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.

What every startup event feels like after you hit 40.

Yura Riphyak 🇺🇦

Tech entrepreneur with over 10 years of experience. Key areas: HR Tech, social media, online marketplaces, product development.

Starting his career as a designer in 2000, Yura has been building user interfaces for web and stand-alone digital products before the UX/UI acronym was invented. He collaborated with an advisory to Ukraine’s President Yushchenko between 2005 and 2010. On 24 February 2010, he has been awarded the Ukrainian national “Order of Merit Class III”. In 2009, he founded “Chumak Way” – a startup-focused business development consultancy that pivoted to a business event management service. Yura sold his stake in the company in 2013.

In 2012, Yura co-founded Hubbub.fm - a “Twitter for Voice” which successfully raised an angel round, grew to 50K+ daily active users and was recognized by multiple media as one of the top European Startups in 2012. 

In March 2014 Yura started YouTeam, with a vision to enable startups to hire top software developers, even with a limited budget and time. Since then Yura was the Chief Product Officer of the company. In 2016 YouTeam pivoted to become the world's first b2b marketplace for engineering talent. In January 2018 YouTeam was backed by Y Combinator and then raised Series seed from Horizon Capital, Digital Futures and a group of prominent angel investors.

Besides YouTeam work, Yura also mentors startups at YC Startup School, lectures at Lviv Startup School and teaches business development crash courses at Ukrainian Catholic University.

Co-founder & CEO @ Alphie: Intelligent GTM Assistant

Parents. If you don’t want your kid to become a founder and condemn themselves to a life of misery, self-doubt, and rainbow-chasing, make sure they don’t read too much fiction.
👇🏻

As long as I can remember, I was curious about why people start startups. If you think about it, this is one of the worst ways to make money. You sign up for years of hard work and anxiety with a chance of getting something out of it being infinitesimally small.

After asking this question to several hundred founders, I finally had my answer: people start startups because they read too many books in their childhood.

The thing is: most literature, especially middle-grade and young adult, is built upon a heroic fable. A hero, whom readers associate themselves with, overcomes impossible obstacles, slays terrible monsters, and defeats their own insecurities – so that they can prevail and save the world, no less.

The problem is we live in a world where most of the monsters have already been slain, taxidermied, and relegated to a museum, and the biggest peril most of us ever had to overcome is being laid off from our summer internship job. We live a life of safe, comfortable boredom – and thank heavens for that.

But a life like that could never be enough for a kid who read a lot of books. So they start creating those obstacles and monsters themselves - to then slay and overcome them and achieve eternal glory. Or, if this doesn’t work - get acqui-hired by Meta.

So yes, dear fellow parents. If you really care about the well-being of your progeny, hide those Harry Potters and Hunger Games deep in the attic - and get them a copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad instead.

Follow me for more practical advice on startups and parenting.

#startup #parenting #harrypotter

A question that always stumps me: “What is your favourite book as a founder?”

I firmly believe that founders must commit to continuous self-education. No single book can ever be enough. Here’s my very small starter set:

🧠 THE MINDSET:
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - to understand how one can achieve great things while remaining a good person and living a meaningful life.
- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb- to once and for all cure the illusion that you can predict the future.
- Free Will by Sam Harris - to grasp the paradox of free will and liberate yourself from both hubris and misery.
- The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Warner Klemp - probably the worst-written book on this list, but trust me, the reward is worth the struggle: hands down the best thing I ever read on the leadership mindset.

♟️THE STRATEGY:
- The great CEO Within by Matt Mochary - Okay, for some unfathomable reason, you can only read one book, this is the one. The founder’s essential companion for survival in the wild.
- Good to Great by Jim Collins - for the later stages, when you inevitably hit a wall.
- The Bezos Letters by Steve Anderson - for the 70% rule, two-way-door, "every day is day one" and other unique bits of practical wisdom from one of the greatest entrepreneurial minds of our time.
- Atomic Habits by James Clear - to learn how to make changes that require time.
- The Magic Box Paradigm by Ezra Roizen - to understand what selling your business really involves, and how to start building for a successful exit from day one.

🪖THE TACTICS:
- Who: The ‘A Method’ for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street - a step-by-step playbook for hiring people that you will want to keep and that will stay with your company.
- Start with No by Jim Camp - after reading dozens of negotiation books, this one stands above the rest as the only one that offers a robust system for consistently landing the best possible deal.
- How to Decide by Annie Duke - to make important decisions based on logic rather than gut instinct, and to understand which decisions are important and which are not.
- Obviously Awesome by April Dunford a clear, no-nonsense framework for positioning your product and achieving product/market fit - or realizing it doesn’t exist.

So, what’s your favourite book as a founder?
Just kidding. 🙂
But actually - if you’ve got other titles you found really useful, drop them in the comments.

AI-native GTM stack, late 2025:

AiSDR - Autonomous prospecting and sequencing designed to keep working a lead until a meeting is booked.

Floworks - End-to-end outbound: research → personalization → sequences → follow-ups → replies.

Coldreach (YC W23) - Signal-triggered outbound based on hiring, funding, stack shifts, and company news.

Venta AI (YC S23) - Multi-channel outbound built for regulated/saturated markets, including physical letters.

Clay - The default programmable GTM data engine: 100+ sources + workflows + AI research.

Crustdata (YC F24) - API-first live company/people data for teams building their own scoring layer.

OpenFunnel (YC F24) - Tracks changes over time (pricing, launches, hiring patterns) to surface buying windows.

Orange Slice - AI agents scanning the web continuously for buying signals.

Hindsight - Competitor monitoring and win-loss insights to sharpen positioning and battlecards.

Jasper - High-quality inbound content production and campaign workflows.

Writesonic - Jasper-class content engine with strong SEO/GEO-oriented tools.

Copy.ai - Widely used for landing pages, nurture, and outbound-to-inbound repurposing.

Clearscope - Semantic relevance + content brief scoring (still the gold standard).

Rankai- AI marketing agency,” starting with end-to-end SEO/GEO automation.

Frase - AI briefs + long-tail intent clustering.

MarketMuse by Siteimprove - Topic modeling and content planning.

Chili Piper - Category baseline: qualify → route → instant scheduling at form submit.

Alphie - Real-time inbound lead qualification (<2 seconds), and engagement tailored for founders and lean GTM teams.

Default - Modern all-in-one alternative: forms + enrichment + qualification workflows + routing.

Qualified- Real-time visitor capture + qualification + meeting booking.

https://lnkd.in/g-grkdS4

Val Sanin built the entire YouTeam revenue operation from the ground up. One of the most brilliant people I’ve ever worked with - and a ton of positive energy!

A year from now, I’d do my best to hire him myself. So this is your chance, folks.

Technology sales professional, consultant, mentor & team leader

Thankful I can finally write this post. I'm returning to my civilian life and my family after serving in the Ukrainian army. 

I'm also getting back to work - in tech sales. Is your company hiring? 

My growing family and I just settled in Prague and I'm actively looking for a remote (or local) sales role on a team I can grow with, be it an ambitious startup or a mature larger company.

What I bring:
• 12 years in sales, over 7 years in tech sales: Account Executive to Director of Sales and Marketing at a Y Combinator-backed startup (now acq. by Toptal)
• 4 years leading sales teams in high-pressure environments
• legal background (Master of Laws)
• creative hunting, empathetic closing, and perseverance

What I'm looking for: 
A mid-to-senior role at a startup OR a mid-level role at a mature company with 200+ employees. I'm specifically interested in making the jump from SMB to mid-market and enterprise sales.

Know of something that might fit? Let me know

👋🏻 High five if you spend two weeks and fourteen emails to get a demo call with a lead and then when they are 3 minutes late secretly hope they won’t join.

taplio

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