Vasili Shynkarenka
Founder @ AI Study Camp. YC alum. Writer. “I seek to understand.”
London, England
Overview
Work Experience
Founder
2023 - Current
AI Study Camp is a month-long online course aimed at understanding modern LLMs like GPT-4 and figuring out what you can build with them (e.g, internal tools, features, products). The program is taught per SOTA science of learning, in a small group of ~ 10 YC alums, myself as an instructor, and speakers like Sharif Shameem of Lexica. More info here: https://vslog.substack.com/i/136785235/what-ive-been-up-to-ai-study-camp
Co-Founder & CEO
2017 - 2020
Storyline was a website where you could build Amazon Alexa skills without writing code. At our heyday, we powered 10% of the Amazon Skills Store! - built a v1 in a few days, launched on PH, and got thousands of users - raised $770k from Y Combinator, Adam Draper, and co-founders of MSQRD - partnered with Amazon & Google - worked with NYT & BBC as customers - launched and grew dev community to 3k members in 6 months Eventually, shut it down because people didn’t use Alexa skills/apps much and mostly preferred default features like alarms, q&a, etc.
Co-Founder & CEO
2016 - 2017
BotCube was a chatbots agency in the CIS market. - bootstrapped the business from zero to five-figure revenues in ~8 months - launched 12 projects for brands like WorkFusion, Glamour, and Eurotorg ($2bn/year retailer) - launched and grew chatbots community on Facebook from to 2k+ members in 6 months - built a team of 6 When started working on Storyline and moved to the Bay Area, hired a new CEO, who doubled the agency's revenue in a year.
Co-Founder
2015 - 2016
ALTA AI was an AI chatbot in Telegram you could talk to about all things finance. - helped design & code the chatbot; built a v1 of the currency rates parser - helped with fundraising: finding leads, making slides, etc. - got us a free office space! - saved $50k on servers by getting a startups deal from IBM - helped build a partnership with the #1 bank in the CIS region, Alfa-Bank
Website Developer
2013 - 2015
caseclub.by was a new kind of school, which helped high school students get real business skills by a) attending special classes on solving business cases and b) participating in business case championships. - helped launch the project and attract ~300 students - helped organize 3 business case championships with ~100 attendees each - built the project's website
Education
W18 Batch
2018 - 2018