Ukraine-based CEO Vasiliy Ivanov on Solving Problems, Productivity, And Taking Charge

Hey HackerNoon Readers! I’m Vasiliy Ivanov and I’m the CEO of KeepSolid.

I want to thank the HackerNoon community and staff for their nomination in the Emerging Tech category, as well as .tech domains for sponsoring the Emerging Tech category of the 2022 Noonies awards.

I’ve been nominated for the following awards and if you like my writing, please do check out these award pages and vote for me:

Learn more about my thoughts and opinions on the emerging technology of 2022 and my journey in the tech industry via the interview below.

1. Please tell us your story. What do you currently do in tech and how did you get started doing it?

I’m the CEO at KeepSolid, an international tech company with most of our team based in Odesa, Ukraine. Our company developed a number of online security and productivity solutions: VPN Unlimited (a VPN service with more than 25M customers), Passwarden (a secure password manager), Goals (an object-oriented project management tool), and others. Now at the company, I am mostly engaged in organizational and administrative activities. It is a very boring stage for me because I love development, new technologies, and product launches. But, it's a mandatory step that you can't skip if you want your company to scale.

2. Tell us more! What are the things you make / write / manage / build?

As you may know, we have a war going on in our country right now. This is surprising, but it has been the cause of many changes in KeepSolid.

All the military intelligence agencies of the world predicted that our army would not hold out against the Russian army for more than three days. A week into the war, it was clear that they had all underestimated our army. A month later, it was already clear that not only would we not surrender, but we were going to take back everything that was taken from us. This is where I asked myself a question that concerns both business and the army - why did a superior army with a huge number of weapons shatter like glass in Ukraine? I found the answer in the quality of performance. Next, I noticed that we in the company are constantly releasing something new, but with the release of each new feature or new product, the workload on the helpdesk only increases. At the same time, they mostly write complaints or ask how to do something with the product. Drawing an analogy with war, we made a decision to stop all new developments and put the company into the mode of improving the quality of the current products for half a year. We gather feedback, find old complaints, and we fix them. We've done a lot of iterations, and we keep doing it.

When we find system problems, we not only fix them, but we make instructions or other administrative documents describing what the employee should do next time to avoid the problem. In other words, we prepare a springboard for further growth of the company and release new functions with high quality.

This is what all my activities at KeepSolid are focused on right now.

3. If we gave you 10 million dollars to invest in something today, what would you invest in and why?

Well, if you gave me 10 billion dollars, I would work on the technology to overcome the speed of light. And with 10 million, you can do simpler, but still important, tasks. You know, I wondered what online tool I could use to organize my teams’ work now. I was very surprised. There's not a single working product right now. Some offer agile methodologies where the focus is on tasks, but no one thinks about goals. Others allow you to juggle key results, but at the same time, I can't even see the team's workload so I can’t schedule new work for the least busy employee. Others don't even think about the need to monitor the quality of work and find the weakest link. All in all, I would use such an investment to create a business management product as I see it from the height of my management experience.

4. What do you think is the most exciting development in tech right now? And on a personal level, what tech are you most excited or passionate about?

I like what the guys at Boston Dynamics are doing. These are really cool robots that can take a difficult or dangerous job for humans, and get it done. Now that we have a war in our country, believe me, I know what I'm talking about. :)

Personally, I like technology to collect and process data. The more I do marketing, the more interesting it is because I have to analyze hundreds of indicators and often have to wait for all the data to be downloaded. In the case of Apple or Google, the lag can be up to a few days until they process the data and give you the final analytics. There's more to develop here. It's not just about Big Data or Data Analysis, it's also about the proper organization of visual data so that analysis of all company activity at all levels takes not 2 hours, but only 5 minutes. I love graphs, and our developers often suffer when I ask them to redesign our Dashboards to display data differently.

5. What are your concerns about how fast tech is evolving?

When I combined the work of an engineer and a businessman, I noticed the following thing: a lot of technologies are created as a protest against existing technology. Some new idea is claimed, and the result is another technology that is far from perfect. This snowball effect is still going on today. The need to support it all is making operating systems and computer hardware more complicated. Are we moving toward new possibilities for humanity at the same speed as technology becomes more complex? I believe we are not, and such a path creates more barriers than benefits. Also, a lot of technology is a lot of security vulnerabilities or just system quality.

6. Which tech company do you trust the most? Which do you trust the least? Why?

It depends on what exactly to trust. For example, if I know that company A stores all user data and uses it for its own benefit, then I trust them to use my data too if I give it to them.

Here are some examples:

Facebook knows everything there is to know about us. Is it using it against us? If a Facebook user is a terrorist, Facebook will probably give his data to the government to protect other people. But when I'm an honest person, all the harm from analyzing my data is intrusive advertising. You can trust Facebook from that point of view. (Few people would agree though, right?)

Another example is Apple. When you run an ad campaign in Apple Search Ads, it often happens that Apple doesn't show the advertiser what keyword a significant portion of the budget is spent on. Instead of the keyword, they write “(Low Volume)”. Apple managers have told us that “Low Volume” is indicated when a keyword has too few impressions. But they can't tell me the truth about what “Low Volume” is when more than $2,000 is spent on that keyword. What is this? It's a lie. The company twists advertiser's money in a scheme similar to a scam and won't admit it, explaining that the system decides everything by itself. Do I trust them? Of course, I don't.

I have confidence in Google. Many of their technologies are open and you can check whether everything is as they claim it is. Also, Google's policy is much less about hiding analytical data from developers, which inspires trust and confidence.

7. What are you currently learning?

I'm interested in the topic of long-term stock investing. I'm still trying to figure out how market crashes happen every 10 years.

I study how the human mindset works, why some people have it easy and others find life hard. It's interesting and allows you not only to learn something new, but also to influence the future of the company by selecting the right people.

8. What’s the best advice you’ve ever given someone?

I don't know. Perhaps someone will read this question and tell me for themselves if this has happened.

9. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

I can't say it was exactly advice. A good friend gently pointed out to me that I wouldn't solve many of my problems until I took responsibility for them. It took me about 5 years to really take responsibility, but now I am very happy, thanks to him!