Andrew Vasylyk | Grow by Going Remote

Once you’ve made it past the “start” in startup, you realize that was the easy part. Scaling, says Andrew Vasylyk, is the real challenge — and he should know.

Andrew and his brother and business partner Alex are startup-obsessed. As co-founders of StartupSoft, they help early-stage tech companies scale their engineering teams remotely.

The brothers have also founded their own companies together — “From electronic cigarettes to manufacturing and e-commerce,” Andrew says — with varying degrees of success. 

One especially memorable effort emerged from a specific political and technical situation.

Andrew and Alex are originally from Ukraine, where the Russian social media site VKontakte (VK) was the main social network.

But in 2017, Ukraine’s President closed off access to Russian social media sites overnight, including VK, as part of a package of sanctions.

Andrew and Alex rushed to fill the gap.

Within three months, they built a basic social networking site and peaked at around 400,000 users but were forced to shut down thanks to poor retention rates.

Despite the failure, Andrew is philosophical about the venture.

“We knew there was a very small chance that it was going to be successful, but it was a chance worth taking,” he says.

Now, he puts his experience towards helping tech companies figure out the trickiest piece of the startup puzzle: scaling quickly.

SoftStartup is an agency connecting startups with remote engineering teams in Ukraine, which is easier and more cost-effective than hiring full-time US-based staff.

He also hosts a podcast, Startup Exits, where he interviews business owners who have founded, run, and sold a company about what the experience is really like.

And Andrew is happy to report that he and Alex still enjoy working together.

“One of the most important things you're looking for in a business partner is trust, and we've never had even the slightest doubt in each other,” he says.“We complement each other.”  

🧑 Name: Andrew Vasylyk

⚙️ What he does: Serial entrepreneur and co-founder and VP of StartupSoft, an agency helping tech companies find remote engineering teams, and host of Startup Exits, a podcast about what it takes to start and sell a company.

💻 Organization: StartupSoft

💎 Words of wisdom: “You don't need to work an insane amount of hours: Make sure you're working on the right things. Take a step back and look at the big picture. When you're running a business, there are a million things that you could be doing. It's about working on the right things and making sure that those things are successful.”

🔍 Where to find StartupSoft: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Podcast

🔍 Where to find Andrew Vasylyk: Twitter | LinkedIn  

💡 Startup veteran: Andrew and his brother Alex have founded and run multiple companies in different industries, including manufacturing and e-commerce, with varying results.

💡 Business brothers: Andrew says that although he and Alex, who is five years older, are very different, they complement each other’s skills.

💡 Scale fast from afar: Today they run StartupSoft, helping tech companies scale faster and more efficiently through remote engineering teams based in Andrew’s birthplace of Ukraine.

💡 VK vacuum: When Ukraine’s President banned Eastern Europe’s social networking site VK from the country overnight in 2017, Andrew and Alex set up their own.

💡 About-face: The social network peaked at 400,000 users, but ultimately couldn’t compete with the likes of Facebook.

💡 Make money and change: Andrew believes success in business means changing the world — even in a small way. But it also has to include making money.

💡 Work less, do more: Over the years, Andrew’s work ethic has changed: You don’t have to put in long hours when you can be just as productive in less time.
 

Andrew Vasylyk:

“My goal has always been to build something that creates an impact — to build a successful company that changes the world in some way. It doesn't have to be crazy: You can change the world in smaller ways.”

“I wish more people started companies, but the reality is that it's incredibly difficult.”

“People use Facebook or any successful social networking site not because it has nice features: It’s because their friends are there. The main value is the network of users, and that's very hard to disrupt. We learned that the hard way.”

“Facebook is not a dumb company. They realize that nothing is forever and there are going to be threats to their core business. It's quite simple: Either you buy them out or you clone them.”

“An issue that a lot of startups face is hiring. If you are in a tech hub in the US, there is a huge shortage of talent. And if you're ever faced with the wonderful problem of needing to scale fast, you're simply not able to hire quality people fast enough.”