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August 8, 2023
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19:00
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Online
From Founding Engineer to Director: A Journey with a Unicorn Company
2025
Ukraine
🎯 What does it mean not just to be the first engineer at a startup — but to grow into a director role at a company valued at over $1 billion?
This meetup was an open conversation about real-life experiences at People.ai:
- How it all started: the first lines of code written the day before a vacation, and sleepless nights in a three-story house in San Francisco
- Why a startup isn’t a role but a mindset: rapid changes, tech debt, no QA, and total autonomy
- How processes evolved: from chaos to CI/CD, certifications, and stable development
- How the team scaled: new structure, emergence of managers, tech leads, and company culture
💡 We also talked about how to recognize a company with unicorn potential, how to find strong leaders, spot large markets — and not lose yourself along the way.
Meetup speakers
Director of Engineering @ People.ai
In 2016, Vova joined People.ai as the first engineer and helped build the business from its first steps to a billion-dollar company. People.ai helps customers win more revenue by making decisions based on data and AI insights.
Director of Engineering @ Turnitin
The moderator is Yana Mykhailenko, CTO of Turnitin, an international company that ensures the integrity of education and is a leader in anti-plagiarism solutions. She is a judge and mentor at international competitions and hackathons.
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