Attending dedicated events is one of the good tools in business development. It allows attendees to share their experiences, discuss the latest trends in developing businesses and discover new opportunities and solutions to enhance business performance. But it is challenging to follow each business development step when war destroys infrastructure, homes, and lives. Sergey Tokarev, the Roosh Founding Partner, called on Ukrainian businesses at Web Summit 2022 to care about the system they work within.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, many IT companies have faced crises and lost many employees. But the brevity of Ukrainians and their love for the country helped them unite their strengths and do their best to maintain all working processes and continue to develop the IT sector particularly.
Sergey Tokarev and other participants spoke about their experience and how they could withstand it by looking for opportunities and coming up with new solutions. He took part in the Web Summit event on 1-4 November in Lisbon, Portugal. More than 70,000 attendees were at the conference. Ukraine hosted its own pavilion for the second year in a row.
The entrepreneur had a mission to encourage other Ukrainian founders, CEOs, investors, and other event participants to care about the system they work in today. He noticed the importance of caring more about employees, society, public infrastructure, and the international community. Sergey Tokarev added that only with unity we are able to outlive crises and make the Ukrainian IT sector prosper, and attract more international partners.
The Roosh founder shared his experience of launching a venture firm. It didn’t happen at favorable times and conditions. During the COVID-19 time, he risked creating a new project, Roosh Ventures, to help startups boost and accelerate.
Also, Sergey Tokarev always dreamed of creating the largest IT hub in Eastern Europe in order to support AI and ML projects in Ukraine. He could bring his dream come true by having developed a full-fledged tech ecosystem Roosh. Today, this system includes venture studio Pawa, AI-based startups Reface and Zibra AI, SET University in Kyiv, and AI HOUSE. AI HOUSE is another project for training AI and ML specialists and helping them create a community.
During four days of the conference, other Ukrainian speakers had an opportunity to conduct panel discussions. Among them were 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 made a contribution to saving a business and sharing opportunities to develop it during the crisis and war. Also, they discussed issues on how the crisis affects startup development and employment in the Ukrainian IT sector.
The First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska also attended the Web Summit, where she opened the conference with a brief speech on how technology should be used for inventing new things and helping people, instead of destroying the world. The largest IT conference in the world took place in Lisbon, Portugal, on November 1-4. It is an annual event gathering all IT professionals from all over the world.
