Camplight

I’m part of the Partner Success team and my whole focus is getting our partners from 0 to 1.

But apart from that I’m co-creating a software cooperative that wants to evolve human collaboration while growing with 36% CAGR since 2012 🫶 

Partners vary from small startups to enterprise scale-ups. 

By collaborating on different camplight initiatives, I've gained expertise in the leadership of participatory, innovative, business-critical, and digital transformations, focusing on Fintech, Edutech, and Healthtech, among other industries.

I got the benefit of experiencing XXX k€/year budget responsibilities and multi-stakeholder collaborations.

I've participated in co-scaling camplight from 5 people to 21 and in most critical initiatives as a bootstrapped self-managing organization and community operating with X m€/year

Co-Owner & Venture Builder

VMware

R&D for new company product using VMware SDK 5.5, ReactJS (with flux), ImmutableJS, GulpJS, LESS  and BabelJS

Software Developer

Creating value with startup consulting, leadership, growth hacking, sales and helping to build open, transparent, decentralized, distributed lifestyle software company :)

Camplighter

Game Craft

Crafting game experiences :)

Entrepreneurship (interaction design, zero marketing, lead dev, sales dev, project management, team leader & everything in between and what's necessary O_o). 

Running my first democratic startup & pioneering with gamification consulting in the Balkan region :)

Craftsman

Melon, Inc.

Development of flash applications both on web and desktop platforms. Learning how to write my first production-grade code

Flash/Flex developer

XS Software

Main activities and responsibilities	

Balance, improve and optimize game tables for quality experience.
Write Game design documentation for future projects.
Interaction design of game mechanics.
Review existing games of rival companies.
Communicating with other team members on daily basis.
Design and integrate new features and mechanics.
Research new technologies available on the market.

Game Designer

>> I'm a fanatic about high-performing teams, not individuals.

What can I help you  with (through my Camplight & my fractional‑CTO practice)

> AI‑Powered Digital Transformation – From rapid GenAI prototypes to enterprise‑grade roll‑outs that move $1B bottom lines.

> Venture‑Building as a Service – Cross‑functional “camplight” squads that design, ship, and scale new products—fast.

> Fractional CTO Leadership – Strategic tech stewardship for startups and scale‑ups without the full‑time overhead.

> Mindful Team Coaching – Burnout‑proof operating systems and decision‑making models for boss‑less, high‑trust cultures.

How I Got Here (the short version)

I bootstrapped my first studio, building gamified products, then drove it into the ground through sheer hustle and zero alignment. The resulting burnout forced a hard reset: work had to become a path to enlightenment, not a treadmill.

That quest led me to cooperative ownership at Camplight, where we build tech the same way we live—collaboratively, transparently, and with skin in the game. I’ve since:

> Led multiple 7‑figure digital‑transformation programs in FinTech, EduTech & HealthTech.

> Embedded AI/ML solutions that quietly power nine‑digit revenues.

> Mentored dozens of product squads, turning chaotic sprints into enlightened shipping rituals.

Today I call myself a fractional CTO & digital shaman (IG: @the.digital.shaman)—equal parts architect, facilitator, and catalyst for change. 

If you’re ready to fuse technology with a more human way of working, let’s talk.

Vitaliy Filipov 🧘‍♂️

Iliya Valchanov

Team-GPT

Used by companies like: Maersk, Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, Shift4, EY, Charles Schwab, and many more.


Private Enterprise sofware for using LLMs.

0 to 25K users in 9 months.

Learn, collaborate, and master ChatGPT in one shared workspace.

Co-founder & CEO

Udemy

1.5M+ students in the field of statistics, data science, machine learning, and deep learning.

Bestselling courses:
- The Data Science Course: Complete Data Science Bootcamp (750,000+ students and 150,000+ reviews)
- The Business Intelligence Analyst Course (250,000+ students and 45,000 reviews)
- Statistics for Data Science and Business Analysis (220,000 + students and 45,000+ reviews)

AI Course Creator

3veta

3veta is a product company, specializing in video conferencing, scheduling, payments, and more.

Our core products are: 
→ A SaaS that simplifies scheduling and streamlines video meetings for remote and hybrid teams
→ A white-label video conferencing tool
→ API for appointment scheduling
→ Marketplace builder

Co-Founder & CEO

365 Data Science

By 2020 reached:
- 1M+ students on Udemy
- Our own learning management system
- 500,000+ students on our own platform
- 30 employees
- $1M ARR

---

It started as a simplistic WordPress website showcasing our portfolio of courses. With time, our team started growing and we developed more complex software solutions until we launched our own learning management system and developed comprehensive in-house marketing expertise.

My role was closest to that of a COO. My OCD has always been preoccupied with structuring work and developing processes in order to never miss a step or a deadline. Therefore, scaling our team and processes was more of a relief (of my obsession for structure), rather than an occupation. 

But as a co-founder I have worn many different hats with the C- in front: CFO, CTO, CMO. Nonetheless, I have never neglected the specific business driving activities of our industry, such as creating and editing content (video and text), content dissemination (automatic, semi-automatic, and unfortunately, at times, manual), social media management automation, technical SEO, tracking, ads management (running Facebook ads until my last day) and probably many more.

On the managerial side, apart from overseeing most processes, I was head of content creation and have personally read and edited all the educational content that came out of 365 Data Science. This has proved invaluable for expanding my programming knowledge base and providing me with incredible breadth of data science skills (all types of statistics and machine learning, incl. regressions, clustering, dimensionality reduction, credit risk models, price elasticity models, visualizations, feed-forward neural networks, convolutional neural networks, and more). 

In December 2020, I exited 365 Data Science to devote more time to other projects.

Co-Founder

365 Careers

365 Careers is the #1 best-selling provider of business, finance, and data science courses on Udemy. The company’s courses have been taken by more than 2,000,000 students in 210 countries. People working at world-class firms like Apple, PayPal, and Citibank have completed 365 Careers trainings.

During my time with 365 Careers, I have worked extensively on creating, managing, editing, and curating the data science content of 365 on Udemy. 

I am the author or co-author of the following courses:
-> The Data Science Courses: Complete Data Science Bootcamp
-> The Business Intelligence Analyst Course
-> Statistics for Data Science and Business Analysis
-> Deep Learning with TensorFlow 2.0
-> Python + SQL + Tableau: Integrating Python, SQL, and Tableau
-> Machine Learning 101 with scikit-learn and statsmodels
-> Customer Analytics in Python

I have overseen the creation through editing and/or project management of the following courses: 
-> The Data Analyst Course: Complete Data Analyst Bootcamp
-> The Data Visualization Course: Excel, Tableau, Python, R
-> Convolutional Neural Networks with TensorFlow in Python
-> Credit Risk Modeling in Python
-> Probability for Statistics and Data Science
-> Web Scraping and API Fundamentals in Python

I have also lead the translation effort of video content in German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese, resulting in the following courses:
German:
-> Das komplette Data Science Bootcamp 2021 in Python
-> Statistik für Data Science und Business Analytics
Spanish:
-> Bootcamp Completo em Data Science com Python 2021
-> Estadística para Data Science y análisis de negocios
Português:
-> Entrenamiento completo en Data Science con Python 2021
-> Estatística para Data Science e Análise de Negócios
Chinese:
-> 数据科学和商业分析中的统计学

Content Manager

CEO @ Team-GPT | 1,300,000+ AI students on Udemy

👉1 sentence about me: 
I teach AI to 1.5M students on Udemy; also CEO of Team-GPT: A leading Enterprise AI software. 

👉Multi sentence about me: 
I used to compete in Maths for 10 years and was quite good at it. To this day, my work ethic is highly influenced by my Math competitor days.

I graduated in Finance and have all the financial knowledge I could ask for. It was not my calling, so I never pursued it... but I find it quite useful in running a business. 

At 23, I co-founded an educational startup for online data science courses - 365 Data Science. I helped it scale to 30+ people with millions of students worldwide and $1M+ ARR. Courses that I have personally created have been taken by 1,300,000+ students. This EdTech business was bootstrapped to $30M+.

Currently, I'm Co-founder and CEO of Team-GPT. Team-GPT reached 25K users in 9 months and is used by enterprises all around the globe.

I'm a very curious guy, who loves to build stuff.

Learn, collaborate, and master ChatGPT in one shared workspace.

Когато пиша за политика, алгоритъмът се обърква, тролове коментират, маркетинг стратегията ни пропада, а бизнесът ни страда.
Но има нещо от което бизнесът ни, както и на много други българи, страда повече.

Това, че ни спират тока, като им пречим.
Това, че съдебната система е завладяна от мафията.
Това, че взимат бизнеси на хора безнаказано (Илия Златанов от Изамет и Осемте Джуджета, както и десетки неразказани истории).
Това, че държат кмета на Варна 6 месеца в затвора без причина и без присъда.
Това, че саботират полезните действия на кмета на София.
Това, че Европейската прокуратура трябва да се намеси, за да търси справедливост срещу кметове на ГЕРБ и безумията им. 
Това, че САЩ трябва да използва Магнитски, защото сами не можем да се справим с корупцията.
Това, че от години в България няма истинска журналистика, защото разкараха всички достойни журналисти.
Това, че медиите показват каквото им се каже, а социалните мрежи показват истината.

Това, че закърпват държавния бюджет с парите на най-здраво работещите хора. Не за да ги дадат на учители и лекари, а за да приберат парите в джобовете на безкрайно оядени престъпници. 
 

Ние сме хората, които градим, а не рушим.
Които вкарваме външни инвестиции в страната и увеличаваме богатството на България.

Протестираме, защото заслужаваме много повече от прасе и тиква.

CEO @ Juma | 1,500,000+ AI students on Udemy

You got into marketing because you love the work. 

The strategy. The creative. 
The moment a campaign clicks and everything comes together.

But that’s buried. 
Dozens of tools. Hundreds of workflows. Endless details.

You spend more time managing systems than creating. 
More time switching contexts than turning ideas to life. 
More time explaining what you're doing than actually doing it.

This isn't what you signed up for.

Marketing should be simpler. 
Much more delightful.
More like... Juma!

-

Juma is the workspace where your team does their best work.

Everything you need to plan, create, and launch lives in one place. 
Your team has the same context. The same tools. 
The same ability to move fast. 

A place where work stops feeling like a burden.
Experience the joy of marketing.

Think together, move as one!
Welcome to Juma.

juma.ai

I’ve gone from $0 to $1M/year for the 3rd time in my life.

Here are 25 startup truths:

1. Building a great team takes time. I’m building ours for 9 years, across projects.

2. Radical transparency builds trust like nothing else. Mostly- attracts the right people, repels the wrong ones.

3. It’s cheap to build software, it’s extremely expensive to build a great product. 

4. Bootstrapping vs being venture-backed depends on the market and competition. Not on your personal preference. 

5. PR is vanity. Yet it's an important part of the marketing mix and must be done.

6. Each time you get from 0 to1 is different. The fact that you’ve done it before helps... but the strategy and tactics are different each time.

7. The true test is: how much $ will you be making if tomorrow you have 0 employees. What about in 1 year?

8. It’s all marketing. Nobody loves their creation on day 1. Yet you can’t make $1M if you don’t sell the s**t out of whatever you have.

9. The more senior you become, the more sales you do. 

10. CEO needs to have deep expertise in the field of the business.

11. if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, join forces with others. 

12. Owning 5% of a $1,000,000,000 business is better than owning 95% of nothing.

13. 30% of the time of a CEO goes into admin and finance. As CEO, find someone to own this ASAP and you’ll accelerate the trajectory of your business.

14. If someone is not working out, part ways fast. It’s better for everyone.

15. Toxic clients should be fired.

16. Partners that benefit from your partnership at your expense should be removed. It must be a win-win.

17. Look for ways to outsource as much as possible. Never outsource your core product/activity.

18. Always reward hard work and dedication. If you can’t afford to do it with $$$, give more time, attention, coaching. That’s often more valuable. 

19. MacBook is orders of magnitude better than any Windows computer. You can’t reach your full potential without a Mac. Not an opinion but a fact!

20. Great systems are the difference between very good and truly great. 

21. Process is the opposite of creativity. To stumble upon great ideas, you must avoid putting people in boxes. Yet no process means no scale.

22. Your 20s must be spent in experimentation. Find what you hate. Find what makes you tick. 

23. It’s easy to give back. It’s hard to pay forward.

24. Being direct may be perceived as being rude. Yet always being direct makes you predictable and trustworthy, which is extremely productive.

25. It has never been easier to start a business. Yet it’s harder than ever to build lasting value. 

---

This post was based on my experiences scaling businesses to $1M.

Yet money has never been the final goal for me.
How can the means of getting there be the destination?

devote-academy

Post | Feed | LinkedIn

JSESSIONID

li_at

Talks about #ai, #chatgpt, #startup, #buildinpublic, and #entrepreneurship

We hit $1M ARR ✨

1,000,000 USD per year are paid to our company bank account because of what we've built. 

We've achieved what 96% of startups never will. 

Want to know the secret to always hitting your goals on time?

Watch the video, sound on!

New product, who dis?

Soon to empower every marketer in New York.


Proudly created this in Juma

Now 15,000+ people follow my content here.

I'm the CEO of an AI startup but don't use AI to write on LinkedIn.

Why?
-> I think AI can help with wording.
But it can't help with self-expression.

-> Lots of work will be automated by AI.
But human connection is not one of them. 

-> AI writes cheaper, faster, better than me.
But I mainly write to structure my own thoughts.


That's why I'm on LinkedIn -> 
to structure my own thoughts, express myself, and hope to connect with likeminded people on the way. 


In the last 3-4 years of posting, I shared the good, the bad, and the ugly.
-> Reached millions of AI students with 365 Data Science 
-> Closed 3veta and shared why
-> Built Team-GPT in public from Day 1: 0 to 10K users posts, fundraised $4.5M, posted investor reports, shared deeply dramatic insights, hit $1M ARR, and even posted the OpenAI legal letter suing us


I share because 𝘺𝘰𝘶 have shown me it's useful!
And am thankful for your time. 

.
.
.

P.S.
If you don't know me -> let's connect!
If you know me -> Thanks for being around, I'll continue sharing 🫡

For over 2 years, the name 'Team-GPT' served us well.

With the name 'Team-GPT' we welcomed our 1st user.
Today we have 75K+ users!

With the name 'Team-GPT' we crossed $1M in recurring revenue.
1 million reasons to believe we are onto something special.

That something special deserves a new name.

From the foundation of Team-GPT rises a new era of augmented work.
A new vision.

The team behind the name will keep serving you.
With a new name and our own identity.

Thanks, 'Team-GPT'. 

I'll wear you on my hoodie at home ❤️

.
.
.

P.S.
new name drops on 19 Nov!

+ Follow to get updates

Първи ден на Джума и вече е в новините 😎 

Благодаря на Mary Ivanova и Капитал, че отново разказаха историята ни!

🤖 Преди година, малко след като #TeamGPT привлече 4.5 млн. долара финансиране в рекордна за млада компания на този етап сделка, в лондонския офис на дружеството пристига писмо, адресирано от OpenAI. "В него ни подтикваха да се откажем от търговската си марка в САЩ, Великобритания и ЕС, защото не можем да я притежаваме", обяснява Iliya Valchanov, CEO и съосновател на Team-GPT (българското дружество се казва "Тийм ГПТ").

📧 Екипът от петима бизнес партньори решава да игнорира писмото, защото компанията има запазени марки на трите пазара, одобрени от съответните контролни органи. Разбира обаче, че не можеш да игнорираш OpenAI така, "както можеш да не отговориш на съобщение на мъж след неуспешна среща", смее се Вълчанов...

🌍 Тази седмица стартъпът, който от две години обслужва вече над 75 хил. клиенти в САЩ, Канада и Европа, сменя своето име и търговска марка. Team-GPT вече се казва Juma. Какво се случи междувременно, какво правиш, когато технологичен гигант съобщи, че иска да те съди и какво казва законът? Четете в статията  на Mary Ivanova тук: https://lnkd.in/dJ-2qRqy

Open article: Team-GPT вече е Juma: какво правиш, когато OpenAI иска да те осъди by capital.bg

Team-GPT вече е Juma: какво правиш, когато OpenAI иска да те осъди

Choosing a new name for Team-GPT was the worst 🤮

300 shortlisted names.
All problematic somehow.

At the end, a branding agency helped us out.

Here's things went.

Founders, VCs, angels:
Our fundraising materials for raising $4.5M in San Francisco as Silicon Valley outsiders.

What it took? 
85 'NO's and a physical breakdown.

The steps?

Prep:
1. Read books
2. Meet founders
3. Prep materials
4. Get angels
5. Get VCs

The VC bits:
1. Create an investor list
2. Get warm intros
3. Pitch deck is used to get a 1st meeting
4. NEVER show the pitch deck in the first meeting
5. 1st meeting is to get a 2nd meeting
6. Follow-up with the f*cking best materials
7. Receive a term sheet or get a ‘NO’ ASAP


Unfiltered, 1-hour lecture:
👉 https://lnkd.in/dt6xEJhB

Other materials:
1. PPT presentation from video: https://lnkd.in/dhpirdmD

2. How to raise $5M-$15M from Silicon Valley? Learnings from a conversation with a VC from Sequoia Capital: https://lnkd.in/ggPfyJFh

3. How Team-GPT raised $4.5M- A True story - 100% real story about our fundraising. Journalled as it was happening.
https://lnkd.in/dZ3UxmfE


Thanks for the support along the way!

Rebranding Team-GPT has been so draining..

Mainly because changing your identity is really painful.

I'm glad it's almost over and can't wait to show you the new product!

Yellow alert!

We are changing everything about us next week.

New name, new agents.

Stay tuned!

our product can't be called Team-GPT... even though we hold 3 trademarks ⚖️

OpenAI sent us 2 legal letters, making it clear that they are so big and powerful that resistance is futile 🤑🤑🤑

We are in the right... 
but can't afford the fight.

The only thing left for us to do?
Great product and dope marketing!


+ Follow 
to see what's next

We've reached a super important milestone in our history.

Choosing cool colors 🎨

Out of these, what's your preferred palette ?

1. Blue
2. Purple
3. Red
4. Yellow
5. Green

We will use all of them but one needs to be the main!

86% of marketers believe AI will benefit their work.
Only 26% can actually execute on it.

That's a 3x gap between confidence and capability.

Many teams are stuck:
- Not decisive enough to commit. 
- No internal drive to manage the adoption.
- Not technical enough to set AI up for success.


The Growth Syndicate made a report which covers 110 B2B marketing leaders and breaks down:

1. Where teams are actually using AI (91% for content, only 20% for sales enablement)

2. Why skills matter more than budget (60% cite training needs vs 25% budget constraints)

3. Much more


My contribution to the report:
"Don't be afraid to make changes to your strategy as you learn more. But with any marketing activity, if you give up after one post on LinkedIn, have you really tested the channel? 
Same with AI tools—commit long enough to learn, then course-correct."

Link:
https://lnkd.in/d3seAUE7

To make $1M per year,
you need:


1,000,000 customers paying you $1
100,000 customers paying you $10
10,000 customers paying you $100
1,000 customers paying you $1,000
100 customers paying you $10,000
10 customers paying you $100,000
1 customers paying you $1,000,000


Which one do you prefer?

No alternative text description for this image

San Francisco hits different when you're all-in building.

Sure, the investment money helps. 
But it's not about that.

It's about the energy. 
The ambition. 
The history.

The belief that you can actually change the world with a laptop and a vision.

You're the average of the 5 people closest to you. 
When that may be Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Satya Nadela, and Jensen Huang you either become a supervillain or you get really ambitious. 

Hope it's the latter.

We're cooking up something that will change how people market stuff.

More soon!

Not all $$$ are made equal. 

Recurring revenue is way more valuable than one time. 

Service revenue is easier than product revenue. 

B2B revenue is easier than B2C. 

Enterprise revenue is hard to get, hard to lose.


The goal of each business?
It's not generating money but generating free cash flow.

So it's not about how much money you make. 
It's about how much money is left.

I hate Black Friday.

After building multiple products and runnning many promotions-
Black Friday deals work only for ecommerce.  

- For software, it cheapens the product and the experience. 

- If you do this often, people get used to it and 'wait for the discount'. 

- Loyal existing users feel betrayed that you gave a deal to someone else, while that someone else only chose you cause you are cheap, not because of your value prop. 

+ the revenue is not that much anyways

I know these tease posts have been a bit too much...

But I literally have only 2-3 days left to do them.

Stay tuned- 
dropping our biggest update ever next week!

taplio

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Vitaliy Filipov 🧘‍♂️

Iliya Valchanov

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The Battle

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Iliya Valchanov

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