15 years of AnyforSoft, told the way only our CEO could tell it.
AnyforSoft turns 15 today! Twice in those 15 years, I wasn't sure we'd make it to the next one. The first invoice AnyforSoft ever sent in 2011 went to Patrick de Grijs, who ran a design agency in the Netherlands. One project became ten. Ten became referrals. That's the entire origin story - one person decided to trust us, and then never stopped. Then 2014-2015. War reached close to Kharkiv, our home city, for the first time. Economically, it was tough, and I won't pretend I had a plan for the first time. 2016 is when we stopped surviving and started building. Joel Kepple joined as Director of Business Development. Artem Matsa became our first salesperson. Oleksandr Tuchkov brought the structure and process we'd been missing. That was less a good year than a second founding. 2020 taught a different lesson. We had just finished one of the biggest projects for us - a platform for Stage Entertainment that I was genuinely proud of - and Covid cancelled the world it was built for. You can do everything right and still lose the thing you built. You keep going anyway. February 2022. In the first 72 hours, our only job was getting every person safe, and then getting every client's work running again from wherever people had landed. We did both. Some of our team are serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine right now. We support them, and we will for as long as it takes. A huge appreciation to my wife Viktoriia Pazhyna. For years, she brought energy inside this company and keeps supporting me in this wonderful journey. The biggest thanks come to our clients who trusted and stayed for years: BELLAME Beauty, Verifone, High Pass Education, Delaware County Community College, Imperial Business School, Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences, Game Informer, Newser, XSPORT.UA, and others. And to the communities that shaped how we think: EDUCAUSE, Entrepreneurs' Organization, Drupal Association, Kharkiv IT Cluster, Young Business Club. One thing hasn't changed since 2011 - curiosity and a stubborn conviction that clients deserve the best technology available - not the technology we happen to be most comfortable with. Which is why the next chapter is pointed at EDTECH. Somewhere right now, a 17-year-old is deciding her future on a university website that's failing her. A nurse is preparing for a licensure exam on a platform built in 2009. Proper tech and AI can fix both - and almost nobody is doing it properly yet. That's the work.
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