Marcus Richards
The war caused by the full-scale Russian invasion hasn’t frozen business processes in Ukraine, including the IT area. Companies are doing their best to keep growing and bring up new solutions to move forward. The Roosh Founding Partner Sergey Tokarev took part in the conference in Portugal and announced that IT companies should care about the system they operate within.
From November 1-4, the world’s largest IT conference Web Summit took place in Lisbon, Portugal. It is an annual technology event, creating a network with founders, investors, media, CEOs, and politicians all over the world. This year, the event welcomed over 70,000 attendees. Ukraine presented its pavilion for the second year in a row.
Sergey Tokarev emphasized the importance of developing entrepreneurship in times of uncertainty in his speech. The businessman noticed that in the new difficult reality, IT companies should care more about their working staff, society, public infrastructure, and the international community than ever before.
The Roosh Founder exemplified some facts from his experience while encouraging the conference attendees to appreciate the system they work in and contribute to it. Sergey Tokarev shared that he always dreamed of developing the largest hub in Eastern Europe. His objective was to support AI and ML projects in Ukraine. Such an impetus led to the creation of a full-fledged tech ecosystem Roosh.
Also, the entrepreneur mentioned the times of COVID-19, when many restrictions were applied. But he risked launching a new project, Roosh Ventures, truly believing that Ukraine would withstand all the challenges of those times. Roosh Ventures is a venture capital firm helping startups boost and accelerate. It also assists startups in mentoring, sharing experience, funding, and providing access to resources.
Today, the Roosh ecosystem incorporates AI-based startups Reface and Zibra AI, venture studio Pawa,
SET University in Kyiv, and AI HOUSE. The latter is a project for training AI and ML specialists and helping them create a community.
Sergey Tokarev had a great mission at the conference―he encouraged Ukrainian founders and entrepreneurs to continue developing IT within the country and investing in Ukraine at large. The war has shown how strong, brave, and united Ukraine is. This has revealed the country’s potential to cooperate, being under pressure of missile attacks, and with international partners.
Apart from the Roosh founder, other Ukrainian speakers participated in a panel discussion on the Ukrainian pavilion. Among them are Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation Oleksandr Bornyakov, Deputy Chief of Party, USAID Justice for All Program Natalia Petrova, and Head of Product Pawa Tetyana Yaroshenko. They also shared their experience on how to save a business and opportunities to develop it during the crisis and war. In addition, the speakers raised issues related to the crisis’s effect on employment in the Ukrainian IT industry and startup development.
The Web Summit was opened by the First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska. She talked about tech development and how tech products should be used to help people, invent new things, and not destroy the world.
