While working on an article about IT clusters in Ukraine, we noticed that there are many large, medium, and small companies operating in different regions of our country that - often despite the odds - push forward technological development in various fields, create software and interesting new products, and help save lives and make the army more effective on the battlefield. Stepan Tanasiichuk, founder of the IT company Stfalcon, an entrepreneur and developer from Khmelnytskyi, is one of these passionate people. That's why we decided to talk to him about business and more.
He is a typical IT guy, an "old school" guy who likes to solve problems quickly using all available IT solutions. If solutions are not available, he is ready to break through walls to win. Stepan is the author of the idea and project manager of the Air Alert project. At the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, together with Ajax Systems, he and his team launched a well-known app that signals danger in 48 hours.
Here's an interesting story about how to become a serial entrepreneur and survive while implementing a bunch of exciting social projects and launching an IT business in Ukraine after the global financial crisis.
"Air Alert", "Shelter" chatbot, "eRocket"
Stepan Tanasiichuk founded Stfalcon in 2009 as a small web studio. We will tell you about the history of its creation a little later, but for now we will focus on the events after February 24, 2022. According to Stepan, it was he who came up with the idea to create the Airborne Alarm app. "Ajax Systems helped us a lot with this. We started making this app ourselves, but we needed to make sure that the alarm would break through the silent mode. And I remembered how the Ajax Systems app screams in the middle of the night. We contacted their management and they told us how to do it. There is a thing called critical push notifications. And to be able to send such notifications, you need to have additional permissions in your App Store account. It takes time to get these permissions. And there is a war going on, missiles are flying, people are dying. There was a clear feeling that there was no time," the developer told us.
Therefore, they agreed to publish the application in the Ajax Systems account. Then Oleksandr Konotopskyi's company offered to join the development. "We agreed. I closed a bunch of issues, they closed the development issue, the Ministry of Digital Transformation closed a bunch of issues on implementation in Ukraine. And so Stfalcon, Ajax Systems, and the Ministry of Digital Transformation "banged out" this product together. In 24 hours, we developed it, in another 24 hours we implemented and tested it, and in 48 hours the official release took place. And we got a million users in the first hour after the official release. This is a world record. Since then, we have divided the roles: Ajax Systems deals with the back end and design. There is a part that operators work with and a mobile application. They are responsible for servers and software for operators, while our part of the work is the application. They are still designing the app. Plus, Stfalcon has rocked the whole ecosystem well, we have made autonomous siren control units, more than a thousand units all over Ukraine. They turn the sirens on and off in sync with the Air Alert. We also created the Shelter chatbot, which has a database of safe places across Ukraine. It is now working," said Stepan Tanasiychuk.
The IT team also has an API (application programming interface), which is a single digital source of alarm signals that connects many different establishments, shopping centers, and gas station chains, which can then do something with this information, such as shutting down the cash register.
"We created an API and an official air raid alert map - map.ukrainealarm.com - together with developer Artem Lemeshev. Then it was integrated into applications. There, in a minute, two million people can go to the map to look at it. The alert can last for a very long time. For about a year, I was looking for a way to access an official source of information that would allow you to additionally notify you that something is flying in your direction. And we did make a notification about the increased level of danger. The Ukrainian Air Force asked us to make such notifications at 15-minute intervals if, for example, the CABs continue to fly. We are working to improve it, but it is better than nothing," the expert explained.
When we asked whether the app would be able to receive notifications about missile threats separately, Stepan said the following: "I'm all for it. But we do not officially have an increased level of danger. Sometimes I have problems when some high-ranking uncles start calling and saying, for example, that there should not be a separate signal for radiation danger, but the same signal by law as for the air raid alert - "Attention everyone". Sometimes I don't even wake up during a normal air raid alert. That's what I tell them: "If the nuke goes off, I would still like to wake up." We are a bit ahead of the curve with this product. I think that laws will be changed. I look from the user's point of view. And the legislation is Soviet. They somehow adapt it, but it takes a long time."
In fact, an IT solution for missile warning actually exists, but it doesn't work properly. In 2022, Stepan Tanasiichuk co-founded the eRocket project: an application where users can report the passage of a missile or a shakedown; it is also a network of acoustic sensors. The official name of the project has now changed, and it does not overlap with the threat type notifications in the Air Alert app. Odesa developers have a similar project called ePPO. According to Stepan, there is a lot of noise in the data coming from users, so it would be much easier to get information from sensors.
"It makes me angry. It can be done quickly. Why are they sitting there? It's a scoop. I do it for my own money, the state doesn't pay me any money. And every month I have to worry about the alarm, we help to close the meeting. Without volunteers, we would really be in such a mess. There is still no button to turn on the alarm throughout Ukraine. I am talking to the Air Force about automation, because there is a delay. While the information goes through the chain and their algorithms, a minute, two, three pass. During this time, something can already arrive. It makes me nervous," the entrepreneur said.
After the start of the great war, Stepan Tanasiychuk, like many Ukrainian businessmen, started working on projects in miltech and defense tech. He launched drone production: 40,000 drones were assembled in 1.5 years.
"Together with our partners, we set up a separate company to produce FPV drones when it was not yet a trend, scaled up, and found suppliers. Now we have developed a transponder and are codifying it together with the drones as a complex. We are also developing an airplane-type UAV with a flight range of up to 70 km. It's taking a bit of time - it's not an easy task and we don't have enough resources. We have started production of Arrakis XM drone detectors. This is an analog of Tsukorko. We signed a contract with them and assemble them ourselves under license. We have already assembled the first 100 units and plan to scale up this production, as there is a great demand from the military. These devices really save lives. Meanwhile, Stfalcon started working with the SES: we developed a system that grew into the 112 service. It's like 911 in the United States. They have built new call centers where veterans also work as operators. This project uses our software. I'm generally "blown away" by the projects we do. It's cool, it drives me a lot," the founder and CEO of the IT company Stfalcon told us.
And how did it all begin?
Stepan Tanasiychuk started programming in 1999. He studied at children's and extracurricular courses. Then he studied at the Khmelnytsky Polytechnic College of Lviv Polytechnic National University. In 2001, he started working for a local computer company. "I was working with networks and computers, and in 2002-2003 I tried to commercialize this experience: I was looking for a job as a programmer. Back then, there were no IT companies at all, and there was only one web studio in Khmelnytskyi, where I failed the interview. In 2005, I moved to Lviv and entered Lviv Polytechnic National University. He got a job at the computer company Complex. They still had their own web studio. I worked there in the summer, for a few months. When my studies started, I realized that I couldn't combine them with work. So I transferred to a web studio. At the same time, I was developing, reading books, learning programming languages, and trying to make my own pet projects. People like me were called computer scientists," is how the businessman recalls the beginning of his career.
From 2005 to 2008, the IT specialist joined such projects of the Complex company as auction.ua, wallpaper.com.ua, the Western Ukrainian Banner Network, and many others. The head of this company was entrepreneur Yaroslav Maksymovych. "He was a man of a wide range of interests. He had his own banner network, web studio, auction, and the first bulletin board - bord.ua, auto.bord.ua. Yaroslav could have become the Ukrainian Elon Musk. There was no ROZETKA marketplace yet, and he had a website 220.com.ua, where you could buy household appliances. We had a website called cddvd.com.ua, which sold books and CDs. Now there are a bunch of projects that are based on what we did back then. And we did everything. I don't know how he didn't shoot," said Stepan Tanasiychuk.
According to him, he created a website for the wallpaper.com.ua domain in two days. Having a large collection of wallpapers, our hero made a custom design, layout, and a simple engine, and then "slapped" ads through the banner network. And pretty quickly, up to 50,000 people a day started coming to this site. It was good traffic at the time. "I also added advertising to it. It started bringing in money. This project earned my monthly salary in a couple of days. They just said thank you. That's how motivated I was after that. Then I bought a domain, wallpaper.in.ua, and made an even cooler website. I worked on it in the evenings. And for a while, it generated a good profit. As a result, I quit my job because I wanted to do more of my own projects. Freelancing was just appearing. And I got hooked on this needle. In a year or so, I reached the top 10 in web development. I had a lot of orders. In 2008-2009, I started looking for assistants," the developer said.
This was followed by hangouts with the Zend Framework community, which led to the idea of creating a conference in Ukraine. This was the beginning of the Frameworks Days brand - a conference that brought together fans of software frameworks from a wide variety of directions and platforms. Now it is Fwdays, a company founded by Stepan Tanasiichuk together with his partner, Oleksandr Makhomet. It organizes conferences, workshops, courses, and training for developers. The brand is now 15 years old and has organized more than 100 events. The project's mission is to spread cool ideas and share experience with developers.
"And then in the spring of 2009, the crisis that happened in 2008 caught up with freelancing. There was complete calm. I asked the head of an Internet provider in Khmelnytsky, where I used to work, for advice. I told him that I wanted to start my own business. He gave me contacts of people who rented offices. I rented an office for 800 hryvnias. I had almost no money for business. My mom lent me some money. I brought a computer and a laptop from home. I gave the computer to my assistant Valera, and worked on the laptop. The first month we even rented a router, bought a kettle, and ran out of money. So, on September 29, 2009, Stfalcon started working. I was looking for new orders on freelance, went through old clients. I immediately went into sales and management. And word of mouth started to work," is how Stepan described his start in entrepreneurship.
The idea of the business was as follows: a web studio where two programmers earn money and a third programmer works on the company's own projects. 30% of the turnover went to launching such projects. According to the businessman, several projects were launched a year: there was a "little bit of outsourcing" and a product company. In 2017, Stfalcon turned from a small web studio into a full-fledged IT company that develops custom web services and mobile applications.
By 2022, Stepan Tanasiichuk and his partners had launched a bunch of other projects: the largest Ukrainian-language culinary portal Cookorama, Fwdays Academy and Stfalcon Academy, Roads of Ukraine, Public Patrol, and the Last Checkpoint game, where you can destroy "green men." For the projects UkrYama, Ukrainian Web Challenge, and TEXTY.org.ua, his company created the design for free.
"In 2017, we opened an office in Kyiv. It was our second office, and we increased our staff to 80 employees. We gained a good reputation. The Khmelnytsky IT cluster has just appeared. We held a lot of meetups in the city, pumped up the community a lot. I stepped down as CEO in 2019, hired a person, and started looking at new directions: AI for cars, electric cars, smart homes. But it didn't work out that way. Stfalcon went down sharply without my management, and then Covid19 started.
We had fewer clients and closed our Kyiv office. I came back as CEO. Since then, we have been growing again. Now the company employs 95 people. We have a lot of Ukrainian clients now. Until 2014, we were among the top 20 web studios in the CIS. In 2014, I said that we don't work with Russia, we have no experience. We tried to move to the markets of Europe and the United States, but it was not so easy. Then we started working with Nova Poshta and Kyivstar. They kept us afloat and gave us time to develop marketing and sales to European markets. And projects from the EU, the US, and Arab countries started coming to us," says Stepan.
What's next?
According to the businessman, after a short pause, Nova Poshta continued its cooperation with Stfalcon, which is now the No. 1 IT services contractor for the postal operator. "Our immediate plans are to continue solving problems, developing the economy and IT. We have a fairly active IT community in Khmelnytskyi. We have a 3D printing platform for DrukArmy. At the expense of the IT cluster, we print and ship tens of kilograms of products, which is in demand. Stfalcon is currently developing the Air Alert app and everything related to software. Together with Alla Bevza, we also opened a marketing company called The Kasta. It is engaged in SMM, targeted advertising, and helps to advertise services and increase sales for 50 clients.
I was recently asked at the Web Summit technology conference: "What do you do?". I tell everyone this: "I am developing IT in Ukraine, saving lives and reducing the number of 'good Russians'. In fact, I have become a serial entrepreneur: I see a problem, I have some resources, IT solutions, connections, and I solve it," summarized Stepan Tanasiychuk.