Chris Bakke

Founder

Currently: Investing, writing, and enjoying downtime.

Previously: CEO of Laskie (acquired by X/Twitter in 2023), Co-founder of Interviewed (acquired by Indeed in 2017), COO of 42Floors (acquired by Knotel), managed business development for Zillow (NAS $ZG), RentJuice (acquired by Zillow in 2012).

Founder, CEO

Alphie

Alphie is an intelligent personal assistant that allows to schedule any meeting in 1 click

Chief Scheduling Officer

Pioneer Fund

Venture Partner

Orange Collective

Investor

YouTeam  (YC W18)

YouTeam in now part of Toptal: https://www.toptal.com/youteam

Executive Chairman

"AWS for talent", YouTeam allows businesses to instantly ramp up their R&D with vetted engineering contractors. 

Used by:
250+ tech companies across the US, UK, and Europe.
50+ Y Combinator startups.
2 Fortune 500 companies.

Backed by Y Combinator.

Co-CEO

One of the two original founders of YouTeam, Yura is the architect and the principal force behind the company's present success.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Product vision ownership
- Supervision of the product roadmap and backlog
- Management of the design and development of all YouTeam products
- Gathering and analysis of customer feedback through a proprietary Product Lab process
- Analyzing and interpreting user data
- Managing the cross-functional product team
- Strategic management as a voting board member
- Supervision of R&D, legal and financial departments, 
- Representative duties, customer research, sales, etc.
- Built the R&D, sales and partner relations departments
- Set up YouTeam offshore office in Lviv, Ukraine
- Signed YouTeam first clients (Ormary, Areobooks, Candesic, Toogle Toys, Panda Club)
- Brought some 30+ clients on board, including the largest and most prestigious (PWC, Tide Banking, Starsky Robotics, Just Giving, Wifinity, Leezoo, StratiFi, Akido Labs, Maxwell, etc.)

Co-founder and Chief Product Officer

Forbes Human Resources Council

Contributor

Startup School Online

THE Startup School by Y Combinator.

- 2018 batch: mentoring the group of 23 startups - 2-3 weekly sessions;
- 2019 batch: mentoring 20+ various Startup School companies ad-hoc;
- Helping the Startup School companies hire engineers via the exclusive YouTeam deal
- Co-organized Kyiv Startup School meetup in August 2019

Advisor

Cryptohire

Cryptohire was an online HR platform that helped crypto-economy businesses hire vetted blockchain engineers. 


KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

- The original idea and Proof-of-concept
- Designing and supervising the development of the online marketplace - as a spin-off of YouTeam platform
- Development and implementation of the Go-to-market strategy and website launch plan
- Conducting customer interviews, gathering and analyzing customer feedback
- Pre-sales and working with customers
- Designing secure and compliant payment processing solution

Co-Founder

Seedstars

Individual mentorship of 10+ companies participating in Lviv pitching event of Seedstars global selection. Preliminary assessment of the projects

Mentor

StartupDepot Incubator&Coworking

- Participated as a mentor in 3 Lviv StartUp school batches: 2015, 2016 and 2017 and Startups School University Edition
- Gave lectures and workshops on the topics of Ideation ("Startup founder mindset"), business modeling ("Lean canvas') and investor presentations.
- Individual mentorship for the School startups
- Assesment of the student projects - at the Demo Day

Mentor at StartUp School

Y Combinator

Alumni - Winter 2018 batch

Tech entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience. Key areas: HR tech, social media, online marketplaces, product development, AI assistants, and productivity apps.
Yura began his career as a designer in 2000, building user interfaces for web and standalone digital products—before the term UX/UI even existed. From 2005 to 2010, he collaborated with an advisory group to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. On February 24, 2010, he was awarded the Ukrainian national “Order of Merit, Class III.” In 2009, he founded Chumak Way—a startup-focused business development consultancy that later pivoted to a business event management service.
In 2012, Yura co-founded Hubbub.fm, a “Twitter for voice” platform that successfully raised an angel round, grew to over 50,000 daily active users, and was recognized by multiple media outlets as one of the top European startups of the year.
In March 2014, Yura co-founded YouTeam, a marketplace for hiring software developers that pioneered the “fracking for talent” model. In January 2018, YouTeam was backed by Y Combinator. In 2025, it was acquired by TopTal.
That same year, Yura co-founded Alphie—an AI personal assistant.
He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, Maria, and their two children. He plays chess and writes literary fiction and sci-fi. His short stories have been published in Eclectica Magazine, Twelve Winters Journal, and Black Sheep Magazine.

taplio

The Battle

Chris Bakke

Yurij Riphyak 🇺🇦

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