mada co-founded Branch in 2014, masterminding the community-driven marketing strategy behind the company’s early, explosive success. Today, Branch is the mobile growth platform of choice for over 50,000 apps and 2 billion monthly users around the world, and one of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing Unicorns. Mada currently leads marketing for Branch, and she remains deeply involved in the company’s global culture initiatives, which have led to several industry awards. Born and raised in Romania, Mada came to the US to study Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and then earned her Masters of Engineering and MBA from Stanford. Mada enjoys playing the latest viral mobile games, binge-watching the hottest sci-fi shows, and photographing Branch events. Mada regularly speaks about mobile growth at top global tech events, including Web Summit and SaaStr, and she is the host for the How I Grew This podcast series and an instructor for a Growth Strategies course at Stanford Continuing Studies. Awards: 2016 Linkedin’s Next Wave – 150 top professionals in 15 industries all under 35 2019 Marketers That Matter – Winner in the Building Brand B2B category Top Women Entrepreneurs In Cloud Innovation 2019 Winner Speech Overview: The mobile growth trends you need to know about in 2021 – 2020 have changed our world – from COVID to big platform changes when it comes to mobile technology you have to stay ahead of the curve. This talk explores the mobile marketing landscape and the key trends you need to know.

Mada Seghete, Branch. Mobile Growth Trends

IT Arena

Julia Petryk is the Head of PR at MacPaw, a globally acclaimed developer from Ukraine. Julia has 10+ years’ experience in digital marketing and online communications. She currently oversees the MacPaw’s global PR strategy, leads a team of PR practitioners, and maintains the company’s online presence in Western media. Julia is a mentor for tech startups and an author of her own online course “Product PR”.

Julia Petryk, MacPaw. Product PR: a how-to guide

IT Arena

Yaroslav has been working in IT industry since 2008, delivering more than 50 projects in different domains across the globe. In the last few years, he’s been cooperating with high profile clients to provide guidance and support on their organizations’ journey to digital transformation. He worked with the biggest retailers in North America and tech giants such as Cisco, Dell, Suse, and Canonical. His most significant recent project is Data Science Platform (ML) developed in collaboration with Dell, Canonical, SUSE, and Intel (officially announced on February 2020). Today, he is a head of the IT Advisory Group at the Intellias Technology Office. Speech Overview: We will discuss the reasons why Kubernetes won’t change a lot outside the infrastructure providers’ world and why it’s not the best option for you. Why is it more important to understand the concept behind this platform rather than use Kubernetes itself? How Kubernetes managed to become the platform for computation, while OpenStack didn’t? What other alternatives might work better for you? When to use and not to use Kubernetes?

Yaroslav Ravlinko, Intellias. You don’t need Kubernetes. You need to understa...

IT Arena

Yaroslav is in software development focusing on Cloud since before the Cloud. It is his work and hobby at the same time. Concepts, architecture, solutioning and hands-on implementation along with leadership, management, and processes were his responsibilities working and consulting in Canada, USA, Ukraine, Austria. Anton worked as Engineering Manager, leading 5 products at the same time. Took part in due-diligence, importing companies

Yaroslav Novytskyy, Anton Vasylenko, N-iX. Migrating to the cloud: options an...

IT Arena

Kostiantyn Bokhan, a technical lead at N-IX, focuses on data science projects. He leads data science projects in several areas: Computer vision, NLP, and signal processing as well as consults clients regarding digital transformations with AI. When free, he conducts research in the deep machine learning area. Kostiantyn has been an associate professor and faculty member of several universities since 2002. His research focuses on machine learning, deep learning, signal, and image processing. He received a PhD degree in network and telecommunications systems with research in digital signal processing in 2013. He has served on the scientific committees and review boards of several conferences. Speech Overview: Applying machine learning to make business applications and services intelligent is more than just training models and serving them. It requires implementing end-to-end and continuously repeatable cycles of training, testing, deploying, monitoring, and operating the models. Continuous delivery for machine learning (CD4ML) is a technique that enables reliable end-to-end cycles of development, deploying, and monitoring machine learning models. There are a lot of tools and frameworks that can be used to implement CD4ML. One of them is Kubeflow. Our experience of using Kubeflow for implementing CD4ML for the manufacturing area based on Azure Kubernetes service will be described in this speech.

Kostiantyn Bokhan, N-iX. CD4ML based on Azure and Kubeflow

IT Arena

More from IT Arena (20)