February 9, 2022

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18:30

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Offline

How to become great CTO in startup

2025

Ukraine

🧩 Being a good developer isn’t enough to launch your own startup.

This meetup offered a behind-the-scenes look at technical entrepreneurship, where the main role isn’t just writing code — it’s about building the product, the team, and the value.

During the meetup, we discussed:

  • How a technical background can help — or hinder — startup development
  • Why even failure is a step toward a successful launch
  • What skills do you need to develop to become the ‘tech co-founder’ everyone’s looking for

The speakers shared their real-life experiences of building startups as technical co-founders — juggling architecture, team building, business models, and keeping the project alive.

This meetup was an honest conversation about first steps, internal doubts, and why “failing” is okay — as long as you tried.

Meetup speakers

Speaker
Artem Melnychenko

CTO @ Wantent

Artem started as a developer at an ambitious Ukrainian startup. Now he works as CTO at Wantent, a consumer analytics company developing an AI-powered reaction recognition platform.

Speaker
Volodymyr Sveredyuk

CTO @ DEV Challenge

Volodymyr developed the platform and service station of DEV Challenge, the largest IT competition in Europe. He also has experience in launching more than 35 IT projects and holds the position of CEO at KERUJ and CTO at KESETECH.

Upcoming events

Tech Stack

On the first Thursday of October, we will hold a Tech Stack meetup to discuss choosing the right technology stack, optimal use of cloud solutions, and effective practices that directly affect development speed, product quality, and infrastructure stability.

October 2
Artem Melnychenko
CTO @ Wantent
Oleksandr Tarasenko
CTO @ Rozetka Pay
Yana Mykhailenko
Director of Engineering @ Turnitin

Conference | How to Become Great CTO

In November, the DEV Challenge team, in cooperation with UNIT.City, will once again bring together Ukrainian tech leaders, entrepreneurs, company and startup founders, CTOs, and managers to discuss the most relevant and important topics in technology, business, and leadership.

13 November
120 seats
Alex Kovalchuk
Co-founder & CTO @ Cargofy
Yana Mykhailenko
Director of Engineering @ Turnitin
Volodymyr Sveredyuk
CTO @ DEV Challenge

Meetup #21

Full information about the meetup will appear here soon.

4 December
Оffline
18:00