May 27, 2024
August 16, 2025
The culture and values of a company shape its success. During one of the founders’ breakfasts as a part of the Mission Possible venture buildingprogram, the founder & CEO at MacPaw, Oleksandr Kosovan, visited to talk about values and the approach to innovation, which can transform a small startup into a global leader.
Oleksandr Kosovan started his career path working as a system administrator in various companies. Thanks to his accumulated experience, Oleksandr began to work on his first website projects. It took more than a year to develop the first version of Clean My Mac. Oleksandr was engaged not only in the code and technical part but also in marketing and the full development of the product. This gave him full-stack experience on how to launch a product and build a business from scratch.
“I didn’t expect anything big when I launched the product. I just wanted to create an Apple inspired product.”
The first team members were his friends and classmates, with whom he had close relationships and trusted, and the first investments were his own savings accumulated from previous jobs. Having assembled a team of several people, he rented a small office and started working on the project. (At that time Oleksandr was 20 years old).
”Everything we built, we built on our feelings and the desire to create a culture and processes in the company.”
From the very beginning, he understood the importance of analytics and used Google Analytics to track the effectiveness of their actions. This turned out to be an effective tool that gave a boost to development.
Insight: Crisis as a driver for change. Each crisis changes the organizational model and allows the introduction of new roles for managers and lead developers.
One of the crucial points of change for MacPaw was 2013, when the team reached 40 people. Then, thanks to cooperation with Hey Group (now Korn Ferry), they implemented company management and introduced an executive team through mission values.
“Every crisis, either you go through it and learn, change, or the company stops in development, or even closes.”
In 2014, Oleksandr and a friend founded the SMRK fund. Searching for the first startups for investments was difficult due to the lack of brand and recognition, but over time, through contacts and requests for help, cooperation was established. Later, public press releases about the fund began to appear, attracting attention to SMRK.
Also, Oleksandr is actively involved in many side projects, which include support for the army and participation in various boards.
Currently, a new story is unfolding at MacPaw: they will become one of the first third-party app stores on mobile platforms. Oleksandr reports that they recently launched a closed beta, which will be an important step for the company in the iOS market.
Additionally, it is impossible not to note the level of MacPaw design, which fits so precisely into Apple’s standards. The approach to design was inspired by Steve Jobs’ philosophy, which states that design should not only look good but also work well. To support the design culture in the company, they’ve created the role of Chief Design Officer.
Although Oleksandr characterizes himself as a person who brings everything to perfection in the case of startups, he advises a quick release. This allows immediate feedback from users and faster movement.
“The approach where you wait until everything is perfect has more chances of failure.”
Speaking about the ideal founder, Oleksandr emphasized the importance of the team.
Insight: When a founder has the ability to assemble a good team, it already says a lot. All founders are different, there are expressive ones with a more aggressive management approach, there are calm ones. But the only thing that connects them is a deep understanding of their domain and the ability to assemble a team.
Oleksandr shares that with the current challenge of remote work, it’s very difficult to convey the senses and culture to all employees if they have never crossed paths in one place. In MacPaw, the product team sets the pace and requirements, which in turn, helps convey the company’s values, even to remote employees.
“We are looking for people who are talented and ready to realize their talent through products, through their influence in the organization.”
In Ukraine, this culture is not as developed as in America, and Ukrainian founders do not yet fully understand their value. Options help show a person how their decisions affect the value of the company.
“To me, this is more correct compensation than just bonuses.”
Insight: AI as a necessity. Oleksandr considers AI a technological revolution that companies should implement. This is a tool that not only allows you to create a competitive product, but the prospect of AI is to solve many problems in the world.
“If you are not in AI, then, most likely, you will lag behind where everything is moving.”
After the MacPaw team had more than 40 people, Oleksandr completely moved away from engineering and began to devote all his strength and time to management. Noting that one of the biggest difficulties is the lack of tools in management, similar to those available to engineers to simplify their work.
Another challenge is the absence of instant rewards for work done. In programming, the results of changes can be seen almost immediately, in management, the impact of decisions may only be noticeable after years.
However, the transition to management opens significant opportunities. This step allows influencing the strategic decisions of the company and seeing how ideas are realized in the long term. Management provides the opportunity to work on shaping the company’s vision, managing large teams and projects, which has a significant impact on the country’s economy.
Through his example, Oleksandr Kosovan shows that with desire, skills, and experience, your mission is possible. Participants of the venture building program Mission Possible have a unique opportunity to receive personalized advice and navigation from leaders of the technology ecosystem. This helps to develop their projects faster, enter the global market, launching a powerful wave of Ukrainian entrepreneurship.
