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.

I see many first-time founders repeating the same mistake I made while building my previous company: focusing too much on investors and not enough on customers.

That might sound strange coming from someone who is now an investor too, but the startup ecosystem is built in a way that distorts reality.  It often feels like investors are the ones running the show - they’re active participants in the ecosystem and dominate the information space. Also, as Michael and Dalton of YC observed, a “principal-subordinate paradigm” operates at a subconscious level - investors naturally slip into the role of the ‘boss.’

Customers, in contrast, are quiet; you usually only hear from them when something goes wrong. But the truth is: it's customers, not investors, who make or break your business.

A related lesson learned: don’t overraise. It’s usually better to err on the side of raising too little rather than too much. When push comes to shove, there’s almost always a way to do more with less. At the same time, the more you’ve raised, the harder it becomes to sell your company - because at exit, investors get paid before founders.

I’ve heard many times from later-stage founders: “I wish we sold after Series A,” or “I wish we didn’t dilute that much.” I’ve never heard anyone say, “I wish we raised more.”

Yurij Riphyak 🇺🇦

Top 10 most promising Ukrainian startups

Top 50 European Startups

Winner, 1st International Investment and Innovation Forum

Chevening Scholarship

"For the weighty contribution in affirmance of the high brand of national goods producer at international markets", Order of President of Ukraine #257/2010 of 24 February 2010

Order of Merit III Grade (Ukr: Орден "За Заслуги" III ступеня)

NGO Management School, Geneva

Y Combinator

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Lviv National Medical University 'Danylo Halycky'​

Lviv Academic Gymnasium

English

French

German

Polish

Russian

Ukrainian

Democratic Alliance

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

Alumni - Winter 2018 batch

Co-founder & CEO @ Alphie: schedule any meeting in one click.
Previously: co-founder @ YouTeam (YC W18, acq. by Toptal)

A casual and informative interview with the co-founder of YouTeam (https://youteam.io/) dev teams marketplace about how it started, the pitfalls and wins they had. Why to watch: - sh...

Interview with Yura Riphyak, co-founder and CPO of YouTeam

CEO @ Alphie, previously: co-founder/CEO @ YouTeam (YC W18, acq. by TopTal)

“Time kills all deals. Speed saves them.”
👏🏻 Jacqueline Cheong

Co-Founder & CEO at Artie (YC S23)

One time we won a 6 figure deal because: 
- The customer submitted an inquiry in our contact form at 8:20am
- We responded at 8:36am.
- They responded within 2 minutes and said they wanted to go live with real-time pipelines right now

So we hopped on a call at 8:45am and within 45 minutes did discovery and had pipelines running.

Sometimes just being responsive and available is all it takes.

Of course, we didn't just win because we moved fast. 

It helped, but we won because the product just worked and didn't require months of setup, a migration plan, or a prayer.

"So, do you know why today is a day off at school?"

6 y.o.: "Yes! It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day."

"Right. And do you know who Martin Luther King was?"

"Yes, he wanted everything to be fair."
(after a pause, quieter): "I think it's unfair that adults are bigger than kids."

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