On June 3, the Association hosted a major meetup dedicated to artificial intelligence — a topic that is shaping the future right now.

The event brought together tech industry leaders who not only successfully export their products to international markets but also confidently maintain strong positions amid fierce competition.

Our panel discussion “Global Market Competition: How Ukrainian Companies Stay Competitive Among Global Tech Giants” featured executives from our member companies: Denis Sudilkovsky, Brand and Business Director at LUN, Mykhailo Nestor, CPO at Kyivstar.Tech, and Oleksiy Orap, Founder and Development Director at YouScan, plus Oleksandr Stelmakh, Senior Director of Digital Solutions Visa (our Association partner) for Ukraine, Georgia, CIS, and Southeast Europe.

We asked our speakers to share their unique experiences and got curious about something: what strengths do Ukrainian product teams have today that help them successfully scale to new markets?

The conversation was moderated by Nataliya Mykolska, Executive Director of Diia.City United.

AI as Infrastructure

The first question focused on personal experience competing globally with AI products. Oleksiy Orap immediately set the tone:

AI is infrastructure. It’s like a programming language — it’ll be everywhere as a way to do things. So Ukraine will be in the same position it was before with the IT industry.

According to the YouScan founder, Ukraine’s tech sector will get a huge influx of service business — just different types of services. The main goal is creating more product companies in Ukraine. Oleksiy emphasized:

It’s more about creating an environment: we need more product companies in Ukraine. Period. AI won’t leave us behind — both service and product companies will have to use it one way or another.

Speed as a Competitive Edge

Denis Sudilkovsky shared LUN’s experience — a product operating under different brands in ten countries worldwide, competing with billion-dollar companies:

How do small companies beat big ones? Through speed — speed of decision-making, speed of creating value, speed of distributing value. AI is a turbo accelerator for those who can work at that pace, the entrepreneur confidently stated.

According to him, some processes that take months at big competitors, LUN closes in 3-6 hours.

Oleksiy Orap highlighted several key advantages of Ukrainian startups:

War gave us a new perspective on stress. For me personally, startup stress doesn’t look very serious compared to when a rocket hits nearby.

He says Ukrainian teams have three critical advantages: boldness and speed in creating new products, stress resistance, and strong technical talent.

Oleksandr Stelmakh confirmed this observation from Visa’s global perspective:

I think our Ukrainian companies’ stress resistance is at an absolutely cosmic level. Plus, we definitely won’t find this price-to-quality ratio for developing new products anywhere else in the world.

LUN’s Painful Lessons

Denis Sudilkovsky openly discussed their first failed attempt to enter foreign markets and LUN’s main lesson — you can’t create a universal product for the whole world:

I read online that you could ‘Ctrl+C’ a Ukrainian business to Poland and live well. Doesn’t work and never worked for us — expensive, but now we have this experience.

Denis believes every country has its local peculiarities that are extremely important to know and understand.

In Kazakhstan, the main moment for buying housing is a wedding, when a young couple takes a government loan for 20-30 years, and the woman handles choosing the home, the speaker added.

YouScan’s Leading Positions

Oleksiy Orap shared his experience with the American market:

We hired a sales team there, then fired them because they didn’t show the results we’re used to working with in Ukraine.

However, YouScan found their solution — they focused on markets with cultural fit and now successfully work with Latin America.

Competing with SaaS giants like Brandwatch, Sprinklr, and Talkwalker, YouScan manages to hold leading industry positions:

I’m very proud because YouScan recently ranked fifth globally in our competitive field — that’s more than 150 players in the Social Listening industry worldwide. Our company is small, just about 80 people.

Global Opportunities for Developers from Visa

Global company Visa started using neural networks to monitor fraudulent transactions way back in 1993. Today, their developments save businesses billions of dollars annually.

Oleksandr Stelmakh shared new Visa opportunities. The company is currently adapting its infrastructure for AI-based commerce to launch the new product Visa Intelligent Commerce. Soon, consumers will be able to delegate AI agents to make purchases according to clear rules:

We’re fighting to make this opportunity available to our Ukrainian partners next year…

He also reminded about existing programs: Visa Developer Center with 38 APIs, VisaReady certification, and the annual Visa Everywhere Initiatives competition with grants and access to company infrastructure.

Kyivstar: From Service to Product

Business always first looks at how it can solve problems faster — so it buys many ready-made out-of-box solutions.

If you keep buying boxed solutions, you can’t sell anything because you don’t produce anything, Mykhailo Nestor explained.

Kyivstar, like the entire VEON holding, has been actively going through digital transformation for the last 7-10 years: relying less on vendors and outsourcing to have more product culture inside:

Previously, we mostly exported what could be called expertise. There were periods of such hubs when we combined different expertise: BigData — Ukraine is very strong in this, so they periodically reached out to us too.

Today, Kyivstar Tech has about 600 technical specialists — so they develop most of their products in-house.

New Global AI Product Ideas from Speakers

We offered the successful tech leaders to try the “blue sky thinking” exercise and asked them to dream big without worrying about budget constraints, technical limitations, or market realities:

If you had unlimited resources and a first-class team ready to start development — what breakthrough AI product or feature would you create to bring to the global market?

Oleksiy Orap talked about domain expertise being key. He used XVision as an example — a startup where two surgeons combined AI and VR to improve surgical procedures. His point was that you can’t just copy this kind of expertise, even with powerful AI like OpenAI:

Successful products are built where there’s industry expertise and thorough understanding of client needs — even from the consumer perspective: simply solving some problem for yourself and having very high empathy for this use case.

Denis Sudilkovsky dreams of creating “digital city twins” — a system that predicts where it’ll be comfortable to live in 10-20 years. It’s about using AI to model urban development, demographics, infrastructure, and lifestyle factors:

We want to have many, many more projects that answer one simple question: ‘Where will I live better?’

Actually, if I had truly infinite resources, I’d work in education, Mykhailo Nestor confessed.

According to Mykhailo, the gap between modern AI technologies and traditional universities is huge:

98% of programs for millions of students worldwide are time and money down the drain, because in 4 years they’ll graduate without relevant skills.

Oleksandr Stelmakh wants to solve global commerce friction, which isn’t in payments at all. According to Oleksandr, buying New Balance sneakers from America to Ukraine is still quite a quest — and that’s the problem:

IP blocking, cards not accepted, unclear delivery… If we could make a startup that lets you choose a product in any store in the world, click ‘buy’ and actually receive it without running around, I’d invest in that.

What Ukrainian Teams Need to Change

In a quick final lightning round, each speaker named one thing Ukrainian teams should change for success:

Denis:

Play big! More products, less outsourcing, and don’t get stuck on small markets

Oleksiy:

Think more about distribution, sales, marketing — companies often lack this for success

Oleksandr:

Don’t limit yourself and don’t fear challenges

Nataliya Mykolska summarized:

I want us all to wake up wanting to create something cool and global — something consumers will be ready to pay for.

During the discussion, experts agreed: Ukrainian companies have unique competitive advantages: speed, flexibility, stress resistance, and technical talent. The key is using them correctly, understanding local market specifics, and thinking globally from day one. 🚀

FutureTech is a series of open events by Diia.City United dedicated to the most relevant technological trends, held every three months. Follow our announcements on the website and social media!

Want to be part of the community shaping the future of Ukraine’s tech industry? Join Diia.City United and gain access to unique development opportunities. Together, we influence the definition of clear business rules, implement fundamental changes, and protect transparent rules of the game for global growth of tech businesses from Ukraine.