Yaroslav Azhnyuk, co-founder and CEO of Petcube, has joined Fuel Finance as a partner and co-founder, as Aliona Mysko, founder and CEO of Fuel Finance, told AIN.UA.
Yaroslav will help develop the product and expand the business into western markets. However, Petcube remains Aznyuk’s primary responsibility. His role at Fuel is strategical participation and decision-making. Yaroslav is also present in a similar format at the O0 design studio as a co-founder.
An editor of AIN.UA talked with partners about what led to such a decision.
The story begins in 2020 when Petcube has become one of Fuel Finance’s clients. Those days, the Fuel team worked directly with Azhnyuk to integrate a system into the client business. That’s how the future partnership began. “The things Fuel did one and half years ago, when we started to cooperate, was something I dreamed of integrating within Petcube. But I never had neither focus on it nor right people. Financial data in a cloud, spreadsheets, and dashboards organically complementing the business are things from the Bill Gates’ Business @ the Speed of Thought book — and you must not spend months and tens of thousands of dollars to implement ERP systems,” Azniuk told AIN.UA. Successful cooperation and a shared business vision formed a ground for future partnership.
According to Mysko, first, she asked Yaroslav to become a consultant for Fuel Finance. “We measured financial and other indicators before we started to collaborate and then measured them after a year. As a result, the business grew three times in terms of income, and now American and European clients generate more than 40% of our revenue. We get a lot of analytical data about our activities, so it was not hard to measure the efficiency of our cooperation with Yaroslav and his impact on the business growth,” explained Mysko.
I like to do operational activities because I can create the highest value here. Starting with general management experience, product management, and engineer team setup and ending with sales in the American market and fundraising.
Yaroslav Azhnyuk
During a year, the Fuel Finance team implemented several product solutions from Azhnyuk. He also brought many customers helping to increase its income. After such results, they asked Azhnyuk to become a partner and co-founder. Then parties have agreed.
However, the financial part of this deal remains unrevealed.
Why is it interesting? First, the example of Fuel Finance and Yaroslav Azhnyuk shows how a high-quality partnership should be: shared values, similar business vision, and benefits in the form of measurable results. Second, there are not so many success stories in Ukraine when a company already successful and growing invited a new partner and made him a co-founder.
Fuel Finance develops software and provides financial management services for small and medium-sized businesses. The company was founded in 2019; now, it helps manage companies’ budgets with $250 mln of P&L in total. Fuel Finance is active in Ukraine and the United States; its clients are Saga Development, Petcube, Awesomic, Delfast, Ksenia Schnaider, and others.
