How Vitalii Sydorenko Used AI to Compress Enterprise R&D from Months to Hours

Julian Castelli (00:01.719)
Good afternoon. This is Julian Costelli. I’m the host of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, where each week we talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders in the tech industry. This today’s podcast is part of our AI Sherpa track, where we talk with leaders, builders, and experts who are building and innovating with AI. This episode is brought to you by the Growth Elevated Leadership Community. We are a community of tech founders, CEOs, and CXOs who are committed to working together.

To share best practices and learnings in an effort to help all of us become better leaders. We do this through educational programs like this podcast, as well as our blog and, of course, our annual ski and tech summit in beautiful Park City, Utah. So check us out at growthelevated.com if you’d like to join us there. Today, my guest is Vitali Sidorenko, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Gearhart.

Gearhart is a product studio that builds operational B2B SaaS platforms for enterprise customers with a strong focus on AI-first development. Before launching Gearhart, Vitali built Lookme, a media listening and analytics platform used by enterprise brands like Samsung, McDonald’s, and Lenovo. They use this to manage their reputation across both digital and traditional media. That was a million-dollar business that Vitali bootstrapped. His next

Venture Giffsy connected thirty fashion brands across the US and Canada to a mobile commerce platform and was backed by Google and other venture firms. So Vitali is here today to talk about what it actually takes to build value added AI first products. Welcome Vitali, thank you for joining us today.

Vitalii Sydorenko (01:42.476)
Hey Julian. Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Julian Castelli (01:46.571)
So you’re you’re both an entrepreneur and now you you actually are are helping entrepreneurs with AI products. I I’m excited to learn from you today. tell us a little bit about your entrepreneur entrepreneurial journey. How did you get started as an entrepreneur?

Vitalii Sydorenko (02:02.4)
yeah, sure. Yeah, it was a long time ago. So I would say I started maybe like fourteen years ago. when I started my first business, it was LookMe, you mentioned about it’s a media monitoring platform. I started it not because I knew what I’m doing or what SaaS is. I just started because I worked in media monitoring agency for a while.

Julian Castelli (02:17.396)
Mm-hmm.

Vitalii Sydorenko (02:29.786)
And I just s saw the opportunity that okay, I can automate a lot of processes here and build a product based on that. and I just start doing it. and in the process, I found out okay, it seems like I’m building SaaS. then I found out okay, it seems like I’m building a startup. and yeah, during building this company, I also got like business education. Then I realized even more what I’m doing.

Julian Castelli (02:57.695)
So it was my first startup. It has the strong. part of the company to your need help them. and and build out the earlier. after that it all the works that’s venture capital for a while and

Vitalii Sydorenko (02:59.598)
but it was like it was the beginning. So it was my first startup, which I partially exited from. we sold part of this company to European media holding. and it still it still works. and I still have some shares there, which I’m happy about. after that I worked at Venture Capital for a while and Venture Studio.

To see how everything works on the other side of the table and how it is to be in this investor’s shoes. And I analyzed lots of startups, lots of pitch decks, and got this experience and expertise. but you know for me it was little bit it was not my thing, definitely. I wanted to build something again.

Julian Castelli (03:30.07)
And investor.

Well feature actually got

it must be that else I mean.

Vitalii Sydorenko (03:54.543)
and that’s why I started another startup, gypsy, completely different niche, fashion e-commerce, B2B SaaS platform. I thought I I knew what I’m doing because you know, with all this experience. but and yeah, it was nice because we we landed our first customers and customer in the first.

w first months of work on a product. we raised capital. and yeah it was a nice story. eventually it failed by the way. but I found out how to raise funds, how to work with American audience, with American customers, and I felt the difference because Look Me was mostly for European markets.

Julian Castelli (04:29.458)
Yeah, it wasn’t that story.

Julian Castelli (04:45.287)
Yeah, I thousands of people. Yeah. I try to I try to

Vitalii Sydorenko (04:50.336)
I tried to I tried to enter out to the US market with it, but it wasn’t that good. so with Gypsy I started it from day one for American customers. And after Gypsy I joined Gearhart and as a partner, so and now we help other founders to validate ideas and launch products, build products.

Julian Castelli (04:57.053)
But booth. we can from the four customers. And at the top sort of cards are now we have other blockers to have what we do we can not only like technical text, but we can have

Vitalii Sydorenko (05:19.95)
what we do, we combine not only like technical expertise, of course we have like developers, but we also combine this expertise with product expertise, which I think that on outsource development market is usually missing. And I brought my experience of building products, launching products, and I think that it it helps right now not to repeat my mistakes.

Julian Castelli (05:31.067)
Nice.

Julian Castelli (05:34.915)
Okay, so we can

Julian Castelli (05:43.184)
Yeah.

Julian Castelli (05:47.02)
You can have to leave out forms that you find out about that. Fantastic.

Vitalii Sydorenko (05:48.043)
And I help other founders not to repeat my mistakes basically and save lots of money and time for that. now with AI, yeah. so now with AI everything changing, how we approaching this. but I mean I think that main lessons are the same. the the difference is that everything became much, much faster.

Julian Castelli (06:13.861)
So Vital, you’re from Ukraine. When did when did you move to the the Bay Area? You were in San Francisco for a while. What what part of your entrepreneurial jour journey brought you to the United States and in the Bay Area?

Vitalii Sydorenko (06:25.25)
actually it was it is a funny story. it started from the book. I think it’s called Bullseye from one of the Bay Area entrepreneurs. And I remember reading this book and there was a phrase like it’s hard to be in the right place in the right time, so you can find the right place, go there and wait for your time.

Julian Castelli (06:41.486)
Yeah.

Julian Castelli (06:51.694)
I like that. You could at least nail one of them, right?

Vitalii Sydorenko (06:51.882)
And I like and I like wow, okay, that’s yeah, yeah, yeah. And and I think that when you build a startup, the right place, it’s obviously San Francisco and Bay Area. And I realized that when I first got there as a not a tourist, we were there on a conference with my first startup and I I felt this you know this vibe.

Julian Castelli (07:19.671)
The energy in the air, right?

Vitalii Sydorenko (07:20.556)
this energy, I I felt like okay, it seems like everyone here, like me, they like everyone here try to build something, try to change the world. And even when you go like in any bar, any place, everybody talking about startups, about building startups, about rounds, investor rounds, like how to get this product market fit and everything.

Julian Castelli (07:41.165)
Yes. You get an education just in the bars, don’t you?

Vitalii Sydorenko (07:45.247)
y yeah, and you you you like hear it all the time. And I didn’t I didn’t expect that. I didn’t know that it it it could be like that because like building a startup in Ukraine, you like rarely can meet another person who also builds startup, right? And talk with with this person. Of course we have some communities around this, but it’s like it’s maybe like one community. Yeah, it’s very different.

Julian Castelli (07:49.558)
Yes.

Julian Castelli (07:57.536)
That’s gonna be good for any.

Julian Castelli (08:04.116)
Yes.

Julian Castelli (08:11.733)
It’s very different than a ecosystem like the Bay Area of San Francisco. So that’s so that was a big big learning, accelerated your learning and and then you got involved in venture capital and things, you know, as a result of being in that network probably.

Vitalii Sydorenko (08:24.95)
Yeah, and when I was building my second startup, I knew that okay, eventually I have to go to San Francisco to do it to do it. I started not from there, but I I ended up there, building it. And yeah, so not only like the ecosystem of startup founders, but maybe even more important that investors ecosystem, like venture capital there.

Julian Castelli (08:45.099)
Yeah, the extra.

Julian Castelli (08:54.101)
Yeah, of course. I I work with a lot of I work with a lot of European startups and I I as soon as I see that they they’re most of their customers are gonna be in the US and then they most likely need US funding, I encourage them to come here and get to you know, the Bay Area if they can, because it’s this it’s the center of the startup ecosystem and it’s just just just creates all kinds of network effects, both in terms of who you hire, how you find investors, how you find customers.

Vitalii Sydorenko (08:55.031)
And and again in the in in yeah, sorry.

Julian Castelli (09:24.477)
and so I’m glad to

Vitalii Sydorenko (09:24.888)
Yeah, yeah, I’m totally agree with it. And another thing I wanted to mention here is that when I lived in San Francisco, I felt the difference because sometimes founders say like, I don’t have to live there. I just can go to the conference like once a year or two times per year and get everything you’re talking about. Not at all. Like not at all. it

Julian Castelli (09:51.604)
Not the same, right? I mean that’s that’s that’s nice, but it’s not the same.

Vitalii Sydorenko (09:55.035)
It it it’s like you you you when I lived there and wasn’t these big conferences like Tech Grind or startup grind or something like that, and I met these founders who came just for the conference. you’re you even you know like you talk with these founders.

Julian Castelli (10:14.602)
Yes.

Vitalii Sydorenko (10:20.898)
And you understand that this founder is here just for a few days and then they go somewhere somewhere else. So you don’t even pay much attention to this type of founders. And I realize that investors do the same thing. They they just okay, you’re here for a few days, okay. of course, in some cases, if you are like a genius and you have some crazy traction, it’s it doesn’t matter. But

Julian Castelli (10:30.559)
You don’t think you really think?

Right.

Julian Castelli (10:37.652)
Yes.

Vitalii Sydorenko (10:50.294)
In most of the cases, come on, it’s just

Julian Castelli (10:53.19)
Yeah. There’s a little bias for sure. So it sounds like you got that lesson, you learned that lesson well. So that I I I’ve got some startup founders I’m gonna share this podcast with. let’s let’s move on. So so so you you you you were at you you you did two startups, you’ve had some success, you’ve had some challenges, so you know, you’ve you’ve you’ve got your scars, now you can help others.

Vitalii Sydorenko (11:04.718)
Cool, cool.

Julian Castelli (11:16.126)
But then AI comes around, which is a a transformative change in our lifetimes and allows you to do so much more with with your startup, easier, faster, better. But but everyone’s everyone’s hearing that, but not everyone knows how to do it. What what made you wanna get into helping people with with AI develop AI first development?

Vitalii Sydorenko (11:36.729)
I mean obviously when AI came up, it’s just you you you can’t not do any like not do something with it because it changed it changes the way we work as a product studio. Before AI we did the same thing but without it. And let let’s say like one simple example, like prototyping. When you launch a product.

You definitely need to start with some prototype which you not start like on one of the stages you have to build this prototype. How we did this prototypes before AI? You had to have some designer who works on Figma or something like that. you you give some some of your specs, then designer makes this prototype. maybe like it takes

Julian Castelli (12:24.913)
Yeah.

Vitalii Sydorenko (12:35.882)
up to one week to get something clickable and then you yeah it would it it it would be nice to to get it in one week. now no now with AI first of all we don’t need designers anymore for prototyping. Like it’s a little bit different with B2C products, but my focus on B to B stuff and when you build a B to B product Yeah, yeah yeah that’s our main

Julian Castelli (12:38.642)
And that’d be good. A one week.

Julian Castelli (12:44.092)
Could take weeks.

Julian Castelli (12:51.706)
Right.

Julian Castelli (12:58.69)
Okay, yeah, I focus a couple of years. Okay, so you focus on B to B B to B cu SaaS companies, is that your clientele? No? Because that’s where you had your experience, right?

Vitalii Sydorenko (13:06.144)
The that that’s that’s our main focus and it’s it all my experience with my startups also about B2B stuff. And in B2B space, for prototypes, the nobody cares about the design. So and AI does perfect design for prototypes. So now we do this prototypes like in one hour. it’s clickable, it looks great, it looks much better than after designer.

Julian Castelli (13:12.581)
Yeah, makes sense.

Julian Castelli (13:30.713)
So not only is it faster, but do you you get to do more iteration? You find you you know and and how important is is that, right? Because you know, it’ll that’ll ultimately allows you to g have a better chance of hitting the target, right?

Vitalii Sydorenko (13:35.862)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And

Vitalii Sydorenko (13:46.093)
Basically you can do your customer development interview, show your prototype, and hear the feedback from your potential audience and do the changes during this call, like right away. You just put it in the eye, hey, change this and this, like after you heard something from the customer. And at the same call you show do like, did you mean something like that?

Julian Castelli (13:58.992)
Yeah.

Julian Castelli (14:07.8)
That is the

Vitalii Sydorenko (14:15.822)
And you’re okay, yeah, yeah. And you do the situations basically during the call.

Julian Castelli (14:18.382)
That is massively transformative. I mean if you if you think about how to how the the innovation world was taught to do you know to search for product market fit by interviewing customers and finding needs and and and and trying to understand whether it’s a pill or a vitamin and

Then going and doing a prototype and then coming back and showing your prototype to your customer and takes months, sometimes takes years, sometimes this is eighteen, twenty four months. You saying you can do it not only instantly, almost on the same phone call? That’s that’s amazingly different.

Vitalii Sydorenko (14:53.078)
Absolutely. I it’s that’s yeah, I I would say that everything you just told like stays the same in terms of the process, but this process just it’s just yeah.

Julian Castelli (15:04.717)
Yeah, no, y i it it’s it’s shrunk so fast you can do you can do so much more iteration. It’s faster, it’s cheaper, but it I I think the most valuable thing what you’re telling me is that you can iterate to increase your chance of finding the right fit versus, you know, you know, if if you invest six months in a process, you might just go with what you built because you got all the sunk cost.

Vitalii Sydorenko (15:25.42)
Yeah, and and it’s just about prototyping, then it’s even more exciting like building VP, the same the same stuff happening there. I mean that you can yeah.

Julian Castelli (15:39.896)
Let’s let’s let’s deep duck. Tell me about a use case where you you know, a specific use case where you helped help the customer with the their V P and and the impact, maybe.

Vitalii Sydorenko (15:48.877)
Yeah, so one of the recent use cases which I really love because this combines how AI helped us and how we are different from regular software development studio and how my experience in building products helps here. So the founder came to us and so the a few words about the products he wanted to build.

he worked at medical devices companies for like twenty years in different companies and he was in sales departments of these companies.

Julian Castelli (16:22.709)
Okay.

Julian Castelli (16:28.711)
Okay, so he had the domain knowledge and and and had a had an idea of what he wanted to b to fix. A problem he wanted he found a problem in his domain that he wanted to solve. That’s a great entrepreneurial route.

Vitalii Sydorenko (16:38.934)
Yeah, absolutely. And actually th that’s that it’s someone we are usually looking for, people with domain expertise. But yeah, so what he saw that like during his career, that when medical device company wants to sell new medical device to a hospital, they should start with a trial. And this trial goes about a month. it could be it could be different.

Julian Castelli (17:05.199)
yes. It it it gives shivers in the spine of anyone who’s been through that process because you know the the trials for the in the medical industry are they’re they’re they’re painfully burdensome and long and complex and expensive. I mean I I I’m not even in that space, but I know I’ve heard enough of it that my goodness, you the trial process. It’s its own discipline that you have to you have to if you’re an venture, you have to go, you’re medical. Well let’s let let’s create a whole set of funding just for the trial process, right?

Vitalii Sydorenko (17:08.116)
but what

Vitalii Sydorenko (17:16.467)
yeah, that’s Yeah, playing in it.

Vitalii Sydorenko (17:31.121)
yeah.

Vitalii Sydorenko (17:34.627)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But I’m I think we are talking here w about different trials. so n I mean not trial to check if this device like legit. It’s a one type of trial and yeah, yeah and and another one yeah yeah yeah yeah. And here a trial when the product is already on the market, so it’s it’s tested, it’s it’s valid, but you just

Julian Castelli (17:48.06)
Okay, those are the medical trials. Yes, yes, yes. The regulate regulation driven trials I’m thinking about. Okay.

Vitalii Sydorenko (18:03.886)
and you try to sell it to a new hospital and before buying that pro hospital wants to check it out and test.

Julian Castelli (18:13.367)
Okay, so this is a customer oriented trial versus a regulation like new product into the medical field. Okay, I was I was thinking about the others, but okay, so this is a case where you want to give the customer a trial so they can validate it’s gonna work for them? Okay.

Vitalii Sydorenko (18:16.311)
Yeah, customer yeah, yeah.

Vitalii Sydorenko (18:25.068)
Yeah. Yeah. in in this case, customer is a hospital and users are nurses who are using these medical devices. so the the the main problem he he saw that all these trials are happening literally with papers. So nurses are using this device and every time they use it they write on the paper their feedback and answers on some.

Julian Castelli (18:29.3)
Okay.

Julian Castelli (18:33.801)
Yes.

Vitalii Sydorenko (18:54.306)
questions and sales rep who wants to sell this medical device one he can he or she can get these results only in the end of the trial like after one which process and he and they can’t change anything in during this process. For example, I don’t know like usually it’s about a month.

Julian Castelli (18:55.336)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Castelli (19:07.617)
So it’s a long batch process that you just have to

Julian Castelli (19:18.045)
How long will that process take, you think? okay. So it’s like you you launch it and then you get you you you gotta it goes dark, you you have no in insight for a month.

Vitalii Sydorenko (19:29.856)
Yeah, it’s like I don’t know, if we if we are selling smartphones, it’s like I’m giving you a smartphone for one month and

Julian Castelli (19:36.305)
It’s like it’s like versus a versus a carrier pigeon. It’s the difference between

Vitalii Sydorenko (19:40.827)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I I’ve given you just I’m just giving you a smartphone and I can talk with you during this month. I don’t know what you’re doing with this smartphone. I don’t know if you’re doing right or wrong, maybe you didn’t get something. I don’t know about it. Only in a month I I I I’m returning and ask you, okay, how how was it? And you’re telling me, this I don’t know, I I couldn’t I couldn’t go further than

Julian Castelli (19:56.956)
Yeah.

Vitalii Sydorenko (20:09.294)
than screensaver. yeah, yeah.

Julian Castelli (20:10.726)
Yeah, you might have got you might get stuck and the whole thing might be a waste, right? So you’re to have X percent don’t work at all. And even the ones that are good, you have to wait a month for the feedback if they if it worked, but you don’t know because the process is is kind of, you know, one binary batch, you know, launch and then receive a month later. Hopefully.

Vitalii Sydorenko (20:26.84)
So yeah, so what what’s so obviously the idea was to build a system for nurses to put this information like online in real time when they’re yeah, when they when they’re using it. And sales rep can get the whole picture and change something during the trial to improve this deal possibility basically. So

Julian Castelli (20:38.627)
Real time feedback. Yeah, when when they they’re feeling it. Yeah.

Julian Castelli (20:55.151)
Mm-hmm.

Vitalii Sydorenko (20:55.63)
and he came to us like really confident that he knows what we need to build and he said, Okay, I just need to build this. tell me the costs and let’s go. I don’t

Julian Castelli (21:08.446)
So he had his initial prototype in mind. Okay.

Vitalii Sydorenko (21:11.592)
Yeah, in mind, yeah, basically. So we did this estimations, we’re like, okay, let’s start building it. And after one week of building it, we realized okay, it seems like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I mean, he knows the problem, but he doesn’t know how this product should look like. What what features should be there?

Julian Castelli (21:33.847)
Right. So he knows he knows what a solution he wants, but but the designing a product is very different than knowing a problem.

Vitalii Sydorenko (21:39.725)
Yeah. yeah, and and here the place where where where I proud the most because we stopped him, we just stopped building something wrong. We st we told him, Hey, let’s not spend all your money for building something we don’t know if anybody needs. Let’s help you to validate this idea first. Let’s prototype in, let’s do prototyping, and let’s go to your customers.

Julian Castelli (22:02.157)
Yeah.

Let’s

Vitalii Sydorenko (22:09.908)
And show it to them. And then after after you know from them what exactly it should look like, we will build it. And we spend about a month for validating. not for building, not for like prototyping, for validating, because you know it takes time to organize this meetings, to make these calls, the

Julian Castelli (22:11.396)
to that and then after but after you want to score the hand what’s exactly it should look like little building and we spent about

Julian Castelli (22:33.819)
Right, right. That’s that’s the that’s the that’s the real work is to get people’s attention. But you were creating prototypes for him to go and iteratively c you know, get feedback with multiple different versions. So how many different versions they tested a month versus the old process? We’d be lucky to have one. You probably wouldn’t even get one in a month.

Vitalii Sydorenko (22:41.782)
Yeah, and

Vitalii Sydorenko (22:49.294)
Yeah, I mean maybe one, yes, but not more. in this case it’s it’s definitely were more than 10, but I don’t remember how many exactly. yeah, but you know in with AI, 10 iterations, it’s not scary. It’s it’s 10 iterations, 10 hours.

Julian Castelli (22:59.821)
Wow. So you have to see ten iterations with clients in in in thirty days.

Julian Castelli (23:09.428)
Yeah. No, it’s not it’s not it’s not hard to do with AI, but it the difference, the magnitude of the difference of the old process versus the new is amazing. Right? Because because we talked about this earlier. It’s not the fact that it’s cheaper to build a prototype. It’s the fact that you have 10 shots on goal, you’re you’re you’re ten times more likely to to hit that key resonance with the client, say, this is what I need.

Vitalii Sydorenko (23:18.264)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julian Castelli (23:36.631)
Versus the one shot in the dark, you know, the odds of that one shot being successful are so low. And in the startup innovation world, the the iteration and the shots on goal make all the difference ’cause it increases your odds of actually hitting.

Vitalii Sydorenko (23:50.903)
Exactly, exactly. And yeah, I I think that this part is maybe like the most important part in like early days of of of of of the

Julian Castelli (24:02.496)
Yeah, in the innovation processes you especially if you have a customer that’s willing to go along and give you real time feedback and was the feedback coming digitally from a f what was the what was the how how was the customer giving the feedback so they were and how often were they getting it?

Vitalii Sydorenko (24:15.382)
So it was I mean it was online calls where our customer, so this founder, he showed the prototype to potential audience, clickable prototype, and in real time he was asking like what they think about it. not in this way, but you know, like for them to give him honest feedback on that and tell what

maybe should be should be done differently. yeah, and we we should pull that

Julian Castelli (24:48.235)
Yeah, love that. Yeah. And to be able to look at ten to be able to look at ten different examples and get that feedback so quickly in a month, that’s absolutely fantastic.

Vitalii Sydorenko (24:59.278)
What what is crucial here that he had this contacts because usually founders don’t. And I think that it’s like even more important than prototyping and speed of prototyping. If you can if you can’t get your audience on a call, nothing gonna happen.

Julian Castelli (25:09.205)
Yes.

Julian Castelli (25:21.768)
Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say it’s not easy to get a get the audience in the call ten ten times. So you’re saying he came from the industry, he had the domain expertise in the network where someone was willing to invest in him and take ten calls and give him that feedback. That’s quite a competitive advantage. That makes makes perfect sense. So that’s a huge that’s a great example of of of you know old process. You know, you might spend gosh, a month, you might spend six months building a prototype.

Vitalii Sydorenko (25:36.694)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, and that’s like

Julian Castelli (25:50.346)
Trying to get a few people to look at it. And, you know, you just, you know, if you have a one in ten chance of it hitting, right? You you might take ten t 10x that that that that’s six months. Whereas here they’re able to do it in 30 days, 10 iterations of of feedback and real quick feedback. That makes all the difference. It’s not a it’s not a cost benefit as much as it is a you know, increase your chancing of win benefit. But let’s let’s go through the cost. Like what what

What roughly did it cost for this entrepreneur to to have those kind of iterations? And let’s try to ex you know, come a rough estimate of what it might have cost in the old world, you know, five years ago.

Vitalii Sydorenko (26:24.042)
Yeah.

Vitalii Sydorenko (26:28.044)
Yeah, absolutely. So we were talking only about this first stage of prototype and but but but we

Julian Castelli (26:33.682)
Yeah, just just what we just described. You know, the the cost to get all these rapid prototypes and in front of the client and into into basically accelerate and enhance the discovery process is what you just described. You you’re giving an entrepreneur a chance to do ten reps, versus, you know, you know, in in one month at you know, probably more than ten x the speed and vr variety than than was normally possible. And I’m I’m just trying to add the cost element because, you know, it it would cost them look

What would what what did that cost that client? Just roughly, I don’t need any deta you know.

Vitalii Sydorenko (27:04.79)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. that just yeah, just for you to understand that overall this founder paid us about twenty five K, but it’s not only for prototyping, it’s for pro for prototyping all this phase that we discussed, and also we built MVP ready to sell for first the first customers. Yeah.

Julian Castelli (27:16.935)
Okay.

Julian Castelli (27:28.006)
Okay, then after all that research you use the use the process informed data that you got to build the V P with a much higher chance of hitting the mark because of all that research and the and the prototyping.

Vitalii Sydorenko (27:40.237)
Yeah, and after this prototyping we knew exactly what we need to build. We knew exactly what should be done as the on the MVP stage, and we know how to use AI to build it. So what dramatically changed changed like between process which it wasn’t before and now like twenty-five K it’s not small amount, right? But

Julian Castelli (27:49.007)
Yeah, you can also have to be a good thing.

Julian Castelli (28:03.431)
No, just by

Yeah, yeah, it’s a meaningful investment.

Vitalii Sydorenko (28:09.322)
Yeah yeah, but still it’s like I would say that we spend for for the MVP maybe less than ten K. And we just spend more for this time of validating, do a product time and and

Julian Castelli (28:22.704)
The rapid prototyping and the discovery. Yeah, you’ve you this is the Arthur Blank discovery you know, process, right? You you you you enabled that faster with more fidelity, with more iteration than the old process was would would it ever allow.

Vitalii Sydorenko (28:36.536)
So with old process, with old process, we would do only one version, at least for two months, and at least for fifty K. And it’s it would be only first iteration. So you can imagine how much money we saved and how much time we how too much time we saved.

Julian Castelli (28:42.692)
Right.

Julian Castelli (28:47.129)
Yeah. So

Julian Castelli (28:51.388)
Right.

Julian Castelli (28:56.628)
Yeah, that’s huge. This is t you know, ten ten more this is what we’ll go back to like yeah, okay, so you you you did it in half the time, half the cost, but more importantly, you get increased the chance of succeeding by ten X. Unbelievable. That’s that’s a great example. I love that. I love that. So so I I I wonder you I I can’t help but ask you, like, you know, you must look back at your own entrepreneurial days, say, man, I wish I had this when I was an entrepreneur, right? So

Vitalii Sydorenko (29:08.353)
Absolutely, yeah.

Julian Castelli (29:23.567)
So what would you tell your old self, like applying these lessons now that you’re able to give th give these entrepreneurs this magic capability? What you know, what how do you think about applying these lessons to your days as a founder?

Vitalii Sydorenko (29:37.249)
man, I have some painful lessons, and actually one of them we we just discussed. I just want to articulate it. So this niche expertise and importance of niche expertise when you are building B2B company. I always thought that domain expertise is about knowledge. and if you don’t have knowledge, you can

somehow you know, like read articles, books, talk with people and and catch up. And my painful lesson was with Chipsy, my second startup. I didn’t do anything in fashion e-commerce industry before that startup. And I started doing it and I thought that okay, now I figured it out. And I figured it out like technically, like how everything works, how

Julian Castelli (30:16.044)
I think that was changed in my thing.

Mm-hmm. And I started doing this and I thought that okay, now I figured out this complex dwarf. Yeah. So it’s not just the what, it’s the who.

Vitalii Sydorenko (30:35.266)
what what what is happening there but that i didn’t know anybody in this industry when i was starting and yeah and for and actually the lesson for myself was that niche expertise is not about the knowledge it’s about the network and like we just discussed this founder who came to us he

Had this opportunity to talk with 10 potential customers in the first months. when I was building it in Fashion e-commerce when I didn’t know anybody, it took me months to book these calls because it was so hard. Just yeah, just to just to get people on a call. So that was really painful for me to to realize.

Julian Castelli (31:10.402)
Yeah.

Julian Castelli (31:22.53)
Just to get people to give you feedback, right? ‘Cause you’re an outsider. Yes.

Vitalii Sydorenko (31:32.927)
another thing is validation isn’t grow it isn’t a growth. and let let me explain. So with again with the second startup, we we built an MVP really fast. We got our first traction, first customer. it and it was a old process without AI and I think we got our first customers customer.

In the first months of working on this product, which was amazing, which was great, and it helped us to raise some capital. but then we like, okay, we connected one customer, now we need to connect 10, now we need to connect 20, and so on and so forth. And but our product was shitty. It was just an MVP, just to check the hypothesis.

And we started to sell it as much as we can too early. And then we connected like first maybe 10 customers, and product just started to crash. they didn’t like it. because MVP was good for this first particular customer, but it’s not good for others. so we

Julian Castelli (32:36.967)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Castelli (32:54.148)
Right.

Vitalii Sydorenko (32:58.56)
basically partially failed because of that because we started to try to grow really early when we we mixed up the stages of validation and growth. So I would say so my lesson here is don’t mix it up. yeah you need to you need to build entity fast. Yeah you need to show traction fast but don’t try to

Julian Castelli (33:06.933)
Mm-hmm.

Julian Castelli (33:20.061)
Yeah.

Vitalii Sydorenko (33:28.43)
grow fast with with a shitty products. Realize that at some

Julian Castelli (33:34.331)
Yeah. Exactly. That you’re you’re talking about the one shot, you know, which is what you had back then. You you you build your prototype you and you hope for the best. So there’s a lot of good things in there. I think what you’re saying at the the second point was, you know, the more chances you have to iterate, the more chances you can have product market fit. and and in the old world you just kind of a one shot depending on your capital, but you know

Yeah, one shot or just a very long process of we’re gonna iterate, but it might take months to get the second shot and months and this could go to eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-six months, could be a whole funding round just iterating on on pro product market fit with your product and customers. So that’s the that that’s the process that innovators go through and you know, it it’s written about in in terms of you know s iterating for product market fit. Now you can you can accelerate that and condense it both in terms of time, cost, and and iteration, which is amazing.

Vitalii Sydorenko (33:56.835)
Yeah.

Julian Castelli (34:25.886)
But you made a great point in that this customer where you did the medical trials exercise, not only did they have the knowledge of the domain, but they had access. And access, you know, you could build a hundred prototypes, but if you can’t have anyone to show them to, you know, you’re you’re you’re struggling, right? So you’re saying that, you know, the the the key lever that this entrepreneur had was access and network where people would give him real feedback. And that was something that no one, you know, very few people can bring. When you marry that.

Vitalii Sydorenko (34:40.675)
Yeah.

Vitalii Sydorenko (34:50.21)
Yes.

Julian Castelli (34:54.631)
With the chance to do multiple iterations so you can get active feedback and iteration, that becomes a a really valuable combination. Very, very exciting. Great, great, great lessons for for when people say that, you know, now is the best time ever to build a startup, this is I think what they’re talking about, right? ‘Cause you know, people people you hear this all the time and you kind of like, well, good for you. You you you what you’re talking, you know, you you might know how what that means. I think this is an example. No matter what the domain you’re in.

If you have the ability that you can identify a problem, number one. Number two, if you have the ability to actually have access to people who can give you feedback, what you’re sharing with with what you can do with AI tools is you can create multiple iterations faster, cheaper, more customizable, and it’s going to increase your chance of finding product market fit, which is which is what it’s all about in the early stages of innovation. That’s a great story, Vitali. That’s that’s exciting. Thank you so much for sharing that today. I think that’s a great lesson for.

Vitalii Sydorenko (35:46.188)
Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

Julian Castelli (35:51.973)
For all of our entrepreneurs and and and people who listen, tell me how how can people find you and and your in your venture studio or your AI studio?

Vitalii Sydorenko (36:01.814)
Yeah, absolutely. So now actually we have two separate brands. So one of them is Gearhart, it’s gearhart.io. and for this particular AI MVT studio, we just launched another like sister brand which we called Beyond the Wow. It’s beyond the Wow dotai.

Julian Castelli (36:24.421)
Beyond the Wow and Gearhart. Okay.

Vitalii Sydorenko (36:26.912)
Yes. and just just a few words why beyond the wow, because when you’re building something with AI, I’m sure you have this this situation. So you you start doing it in first five minutes, you you get this first result and you’re like, Wow, that’s like that’s amazing. And after that, you try to build this last ten percent.

Julian Castelli (36:39.195)
Yeah.

Julian Castelli (36:49.041)
That’s the district cost ten percent. That’s the hard part. Yes.

Vitalii Sydorenko (36:53.484)
And you spend on this ten percent that’s the hardest part. So why we called it it’s beyond the wall.

Julian Castelli (36:58.467)
Iterating with AI is sometimes the hardest part ’cause it gets you it gets you eighty percent of the way there and then it’s and then like it you try to iterate and that’s that is so hard. You’re right.

Vitalii Sydorenko (37:05.315)
Yeah.

So that’s why we we are telling our customers that we are getting you beyond the wall. So

Julian Castelli (37:13.463)
I like I like that. So beyond the wild to a pr producible product. That’s a great name. Well, Vitaly, thank you so much for sharing your experience today. It’s really great to hear, you know, you have the experience as an entrepreneur and now as a AI studio and helping entrepreneurs with based on what you learn, your experience. I think that’s a a great example and and you really contextualized why people are saying now is the best time to d to build a startup because of

Vitalii Sydorenko (37:19.117)
Yeah, thank you.

Julian Castelli (37:40.663)
your your example. So that’s a great one for our audience. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Vitalii Sydorenko (37:45.518)
Thank you so much Julian for for having me. I I hope it was valuable for somebody.

Julian Castelli (37:50.923)
I I think it will be. Take care.

Vitalii Sydorenko (37:54.105)
Yeah, take care.

Introduction to Growth Elevated & Vitalii Sydorenko (00:00:01)
Julian introduces the AI Sherpa series and welcomes Vitalii Sydorenko, founder of Gearheart and AI product builder.

From Founder to Product Studio (00:01:46)
Vitalii shares his entrepreneurial journey, from bootstrapping SaaS startups to helping founders build AI-first products.

Why the Bay Area Matters (00:06:13)
How Silicon Valley’s startup ecosystem, investor network, and founder community accelerated his growth.

Building AI-First Products Faster (00:11:16)
How AI dramatically speeds up prototyping, customer feedback, and product iteration.

Medical Device Startup Case Study (00:15:48)
A real-world example of using AI prototypes to validate product ideas before building an MVP.

Why Validation Beats Building (00:21:08)
How rapid customer feedback prevents founders from wasting time and money on the wrong product.

Lessons from Startup Failures (00:29:23)
Vitalii reflects on the importance of domain expertise, customer access, and avoiding premature scaling.

Beyond the Wow: AI That Delivers (00:36:01)
Vitalii explains the vision behind Beyond the Wow and why the hardest part of AI comes after the initial excitement.