intrapreneurship and change I’m founder
of Ukrainian and online lending company
called Manorville you a so we operate 24
7 across all Ukraine and what we do is
we provide loans small micro financial
loans up to 2000 rayveness up to 30 days
straight to your bank card within 15
minutes you can probably remember lots
of different situations when you needed
cash right here right now you were dying
in at a restaurant and the bill was
larger than you expected or your car
broke down in the middle of nowhere and
you only had a credit card and
smartphone now you know there is a way
outta money by oga so after this brief
moment of advertising I would like to
talk about personal changes that usually
happen to intrapreneurs and some changes
business usually a face so one of those
I think that many people become
entrepreneurs after some significant
life change in events for me that was
coming back to Ukraine after studying in
the UK and working in investment banking
while in Britain I saw lots of ads of a
highly popular online lending company
1.com who were the first to pioneer in
this area they opened up in 2007 and
since then they have become super large
they have market valuation of billions
of dollars and I thought that was a
great idea to bring back to Ukraine so
after coming up with the business plan
getting the team and securing funding
from the 3 f’s we started developing the
product in case you don’t know what 3f
means this is family friends and foals
and so after a year or so our product
was ready and we launched this was the
happiest day of my life and the date was
quite significant to it was the 20s of
februari 2013 which was just the day
before euro my done started in Kiev
so going to some personnel changes
intrapreneurs usually face they fall
into three categories they are the good
the bad and the ugly just like in old
Clint Eastwood movie so let’s start with
the good ones first is ambition you
start a company not just for fun you
start the company to make it the best
company in the world to rock everyone
together with creativity you might find
yourself in the middle of a night toilet
on a business plan or designing a new
product feature which is great another
thing is focused because there are so
many aspects to writing an Essen company
like logistics legal marketing design
and you need to know the basics of all
of them you don’t need to be as super
competent in all of those areas but you
need to know the basics and be able to
go deeper if necessary so then goes the
bad things that happen to you after you
become an intrapreneur first one is
anxiety the thought of failure will come
across every intrapreneurs mind and
sometimes it might take over and get you
into a little depression another thing
that together with a last time you might
have some health problems bad eating
habits not enough physical activities
smoking or drinking alcohol they all add
up at some point of time and next goes
the ugly changes first one is too
critical because you’re so ambitious and
you want to create the best company in
the world you want only the best stuff
right so you become overly critical
towards other people’s ideas or
performance and you might find yourself
in a position of a bad guy who is always
trying to find something to nag about
another is suspicion because eventually
at some point of time you’ll you’ll
encounter lies or Cheney didn’t work and
this will undermine your beliefs in in
people a little bit so but let’s go to
more factual things what changes do
companies face just some examples from
running our company after we just
started we were we’re in giving out
loans on expert methods so we were
basically looking at a person’s profile
and deciding whether to give him or her
alone or not we thought we were doing
quite a good job until the actual
results came in and it turned out that
the default rate the non-paying loans
was more than fifty percent it was
fifty-four percent so it’s it was even
worse than tossing a coin we were wrong
more times than we were right after that
we were able to gather statistical data
and create a good scoring model and
afterwards our default rate gradually
went down and right now it’s below
market average another example but
that’s a good example of a change we had
a bad example is when we decided to
create a new revenue stream we wanted to
add a small button on our website saying
you don’t want two thousand as you want
more 10,000 or even more just apply it
just fill this application and will
transfer it to some bank and they might
give you this loan so but this button
stained on our website slightly less
than for a week why because we saw a
sharp decline in our sales so basically
this little button was cannibalized in
our sales because some people who would
have taken our loan they were instead
opting for a bigger amounts and we had
to close this opportunity so in general
I could say that entrepreneurship is
constant race towards adaptation and
change sometimes you might feel
comfortable running your company but if
you don’t adapt and change you might
find yourself in big barrel for example
codec they used to be quite popular in
the 80s and 90s but then smartphones
game and electronic cameras and where
are they now
they’re in between big peril another but
there are good examples for example
Nokia in the in the early 20th century
Nokia were making all kinds of stuff
rubber boots cables military equipment
personal computers but then they ditched
all of those products in early 90s in
favour of just telecommunication devices
and they became super popular and right
now they might have some other kind of
problems but at that moment they really
rocked concerning this kind of topic
pivots there is a great book by Erich
rice called the Lean Startup it goes way
deeper and I recommend it to anyone who
wants to run their own company at some
point of time so concerning doing
business in Ukraine I think right now is
quite a good time to start a business in
Ukraine why first of all the business
climate is getting better according to
World Bank’s Doing Business ranking this
year Ukraine went 16 positions up we
still got a long way to go from the 96
place but the situation is really
getting better another thing is that no
one quite knows what is the good the
great place to be in right now because
you know there is a saying oh here she
was in just in right place at the right
time everyone knew where those right
places were a few years ago in some
present administration tech service or
some other murky government agency but
no one does know where this right places
is now so whatever you do either copy a
business model of some Western company
or create your own fashion brand or
start making donuts it could be the next
big thing another thing is that there is
funding available there are lots of
different funding programs both
commercial and governmental there are
lots of VC companies venture capital
companies that are looking to fund a
good idea you just have to
up with one finally for those of you who
are thinking of becoming an entrepreneur
and not knowing where to start here is
my very short list first read adequate
media TechCrunch words everything that
has business in it another one is go to
a conference networking is highly
important meet with people you might get
a good piece of advice or you might find
a partner for your business or maybe
eventually you might even find an
investor and number three if you already
have an idea you might consider getting
into an incubator this is something
between school for entrepreneurs and the
venture capital company that will help
you and and fund you and help your
business grow so that’ll be it thank you
for your attention [Applause]