Startup Mentor, Silicon Valley
Three exits. Over $5M raised from angels, VCs, and the crowd. I built the e-bike that holds a Guinness World Record. Everything on this page is a real link.
30 minutes. No pitch, no obligations.
As seen in
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Where founders get stuck
Your pitch is not landing. Investors go quiet after the first meeting.
We rebuild the narrative, the deck, and the room, then drill the Q&A until it is boring.
Raised $5M+ across angels, VCs, accelerators, and crowdfunding. 500 Global batch 33. Pitched at YC. Judge at Unicorn Battle Silicon Valley.
You built something real outside the US and now need to make it work here.
We map the path from outside-US traction to a story Silicon Valley investors recognize.
Made the move myself: Kazakhstan, then Ukraine, then Silicon Valley. Built and sold VisaNow.AI, an immigration platform, for $11.4M.
Crowdfunding looks like free money until you try to actually run a campaign.
We plan the pre-launch list, the page, the press push, and the fulfillment math before you take a single dollar.
Raised $3.4M in a single campaign on Fundable plus $165,800 on Kickstarter. Coverage: AIN.
You have a working prototype. Manufacturing, logistics, and distribution are a different problem entirely.
We work through sourcing, unit economics, and the first market launches with someone who has shipped it.
Took Delfast from $0 to $8M in sales across 40+ countries in 5 years. Built the e-bike that holds a Guinness World Record for distance on a single charge: 228 miles. Forbes Fastest Electric Bike, 2021 and 2022.
You do not know if you should keep pushing, pivot, or sell.
We pressure-test the option you are avoiding and decide with numbers, not fear.
Sold 3 companies: best.ua, Delfast Delivery, VisaNow.AI. Three different exits, three different reasons.
60 seconds on how I got here
I started as a geophysicist in Kazakhstan, then moved into building out a fuel station network for KazMunayGas that grew from 9 to 500 stations before it was sold.
Kyiv came next. I built and sold best.ua, hosted a radio show called "Startup for a Million" on Europa Plus for 19 episodes, and spent a season doing theater on the side, because building companies alone gets lonely.
Then Delfast: an electric bike company that went from $0 to $8M in sales across 40+ countries in 5 years. I built the e-bike that holds a Guinness World Record for distance on a single charge: 228 miles (367 km). The bike also set a speed record at Bonneville. I sold the company in 2020.
I moved to the US during the war in Ukraine. Built VisaNow.AI, an AI platform for immigration cases, and sold it to JustiGuide in 2026 for $11.4M.
Now building CoreElement.AI. Mentoring founders is the constant across all of it: I started in 2013 and never stopped.
What mentees say
How it works
We go through your business and find the one thing actually blocking you.
If it is a fit, we set up monthly sessions, network access, and async support between calls.
Pitch deck, investor Q&A training, crowdfunding campaign prep. Scoped and time-boxed.
Track record
Mentoring since 2013. 20,000+ founders and students taught.
Jury: Unicorn Battle Silicon Valley, Startup Weekend, BarCamp.
Full record
The tiles above are the short version. This is the full ledger. Where a public link exists, it is live.
Mentoring founders since 2013. 20,000+ students, hundreds of startups.
Mentoring programs
Jury duty
Radio and school
Speaking, 100+ talks since 2012 (this list is 30 to 40% of the full record)
2.5B media impressions, 50+ outlets.
Tier 1
Forbes
Riding the ragged legal edge, 2020 ↗, Delfast reinvents the Dnepr, 2021 ↗, Ukrainian tech dodging bullets, 2022 ↗, Holiday gift guide, 2021 ↗, The California bike, 2022 ↗, Forbes KZ ↗
Tech
Electrek, 2022 recap ↗, Electrek, rocket launchers ↗, Mashable ↗, BGR ↗, BikeRadar ↗, RideApart ↗, autoevolution ↗, MoveElectric ↗, Momentum ↗, Electric Bike Report ↗, ADVPulse ↗, Authority Magazine ↗, LAist ↗, TechBullion ↗, Kyiv Post ↗, Startup Grind ↗, EU-Startups ↗
Regional: UA / CIS
AIN ↗, InVenture ↗, delo.ua ↗, NV ↗, Ukrinform ↗, Ekonomichna Pravda ↗
Plus a 2022 wave: US News, VICE, Yahoo, Interesting Engineering, InsideEV, MSN, Top Speed, The Defense Post, EBikeTips (“Ukraine’s Electric Cavalry,” published in 5 languages, picked up by Reddit, 9GAG, and Wikipedia).
Writing
Education
Certificates
Stanford Building AI Products (Dr. Marily Nika); IBM RAG and Agentic AI; IBM Building AI Agents; IBM GenAI for Executives; Microsoft AI and ML Engineering; Microsoft Generative AI Engineering; Google AI Professional; NVIDIA AI Infrastructure and Operations.
Accelerators
Questions
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