I'm from Odessa, Ukraine. I came to Japan in 2017 as a MEXT scholar, went to Kyoto University to study international relations, then pivoted to law and then completely disillusioned. Participated in a few weeks abroad program that took me to Silicon Valley, where I met exceptional people in a span of a few days, felt like I was missing out, while humanity's future is being built — so decided I want to be part of the startup world.
In 2020, I founded Flora — a healthtech company that first focused on female consumers, helping to solve period pain, PCOS and infertility. After our consumer business started to grow and we raised some VC money, we launched a B2B product that's been selling well and now has over 150 enterprise customers. We work with Toyota Group companies, JR West, Tokyu and others.
I like this market because it's not just about creating an amazing product (which is already an incredibly difficult task), but it's also about learning to work with numerous other stakeholders — ministries (Health Ministry's policy objectives are different from METI, whose are different from Digital Agency on their part), local governments, different departments inside one company (HR is different from Bizdev or health/labor union). This constant negotiation and discussion to create a movement inside Japan lets me have a rich picture of how separate groups in Japanese society work, how to understand, navigate them and collaborate.
This site exists mostly for me to organize and share my thoughts.