Meet the founders of UTEW Tech Tribe: Alexandra Govorukha and Inna Stelmakh
“Elevator pitch” – ID (short resume – who, what, where)
UTEW is a community of Ukrainian technological entrepreneurs, which promote their products via international tech events. UTEW Tech Tribe’s top priority is to encourage tech entrepreneurs to become better at growing their companies on a global scale. That is why we bring them together into a community of 3300+ members that share knowledge, support each other, and exchange experience.
Our motto is: ‘Community over competition.’
“Bootstrapping” – When did you start “Tech & Innovation life” and why? What was the challenge of the sphere?
We’ve been running the UTEW community since 2016. It started as a group of 7 Web Summit attendees from Ukraine that in 2 weeks had grown to 250 people. We saw the value that this group brought to people: they became more connected, better prepared to the summit and they represented their companies better. That is how we understood that by creating UTEW Tech Tribe, we aimed to strengthen the international community’s view of Ukraine as a progressive and reliable technology partner as well as an entrepreneurial hotbed.
“Ninja/Rockstar” – How do you change the ecosystem?
We are building a strong community of tech entrepreneurs sharing their experience on topics such as business development, PR/marketing, fundraising, and investor relations, scaling products, and business operations. As community leaders, we help our members to stay connected within UTEW Tech Tribe. We unite tech entrepreneurs by organizing educational and networking meetups, Pitch Clinics, community-led trips to global tech conferences like Web Summit, The Next Web, Slush, Our Crowd, and others, and through sharing tech news & tips in a closed group on Facebook. We also spread the word about the achievements of the Ukrainian tech industry by publishing news on the Facebook page, by speaking at international tech events and by partnering with other tech ecosystems around the world.
“Moat/Value proposition” – The most prominent projects, achievements you are proud of
We co-organized Ukrainian Tech Days at London Tech Week 2019, Surf Pitch Night at Web Summit 2019, and Ukrainian Tech Days in Israel at OurCrowd 2020. We represented Ukraine tech ecosystem as speakers at different tech events in Milan, Minsk, Tel-Aviv, Tallinn, Chisinau, Brussels, London, and Lisbon. Also, Alexandra was a co-creator of Tech Ecosystem Guide to Ukraine, and Inna is a Portal Lead and International Network Lead of Tech Ukraine.
“Tech for good” – The next big thing you predict in the next decade for Ukraine
We see that our country has all chances to become a European tech hub for startups and IT-services. Many tech talents, internet speed, bright ideas, and not an expensive level of life could play their role in it. We believe that Ukraine has a huge potential in technology and we are striving to develop it and connect with other ecosystems as much as possible.
