As a Ukrainian programmer in 27 years, sold two startups in the USA

While still a student, Viktor Radchenko was the head of the Internet security department at the largest Ukrainian bank. Seven years ago he took a risk and left for the USA. By the age of 27, Radchenko had become the founder of two startups, which he successfully sold to international companies.

Photo: dou.ua

The first project is an assistant for truckers Trucker Path, created in conjunction with Russian Ivan Tsybaev. The company in 2017 was swallowed up by Chinese RenRen, tells Vector. The second is a mobile wallet Trust Wallet. In the summer of this year, a startup sold the Chinese cryptobier Binance. Radchenko told DOU about your career path and future cryptocurrency.

Hacking and PrivatBank

Victor Radchenko studied at the University of Dnepropetrovsk on the specialty "Computer systems". Then he was interested in security on the Internet: he searched for the vulnerabilities of state sites and informed their owners how to hack the site and how to protect against it. At the same time, Victor moderated a community of similar hackers interested in security. They engaged in hacking for good or not very good purpose. Radchenko organized a cohesive community of about 10 000 people.

Work in PrivatBank arose as a result of this hobby. One day a young hacker found a vulnerability on a bank site. As a result, he settled in full time in the main office in the Dnieper. At that time, PrivatBank did not yet have a security department - Victor headed it. In the 2011 year, the hacker community started having problems with the law, government agencies began to elicit information about the participants, and Victor was called to the police. Then he had to quit work, university and go to America.

Status Refugee and Programming

Radchenko left on the Work & Travel student program and ended up in Alaska. He worked 16 hours at a fish factory in the small port town of Seward.

“The fish season is short, only two months, so students are called there. Alaska is very beautiful, I liked it there, ”the fugitive says.

Fearing for his safety in Ukraine, Victor decided not to return. He moved to Sacramento and applied for a refugee:

“The procedure is as follows: you apply for a refugee, then you are called for an interview, and if everything goes well, you are given a special piece of paper. You can get a green card with her in a year and then citizenship after another 5 years. ”

In the 2012 year, the application review lasted 6 weeks. Already through 2 weeks after the interview is known the result. While waiting for citizenship, a candidate is checked for compliance with the law, paying taxes, criminal history. Having gone through all the stages, Radchenko received an American passport.

Before moving Victor was not engaged in programming. I learned code and English already in America. After winning one hackathon, Radchenko decided to develop mobile applications.

Victor Radchenko on the right. Photo: dou.ua

Trucker Path and Truckloads

In Sacramento, Victor Radchenko was friends with many truckers. They often complained about professional problems, so the Trucker Path entrepreneur created as an application for friends. At first, the program displayed truck parking spaces on the map. Then the service acquired other functions and became a full-fledged assistant:

“He could fully calculate the path from NY to LA for about 40 hours. Show where to rest on the road, in order not to exceed the hours set by the law of 14 behind the wheel, where to park, refuel. "

Later, Victor and the co-founders realized that there were many other problems in this industry, and they entered the freight transportation market. Added to the assistant the function of negotiation of carriers with customers. So came Truckloads.

When the number of users exceeded 15 000, it became clear that this could become a business. There were few competitors - only monopolists who had already filled the market for 30 for years. None of them wanted to change something, because truckers need to offer new items carefully. Any innovation strongly affects their lives.

“But it was especially difficult with the consignors, since they were already accustomed to monopolists and the current situation in the market. Only when our application was installed approximately on 1 million devices did it become easier to move forward, ”says Radchenko.

Victor had shares of the co-founder, who began to make a profit only after the investment. Initially, about $ 20 million was attracted, then another $ 30 million.

Radchenko developed the 2 project of the year. Later handed over management and engaged in technical issues. The company expanded to 60 employees and was taken over by the Chinese RenRen due to disagreements between the co-founders:

“My approach is more focused on product creation, less on business. Because I think that if it is good to make a product, then the business itself will come to you. And if you are focused only on business, then you are seriously harming your product. ”

Photo: twitter.com/vikmeup

Seed and blockchain

After that, Victor began to look for a new idea: he took leave and for a year traveled to 20 states. Not finding inspiration, Radchenko got a job at Seed, so as not to lose his skills. Seed is a bank for business, something like Tinkoff projects in Russia and Dubilet in Ukraine.

In Seed Victor was engaged in iOS development, there was a team lead team from 10 people. The office was located in California, but the team worked mostly remotely.

While in Ukraine the banking system was built with new technologies and without monopolists, there are ten-year traditions and powerful competitors in the US banking sector. Since 2007, only the 3 new bank has appeared in America. Therefore, there are many more problems: many laws that restrict competition. And monopolists like Chase and Wells Fargo have terrible interfaces and a lot of hidden commissions. All because of lobbying:

“All these bankers are in power and say that such complex laws are necessary, but in fact they act in such a way as not to destroy the established monopolies. Seed wanted to solve this problem for the business - so that you can do everything online or in an application, simply and clearly. ”

The story of Seed is one of the reasons why Trust Wallet was founded. At that time, Victor began to be interested in cryptocurrency. Since 2016, Victor has got Ethereum. I bought another $ 13 and forgot, and after a while the price increased about 100 times due to speculation, says Radchenko:

“This is the only factor that is now working in the crypt. Everyone is moved by excitement and self-interest, but this is for now. I am sure that this will change over time, but now most people are motivated by this. ”

In such a situation, having your own decentralized digital wallet is very important. Victor decided to do this himself, and in September 2017 began work.

In Palo Alto. In the background is Steve Jobs' house. Photo: dou.ua

Trust wallet

Victor studied the market and realized that few people are engaged in a specific product in the field of digital wallets. 95% of companies are engaged in scam: raise money and then "forget" to create something. Now this situation is changing. The next wave began when people with product knowledge and an understanding of design came to the blockchain. They begin to create products based on protocol and standards.

Trust Wallet Victor Radchenko started by himself. He created a mobile application and invited Maxim Rasputin to the project. Maxim made an Android application for the Trucker Path. The co-founders worked mainly together for the 3 of the month. Since the wallet was originally made open source, many people came to help.

“But the problem with opensource is that people are very unstable. They can come to you, help a little and then just disappear for a couple of months. ”

Photo: Vector

Investment and Binance

The wallet became popular in less than a year. In September, the history of the product began on 2017, and in the summer, the 2018 Trust Wallet became part of Binance. Initially, Radchenko did not plan to sell a startup for ideological reasons. But it was difficult to develop the project:

“There were already 12 000 users, but there was no support service, I did everything manually. And at the time of sale, we already had more than 100 000 monthly users. But when the number of users exceeded 20 000, I already realized that we needed additional people and, accordingly, investments. ”

Radchenko found $ 5 million, another company planned to raise $ 5 million on ICO. After talking with lawyers, it became clear that this is expensive and unprofitable. Only on their services in the first year would require about $ 500 000, then taxes, registration of the transaction. As a result, the company would have received only half from $ 10 million. For this product, a token-sale is not the best way to collect money.

One of the potential investors was Binance Labs - a fund with a $ 1 billion portfolio of Binance. But they did not want to invest in the token itself. The proposal sounded like this: either we enter as the main investor, or we buy a company. It turned out that companies have similar views on business. In the end, they agreed that Trust Wallet remains an autonomous team within Binance, reporting directly to their CEO Changpeng Zhao.

Together with Changpeng Zhao of Binance. Photo: dou.ua

Development plans

There is a problem in the field of cryptocurrency - many are looking too far ahead, which is why there is not enough money and motivation to reach the goals. Therefore, Viktor Radchenko does not focus on 4-5 years, but plans progress on 3 of the month. For example, add support for various currencies: BTC, LTC, Dash, EOS, TRON, NEO. There were also plans to create ID-identification, so that each person had their own Trust-ID. At the same time development is engaged in Binance DEX. During the 3-4 months, they plan to launch a decentralized exchange.

Trust Wallet deliberately makes it a mobile platform. In the mobile version, there are exactly those 80% of users whose problems the entrepreneur should focus on.

In general, open-code creates many risks. Often people do not comply with ethics, ignore licenses, use graphics. It spoils the image of the company. On the other hand, security is very important in cryptocurrencies.

“It is important that the code you create can be audited. I believe that in terms of ethics - this is a big positive. "

Decentralized applications and blockchain prospects

Victor is a fan of decentralized programs (DApps). It is an autonomous system in which no one can fully control the source code. Centralized applications like Facebook can completely deny anyone access and the user will lose all their data. In addition, the owner of the centralized program servers can, without your knowledge, collect and process your data, even sell it or transfer it to fraudsters. In DApp this is not possible:

“Anyone can download open source, and the application will continue to work. It will not evaporate because it is located on the blockchain, and miners independent of each other in all parts of the world control the entire network. No particular person owns the data on the servers, management is distributed among millions of users, therefore the data is safe. ”

The main option, which is now needed blockchain, Radchenko believes trading. We need good convenient functionality for investing and exchanging various assets. It is necessary to give an opportunity to any person to invest and accumulate tokens.

“So that even a grandmother, who has some extra pension left, could buy herself some bitcoins.”

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