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The 2022 was a year of change for all of us. I said this frase even past year and I will repeat it again, this year was more intense than all previous years all together. This year I finally started to see results of my hard work. This year I got really lucky and really really unlucky.
I started this year by working with Scrimmage, a startup that is building an innovative software for sports betting. I found them on upwork and joined as a “Backend developer”.
The mixture of luck and experience made me the co-founder and a Chief Technological Officer of the company. I found there great friends and partners to start my journey in first serious venture.
The next “luck” happened when my co-founder, Matt, said me to leave the country. I bought the ticket next day and moved to Poland where I was hosted by my old college friend, huge shot out to him and his mom, miss Natalia. 2 weeks after I left Ukraine, war started… The fun part is that I wasn’t being able to complete my driving exam and I was actually considering staying month longer to get a driving license. If I did it I wouldn’t be able to leave Ukraine anymore, so intuition saved my ass.
I can not forget to mention my visa trip to Germany. I wanted to get a business visa to US but the closest appointment date was in 4 months so I wanted to expedite process by visiting them in person. In a train to Berlin I joined a group of refugees. As a result I sticked with them and spend next 2 weeks traveling through Germanys refugee bases. In one of the bases in Ansbach I got very sick, that was the first time I was having illness outside of the home and apparently German people treat everything using water and aspirin so the illness was taught. That journey opened up the opportunity for me to join the local German University, they were proving 100% scholarship + were covering living expenses including a hotel. When I denied the proposal our supervisor called me the crazies person she have ever met, but internally I was feeling I am doing a right thing. Shortly after that I came back to Poland, with no progress in expediting visa process.
The next “luck” happened when I met the Vera. She was a Ukrainian refugee and we randomly met each other in co-working space in Poznan. She made me leave the Poland and take a riski trip to Mexico in order to cross the US border. At that time there was no well designed ways to do it and we had no guarantee to success. We made a bet, and after week of traveling and 3 flights we crossed the border by entering San Diego.
First month in US I spend living with my co-founders in a house near Austin, Taxes. They introduced me to their friends and family, they covered my living expenses and “americanized” me. First month was tough, American accent and culture was driving me crazy. It took me 3 months to start feeling myself comfortable and freely understand and express my thoughts in English.
The next “luck” happened when Scrimmage got accepted into Techstars, one of the biggest startup accelerators in the world. The acceptance rate in super low, so being accepted putted us in top 1% of startups and almost guaranteed seed funding. Soon after I reached US, we got sponsored to visit the 2 month in-person program for sport-related startups in Indianapolis Indiana, hosted by Techstars.
Each week we had mentoring sessions from successful founders and “invited dinners” from fellow companies. There I met a lot of great ambitious people and life has almost became stable, but then I got an accident... The house we were renting was not in the best district of city and generally, Indianopolis has a high crime rate, so, I got robbed in a gun points. They have stolen my backpack and phone, hopefully I left my laptop. But the biggest loss was my passport. I was mentally broke, had no phone, no money, and no passport, far from home and family. Thanks to support of my co-founder, techstars fellows and climbing I shortly returned back to normal life. Infact, I still haven’t restored my passport, process takes hell long cause it has to be made in Ukraine and send to US embassy.
Soon after program was completed, our company faced the difficulties with a go to market. The app we were developing wasn’t aligned with market needs and we made a decision to pivot… Driven by my obsession with crypto and WEB3 I proposed to develop an NFT game similar to Axie Infinity and StepN, but for sports bettors. After a bunch of brainstorms we formed a vision of Scrimmage Rewards, the WEB3 reward program. Soon after pivot, thanks to huge efforts from Matt and Dan, we raised the pre-seed round from reputable Venture Capitalists.
The next “luck” happened when my girlfriend got accepted in the US university. We were dating online for 1 year and finally we have got a chance to meet in person. That is where I left my co-founders house and started a “renting journey” in one of the most expensive places on earth - Los Angeles. We were leaving in Costa Mesa, 40 min drive from the downtown Los Angeles, but that haven’t made renting easier. Apparently it is hard to rent a house if you don’t have passport, you are Ukrainain refugee and you have no money.
After 3 months of burning money in Costa Mesa, Hanisha got disappointed by US and US education. She decided to leave college and start online education. That made us be able to choose the location we wanna live in, without restriction from college. We decided to give US a second chance, so we moved to a Silicon Valley, the worlds capital of startups. And we moved here not without a plan, but that is a story for 2023)
At the end, I completed all goals I was setting to myself at the beginning of 2022 except e-book and driving license. In addition to that, in 2022 I found something much more precious. On December 9, at the top of highest Hollywood hill, we got engaged.
So, the year was intense, and the intuition is saying me that after 2023 my life will never be the same it was before. I just hope that war will be over and I will be able to visit my country and my family. US is not that amazing as everyone is liking to show it. Homelessness, high crime rate, high cost of living and upcoming recession are making me love Ukraine as never before. In past year I had experience working with IT specialists across the world and now I can confidently say that Ukrainain education and Ukrainain talents are the best I even worked with. I believe that once the war is over, Ukraine will strive and become the world leading country and I will do my best, to help it happen.
I wanna give appreciation to following people: Matt, Dan, Megan, Vova, Hanisha, Andrey, Natalia, Vera, Lyosha, Rizala.
You are the people who became the important part of my life in 2022, I am blessed I met you, thank you!
Nest year my life will be unpredictable and I can not share all goals for 2023 publicly, the only thing I am confident in is I am going to double down on my internet presence and get 100k followers. The rest, will be handled by a destiny.
Peace to you and your families.