Data Science UA is a company that unites the data science community in Eastern Europe through technical events, mentoring, recruiting, AI consulting and corporate training, and AI R&D centers. The company’s history began in 2016, when the Data Science UA team organized the first AI technical conference in Kyiv.
As part of the ExcellEnt project, TechUkraine team had the honor to conduct an interview with Aleksandra Boguslavskaya, during which we managed to learn more about the company’s mission, main challenges and challenges of the founder, core values, portrait of an ideal client, and other nuances of entrepreneurship.
Aleksandra Boguslavskaya, CEO & Founder of Data Science UA
Please tell us about your education and career background.
I have two degrees. I graduated from the National Mining University in Dnipro. The first specialization was technical, the second was business management. What did I do before joining Data Science UA? I worked for an American product IT company and did a lot of things there: PR, recruiting, HR, and operational work. I was the only person in the company who didn’t write code, unfortunately or fortunately, I don’t know 🙂 Our team consisted of very talented engineers. All of them were fond of AI, almost all of them were KPI graduates. They took me to a meetup dedicated to artificial intelligence. I asked if there was an AI conference in Kyiv, and to my surprise, there was none in the capital of Ukraine.
Then I came up with the idea to organize it myself. My developers friends were very supportive, and I started active preparations for the first Data Science UA conference.
We held the first Data Science UA conference in November 2016. We consider it the first chapter of our company.
What is your mission and vision for Data Science UA?
Our mission is to make Ukraine the number one country on the AI solutions development map. We have very talented and smart AI developers, we have powerful technical universities, and we would like to see Ukraine develop advanced AI products used by millions, billions of people around the world. Therefore, this is what we have been doing for more than 7 years: both in terms of communication with companies and our approach to communication with developers. We try to find the best projects, the best companies for developers, so that our Ukrainian engineers are the most desirable candidates for the world’s leading companies.
Second, we would really like all people in the world to use and make decisions based on data, especially in business. We understand that in private life, of course, there is a call of the heart, but in business, we urge everyone to make only data-driven decisions. No subjectivity: there is a date, there is a story, there are sales, there are numbers.
How did you choose the industry and market?
That’s an interesting question. I think the industry chose me, it was a coincidence. It was 2016, and AI was becoming more and more popular in Ukraine. At that time, Grammarly was already taking a lot of steps to develop the community, they were focusing more on natural language processing, DataRobot was developing machine learning expertise, and Snapchat was developing computer vision. Geographically speaking, it was all located in different cities: from Odesa to Lviv, and we decided to combine all these expertise – machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing – in Kyiv. This is how the Data Science UA community started to develop. So I think we just started at the right time and were in the right place at the right time. I was very fortunate to be invited to this meetup, which was not accidental for me, and after that, everything started to take off. Then we just reacted very quickly to the needs of the market.
How do you think your past experience has helped in the creation and development of Data Science UA as a company?
First of all, I love people very much, and now I work with people from morning to evening. Thanks to conferences, numerous online meetups, and many years of experience in the field, I know almost all data scientists in Ukraine. I know who worked where, who has what career path, who studied where. Because these are the people who helped us as a company, and we helped them, and it’s always a win-win. Before COVID-19 and the full-scale war, I saw the power of our offline events, because it is a more focused focus, when 500-600 people in one place are united by one idea, communication and networking are much more effective. And I know that many startups were born at our conferences. Many people found partners, CTOs, and key engineers there. In addition to speeches, the conferences featured lively discussions, brainstorming sessions, and debates. The power of the community is very powerful, and I see it every year. After the full-scale invasion, all of our events went online because everyone was scattered all over the country and the world. Since the beginning of the war, our events have been charitable – we transfer all the proceeds from ticket sales to help and support Ukraine. But offline, of course, it was super powerful.
How did education play a role in your personal case?
I think I have a great mix: I have a technical and managerial education. If I had only a technical education, I think it would have been very difficult for me to run a company. If I had only a management degree, I think it would be difficult to understand the technical details.
By the way, we have very powerful universities in Ukraine. Most of the data scientists we hire are graduates or students of Kyiv Polytechnic, Lviv Polytechnic, and Kharkiv Polytechnic. These are the three most powerful technical universities that produce qualified specialists. Over the past 5-6 years, the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv has been added to this list. As of now, it is the strongest technical master’s program in data science in Ukraine. This is a private university, they provide scholarships and grants for education and invite top teachers from the industry.
What inspired you to become an entrepreneur and start this journey?
I think that the path of an entrepreneur is when you see an idea and don’t understand why no one has realized it yet. And at first glance, it seems very easy. You have no idea what or who will come your way. In my head, I could see where I was going. Therefore, in my mind, it was simple and easy to gather the best data scientists in Ukraine in one place, in one day. That’s why it finally happened. And I am very grateful to my team and everyone who believed in my idea.
So there was no validation of the idea? Or was there?
We talked to data scientists at an event a couple of months before our conference, told them that we wanted to make such a conference, and asked if they would come to it. Everyone said: “Of course, what date?”. At that time, it was just a discussion, but there were already quite a few people interested. And then I realized that the idea was absolutely valid. There was a validation of the idea, but it was in a very short time.
Were there any challenges at the initial stages?
Yes, there were. At the beginning, it was difficult to assemble a team. So I think that for all entrepreneurs, the main challenge is to gather people who will believe in your idea, develop it, and believe in it as much as you do. I’m always lucky with people and we manage to assemble great teams: a PR team, a team of recruiters, and engineers. There is one person who has stayed with us until now, Igor Frankevych, our Data Engineering Practice Lead. He was the first person who believed in my idea and I am grateful to him to this day. Later, when I remember what it was like, COVID-19, the outbreak of a full-scale war, our difficulties at the beginning seemed trivial. So I can’t imagine how hard it was for entrepreneurs who started at the beginning of COVID-19 or during the invasion. Many businesses either did not survive the new realities or failed to adapt to them. My challenge was to build a strong team. The community immediately trusted us. The engineers always helped us with everything from ideas for company development to introductions with potential clients. It was and still is a powerful community where everyone knows each other. Therefore, it was important for me personally, as a business owner, to find people in the team who would believe in my idea. I was lucky with this. Later, when we expanded the team, I had to communicate our idea, our mission. When we were looking for, for example, our first recruiter, I interviewed about 100 candidates for this position. It was a key role for me, and I interviewed all the candidates for this position myself. It took me an incredible amount of time, but now Anastasia Rusavska, whom I found then, has been working as Head of Recruitment and HR in our company for five years. Therefore, I believe very strongly in the power of my own people, whom I need to look for, and not just hire anyone. And to look for a person with whom a match will happen. You need to understand that if you don’t have chemistry at the beginning, it will be difficult in the future.
Speaking of further challenges, if you can even call them that, of course, there was COVID-19 and the full-scale invasion.
What helped you not to give up during these periods?
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, my team helped me a lot. I was in despair, like all people, but I realized after 4-5 days of war that I could not just sit still and grieve. I realized that we had a team and that I had to pay everyone’s salaries – they had children and parents. I understood that I had to motivate the team, that I had to find clients, that I just had to do everything to save our business so that it would not close, and that families depended on me, not just one family, but 80 families. Because we have 80 people in our team.
I realized that people expect clear actions and decisions from me. And if I sit around in despair, the whole team will be in despair too. We gathered the entire team in early March, and I said that this is a very difficult situation, we do not understand what will happen next with clients, with the country, with work in general, but if we do not work, no one will pay us money. Therefore, if someone is ready to work, let’s work – it’s an opportunity to continue earning money – 90% of the team said they were ready to work. That’s why I think my main motivation is our team, and I always realize that I can’t take a step back. We don’t have that choice, we have only forward. We have to move forward.
What were your skills that helped you overcome these challenges?
I think it’s primarily stress resistance, and secondly, I don’t take no for an answer. If I am rejected or told “No,” I ask what exactly I didn’t like or what we can improve. Or I ask myself, “What can we do to work with the people we want to work with?”
Many people perceive the word “no” as the end result. I don’t see rejection as the end point of communication. For me, it is not over, it is just beginning. Rejection or “No” is a way to improve our service or product, if we are talking about business.
How do you balance long-term and short-term goals?
There is a lot of operational work. As a CEO, I have a huge amount of communication: with team leads, with teams individually, with clients, with partners, and a bunch of other operational issues. But I always have long-term goals where we need to move. I try to set aside 1 day at the end of the week to think about the long-term goals and strategy of the company. Because the beginning of the week is always a meeting with all the teams – we need to discuss a lot of things, understand who is moving where, and constantly keep a helicopter view 360 of what is happening in each team, what is happening with cash flow, what are the goals and KPIs of each team. That’s why all the power is in balance and planning. It’s much easier for me to manage the company because we have a CTO/Co-Owner, Oleg Boguslavsky, who is my business partner and who covers a lot of technical and other issues. Oleg has 20 years of experience in the IT industry – in the world’s top service and product companies. We also have great team leaders. But despite this structure, we still communicate from morning to night. I constantly bring myself back to the strategy and try to get out of the operational activities from time to time. Now that the team has grown, it’s a little easier for me because team leaders are taking on more and more tasks.
Did you consult with mentors?
Yes, I consult them all the time. When I was starting my business, I also had my business mentors and mentors who helped me validate ideas and guide me. And they were my role models. All of these people are very experienced and successful in the profession. I am very grateful to them for helping me validate my ideas.
As for Data Science UA, we now have a mentor/business coach who coaches the company’s executives. We regularly hold strategic sessions and it is a really powerful tool for business development.
What makes your business unique and how do you differ from others in the market?
Our focus has always been and remains on artificial intelligence. There are many companies that do everything at once: web development, data analytics, and testing. We are focused on the development of AI products and solutions. The second point is that we started our journey by building a community that currently includes more than 30,000 AI engineers around the world. We have friendly and warm relations with all people in the community. We know these people personally and hire them for our projects, consulting, outsourcing, and outstaffing. In many cases, companies first build a brand and then organize an event for recognition. We did the opposite: we started with the Data Science UA conference, then organized data science courses, and then AI recruiting was added to our activities. Later, AI consulting, and then outsourcing, AI outstaff. Our company developed very organically. Requests in the areas that we added later were requests from our potential clients, engineers, companies, or top managers who came to our events and conferences. The peculiarity of our community is that we know how to attract the best people from the industry. CV or ML project – we know who will do the best job. If we understand that we need a person with machine learning expertise in e-commerce, we clearly understand that there are top 10 engineers who do it best. Therefore, we have a rather unconventional way of developing the company.
How do you assess the market?
We look at the overall dynamics of companies: how much work is outsourced and outstaffed. We also analyze which companies are starting to use AI because artificial intelligence can be implemented in any business. The use of AI is growing every year. Nowadays, there is almost no top company (I am talking about all areas, not just IT) that does not use AI. And I think that 90% of companies will use artificial intelligence in their work in the coming years.
How do you collect feedback from your customers?
We organize calls and ask for feedback on our work, as well as send clients a feedback form. We are a transparent company in all our work processes. Because we understand that engineers are the people who help us grow our business, and clients are the people who pay us money. So we can’t get better feedback than from them.
How do you stay innovative?
Thanks to AI:) We can’t do without it.
What is your definition of success in the case of your business?
I think it’s automation and a focus on removing uninteresting, monotonous work for all business areas. Because I believe that people are more interested in doing creative and intellectual work rather than monotonous work. And I dream that cool products with global recognition, such as Reface, will develop in Ukraine. This is a team from Kyiv that makes a very powerful AI product that is used by more than 100 million users from all over the world. By the way, we helped to assemble a key team of engineers for them.
And I am very pleased that there are many Ukrainian companies that are known all over the world. Therefore, my definition of success is to make the label “made in Ukraine” synonymous with innovation.
For you personally, as a CEO, what is the biggest success of Data Science UA?
I am glad that we create jobs in Ukraine, that we employ 100% Ukrainians in the company. Some people went abroad, but most of them stay in Ukraine, so this is a big plus for me now. If we stay in Ukraine, we pay taxes to the state and bring the victory closer. We believe that the war will end. And the resilience of Ukrainians is very inspiring. Of course, there have been blackouts and very difficult times… but we see that the team’s performance is at a high level despite all the challenges.
For me, success means holding the tenth anniversary conference of Data Science UA in peaceful Kyiv. And to finally see and hug everyone.
How did your idea go from idea validation to implementation?
At the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, business coaches helped me a lot. I told them my idea and asked for criticism and questions. Such a mastermind with powerful entrepreneurs whom you trust and who have already launched a business is very useful for a new entrepreneur. I had several ideas, and Data Science UA, which you see on the market now, was my third or fourth idea. My previous ideas were smashed to smithereens. And I’m very happy about that, because that’s how I came up with the idea that the market really needed.
What do you think are the key elements for managing a company?
Discipline. Some people can’t organize themselves, and here you need to organize people around you. A great team is a very important factor that will make the business grow faster. I can look for people for a key role for a long time. And I think that this is my advantage, because when I have already chosen a person who will work for us, I realize that we have a 100 out of 100 match.
So my key elements for management are discipline and teamwork.
Flexibility is also important because now, during the war, people have a lot of personal pain, sadness and personal moments. If I see that the shelling of Odesa has been going on for more than a week and the team from this city has not had the opportunity to sleep, there will be no results this week. We just need to exhale, wait, let people sleep, and then there will be a result. Everything will be fine.
What helped you create an effective business plan and find funding?
To be honest, there was no business plan and no financing as such, it was my own savings with which I started the business. I just realized that I had a certain amount and nothing else, so I needed to start earning quickly.
How do you prioritize your tasks?
I try to keep in focus tasks that are urgent, important, non-urgent but important, and important but not urgent. I have a lot of reminders on my phone, a lot of notebooks where I write down all the tasks. We have CRM systems, whiteboards, Trello. Each team uses its own system, which is more convenient for them and where we track progress on tasks. For example, the HR team works in one system, the recruiting team in another system, and the dev team in another system. So I go everywhere and see who is doing what. Also, I have a lot of personal communication with each team member during the day, so Google calendar and reminders are my everything.
Please tell us, what was the biggest challenge for you as an entrepreneur?
I think it was the war. In the early days, I didn’t know if the company would survive. I was scared that we would close the business and have to lay off all the people. That’s why war is not just a black swan, it’s not even a black bird, it’s just a black dinosaur that knocks absolutely everyone down. But Ukrainians have done something incredible in a year and a half: people are working, studying, and developing. In May 2022, our entire team took courses and trainings. At that time, Ukrainians were given free access to very powerful courses, and some of them had very good discounts. And the whole team took advantage of this opportunity. Of course, we would have liked to get it under different conditions, but it is what it is. So I think that startups and companies that are born in Ukraine during the war will be used as examples around the world for the next 30 years.
Who is your ideal client?
The ones we have now are perfect. We really value each of our partnerships and are grateful that our clients choose to work with us.
What are they like?
These are companies that are open to partnership and innovation. And they entrust this work to experts. Our clients are also open-minded people who see the potential of AI. We mostly work with innovative companies that have already applied artificial intelligence in their work. Also, these are companies that are open to experiments and innovations: a new technology is released, and they use it in a month and implement it in their business. These are companies and people who are open to feedback. We have a trusting relationship with our clients and partners and regularly discuss all business and technical issues. Such brainstorming sessions help us develop innovative products, and these are the products that are ahead of the competition. Our clients are people who do not work 8 hours and 5 days a week, but for whom work and business development are a lifestyle. These are people who live their business. Because we live our business, our company, and our clients live their business, their product, and they believe in it 1000%.
Is there a balance between your personal life and your business?
I think that entrepreneurs don’t have a very clear line between work and personal life. I have no problem reading emails on vacation or answering work-related questions on weekends. When I became an entrepreneur, I couldn’t do otherwise.
For me, Data Science UA is not a job: it is my life. If I go to the US on vacation and my clients are there, of course, I will be very happy to meet them. There is rest, there is personal life, and there is time for personal life, but it all gets mixed up with Data Science UA. Entrepreneurship is a very important part of my life. It is a lifestyle and something I cannot imagine myself without.
Please tell us what one piece of advice you would give to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Don’t be afraid to take the first step, then the second step, then the third step, and move forward. I think a lot of people are stopped by fear. It is very important to write down your plans at the beginning and not be afraid to go step by step. Maybe with some fear, but move forward. If you have an idea – validate it, if you have a desire to do your own thing – do it, no one will die because you will develop your business. On the contrary, you will create jobs, you will realize your dream, the dream of other people, because over time it will be a dream for the whole team and a mission for the whole team. Don’t be afraid.
Can you recommend any books or trainings?
For me personally, business coaching is very effective because a coach helps you look so deeply and understand what you want and why you are doing it, as well as answer an important question: how you will develop it. Therefore, a professional coach who is right for you is a godsend and a treasure. As for books, I can say that this is an individual story. There is a case when it is difficult for people after an MBA to start a business because they know all the risks. Do you know why Steve Jobs was successful? Because he did not know that something could go wrong. He didn’t know what the risks were. And here I have a similar story, when I started, I did not realize that something could go wrong and did not calculate the risks. If I had known what was coming my way, I might not have started. But I believed very strongly in my idea. Therefore, my advice is that it is worth reading books, but a great coach will help you move more confidently according to your own scenario. And then there will be no such strong fear that something will go wrong. There will be fewer negative preconceptions in your head.
Could you please share your plans for the future of Data Science UA?
We are currently developing very actively and want to attract new clients. Currently, 90% of our clients are from the US and 10% are from the UK and Europe. We are interested in expanding our geography so that customers around the world know about Data Science UA. We want to help teams from the United States develop interesting products, companies, and solutions, as this is historically our largest region. The United States is very supportive of Ukraine and Ukrainian business, both politically, economically, and humanly, and I am personally very grateful for that. So our plans are to develop the company. I hope that we will be able to continue to hire Ukrainians and create new jobs in Ukraine.
