Crafting startups
Since 2015
Hej, Xin Chào, Привет!
Hi, my name is Yevhenii Kurtov, and I'm a software crafter and IT-entrepreneur. Since 2015 I built two products from idea to market (one to cashflow actually) and participated in the late pivoting phase of a 3rd one. All of them were targeting three different geographies - Canada, Vietnam, and Sweden. Yet, my most significant achievement is still to come, and I'm working hard for it to come sooner than later. Here you can read more about what I already did, what's in the works, and my thoughts on IT and entrepreneurial topics.
My Expertise
Apart from writing well-crafted code I know a thing or two about about balancing out a conflict between a business and software development. That's when software developers focus exclusively on the technical part and completely forget where the actual software value is. Or, as it also happens, when the purpose of a product that they are working on wasn't broken down to them at all.
Harmony between those parts of the company is one of the keys to maximizing returns on invested time, money, and energy.
I.e., how to cure ignorance on the technical side and magical thinking on the business side :)
Products
Ave 88
In 2015 we set ourselves to conquer the longterm rentals market in Vietnam. It was an exciting journey during which we built MVP, got our first thousand listings, and found ourselves in a fiercely competitive environment with four other projects launching within the same month as we did.
Despite the complete financial failure, it was an exciting ride during which my partner and I tried not only to unlock technical advantages to bring our platform ahead of the competition but also to start a business in a completely different culture.
Flowmail
Flowmail was a mobile-first email marketing created to cater to individuals and small to medium-sized businesses by providing optimized user experience.
It featured hand-crafted editor, elegant typography, powerful email delivery engine, and "Flow Manager" that made queuing up emails and newsletters for the week, month, or longer a breeze.
What made it shine though, was the simplicity of use. There was hardly any learning curve, and even solopreneurs could start sending beautiful emails almost immediately after signing up.
The ongoing project
A stealth project
This product combines cultural insights, a relatively lesser-known in the industry model, and Decentralized Finances.
The hope is to create something viable by combining those three parts that were never met together before.
On one side, there are significant challenges: DeFi adoption is not wide enough yet, and the model is quite niche. There were multiple attempts to introduce it to the broader audience, and only one succeeded.
On the other side, it's only because of DeFi a bootstrapped product can enter that market, and only this factor alone makes it worth a shot ;)
My preferred stack
Those tools proved to deliver outstanding results in various circumstances and worked as a solid foundation in every situation that I'm familiar with.
