Volodymyr Panchenko Podcast Transcript
Volodymyr Panchenko joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive podcast.
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Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Volodymyr Panchenko. Volodymyr Panchenko is a pattern recognizer who builds infrastructure for futures, he sees before they arrive.
At 16, growing up in Ukraine, he recognized that the world would take a decade to grasp digital assets would become as economically real, as physical ones. So, he started building. He founded Suntec Soft in 2008, which grew into one of the world’s largest private distributors of digital games.
In 2016, he launched Skin.Cash, a Marketplace with over 20 million annual trades. In 2017, he founded D Market, a blockchain based marketplace that raised 19 million in its first hour. Grew to 3 million users, processed 6 million monthly in transactions, and was acquired by mythical games in 2023. Today as CEO and co-founder of Portal.ai, Vlad is solving a different kind of future.
How to make authentic human connections scalable Portal.ai delivers personalized connection intelligence ahead of every meeting. Business partners, venture capitalists, or your friend, you’ll get to Lightspeed and communicate with Portal.ai.
Well, good afternoon, Vlad. Welcome to the show.
Volodymyr Panchenko: Hello. Hello Brian. Thank you so much for the invitation.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely my friend. I appreciate it and I know you’re coming generally outta San Francisco via Santa Monica tonight I’m in Kansas City, so two-hour difference, but you’re able with your travels and your calendars and time zones able to make the show tonight. So, I really, really appreciate that.
Vlad, jumping into your first question, you’ve spent more than a decade building products used by millions in gaming and digital trading. What lessons about user behavior, trust and value creation are you applying as you build an AI engine centered on emotional intelligence?
Volodymyr Panchenko: Thank you for the question and it’s an honor to be invited and to converse.
Probably the first thing coming to my mind a very replicable, every time in everything was built and I’m building right now with portal ai and it’s all about trust. 99% of the success of everything I’ve built before. And everything we do in Portal.ai is connected to trust of the customers.
As before it was with the technology which allowed us. To trade in game items. It was new. It was not in any way regulated. It wasn’t described in any way. And but there was a lot of liquidity, a lot of hype and a lot of money. So, in my case building the widget. In my case, building a legit application and creating a failure for customers.
The first thing to solve was trust because 99% of everything else was let’s say was, legitimately scaring them off. That was the same in the technology was trading in game items, was the technology of trading crypto NFTs all the time. New technology, lots of new people, lots of hype, and just statistically we’re all human beings.
There were. Numbers of people bringing value, not for everyone, let’s put it this way. And as an example, what we did and then upgraded and then reused, and we will using Portal.ai as well was the ticker. So the idea we took from the money exchanges or like, live shows, like, CNM, the live ticker.
But what we did put there were customer reviews. So, every time the customer was buying something, selling something, exchanging something, using the service after that there was an option to leave a review. Automatically it would appear on the live ticker, on the website, on the main page so that everyone else who is coming can see, can read, and one customers can share their experience and share their trust with other ones.
The most, one of the most important parts of it was a hundred percent transparency because of course it’s it was being tested from both sides. So even if there was a negative review, it would still appear. So, yeah, we, even, when we just started with it, it added double digits to the value creation rates in I have a lot of.
Know how to build trust in the community and thus enable customers to create more and more value.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I really appreciate that. And trust is foundational to all human relationships, and you knew that early on, but your success was a combination of having customers that trusted you, including sharing their experience with others online trading valuable items online.
Obviously, that’s important to people. Trust has to be there. And you were very passionate about what you did and what you built, and you had, a product or a need there that you were able to fulfill, so thank you. And Vlad Portal.ai isn’t a social network. It’s a context engine that helps people connect more meaningfully.
What did, what problem did you see in today’s digital communication that inspired you to build a completely new category of product?
Volodymyr Panchenko: Well, the biggest problem I have, and by far, is still like, trust and trust defined by my communication. I’m 41 and throughout my life business partners and friend’s intimate relationships work like everywhere what I do, what I learn or what I create is defined by the clarity.
Of, of my communication and the communication in the team. As an example, I’ve, it’s usually I remember every time, the first time when something happens, which have has a lot of emotional dilemma for me. And that was, I was maybe 25 or eight years old. And me and my best friend for like a decade.
We were friends, we were doing businesses together. But it came to the point where I got to the conclusion that he’s actually a very bad man. And, uh, for two months, November and December I was feeling very bad, like when I woke up when I went to bed, but very bad. But thankfully we had so many things interconnected.
From business, a friendship that we at least had to sit down at the table to rightfully put an end to the relationship with such a bad person as we thought. But when we sit down at the table and my friend shared with me his life experience and what led him to the idea of that.
Because he also believed a hundred percent that I’m a very bad person. I was shocked to hear it, but when he shared the chain of events and thoughts, I was like, oh, well, I understand why and how he could have come to this conclusion. When I’ve shared my chain of thoughts and happenings in the years with different people, which led me to my conclusion, we both couldn’t believe because neither of us was right.
We both were not bad person, but. Communication was a key. We’re still friends, but the data in between what I was a hundred percent sure. And what was the reality? It was unbelievable. So thankfully right now the technologies are at the point, the tipping point for the civilization where we can leverage them and give every human being.
The opportunity to fix this miscommunication problem and build trust on the global level.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I really appreciate that. You talked about trust and trust being defined by the clarity of your communication. You went into the story with your friend and how you thought, gosh, there’s something wrong here.
He, I think he’s bad. You didn’t trust, and then. Once you sat down and talked all that out, you found out so much more. And there’s so many different facets or dimensions in life and relationships. But you’re right. I think their technology is now at a point where we can build some of this, help build some trust in, especially in online types of relationships.
AI gonna play a big part in that. So, thank you. Thank you. And Vlad, Portal.ai promises smarter collaboration by helping people understand each other before the first conversation. What early use cases are emerging, whether it’s in the enterprise, networking, hiring, dating, that are showing the strongest promise right now.
Volodymyr Panchenko: It’s interesting, like little self-reflection because I, uh, heard this question right now and you made me smile again. Probably I will smile again and again and again because what I do feel is relief. Why I’ll share two cases. one is my personal, uh, because right now I’m sitting at the table in Santa Monica where I was my previous company, I went at least, no, not at least two, three cycles of fundraising.
By the book and it is what it is. every time it was at least two months of more than like, it’s like they call it nine, nine six from early morning to late night. Uh, phone conversations at least a hundred as the first call. And as, yes, the book is right. Only one of those converted into the, uh, actual investment.
I’m a human being. And honestly those two months were not happy months for me. every time before in the middle and after the conversations most of the time I didn’t feel good. Uh, I was feeling, I was feeling nervous. I was feeling bad. I was feeling not balanced.
I was feeling that I underperformed. I was feeling like lots of uncertainty, let’s put it this way, but what I’m a hundred percent sure is that every time on that call, there were two people who genuinely wanted the same thing. Which is, at least I lack the communication to, uh, make it happen.
So, uh, what was the first case I put for myself, which worked in so magically that after three times, I, uh, forgot about the pain that it ever happened was the, uh, very, very simple on the surface, but very. Complicated under the hood algorithm, which would look at me, which would look at the person I’m meeting with and find what we genuinely have in common.
What we genuinely have in common in our lifetime experiences so that we can start and begin the conversation from those things we have in common. And then also helped and helps provided the guidance what I should avoid in the conversation. Not to trigger something which is not related to me, but the person will feel bad and it’s as one person said who didn’t bill it first, he said like, it’s a hallucination.
There is no way. You could put this type of things together and a question to that person and said, go ask him. So, but he said, but this is about me. I said, it is about him as well. And, uh, three out of three times in the, this fundraising cycle I never felt any fear or discomfort because. I know who is in front of me.
I know how to communicate and, uh, I know how to communicate my answers. I genuinely love conversations with people. There’s always something interesting which we can exchange. And now it’s happening. And also like two out of three already, I got the safes closed, but the most important thing that pain I had, and I knew that I will have to go again and again and again through it.
No, I don’t. And the fact that we’re now putting together, today, tomorrow probably the version of that application for last batch of founders just knowing that they will not have to go through the pain, which I had to go through. Brian, I will like, I will wake up like at 5:00 AM like for that, for, for, whatever.
I will. That’s one example. And the other example would be Nick. Nick was, the one of the first who tried the flow of the founder and venture capitalist. And, uh, he’s a friend. He’s the founder of the aviation startup. And after a couple of weeks, he’s still texting us every other day.
It is so emotional. It is. So, he is like, I he is like, I can’t believe. So I like, I had never had those kind of a deep and, uh, friendly conversations and. At the end of it, it’s like, even with the like, founders in ventures or business partners, what do you want to have at the end? You want to build a friendship, the partnership, the trust.
So, if we can like cut out 90% of mistakes and we can, that’s amazing. And Nick already this is how we developed the second flow HR follow because of the customer feedback, because Nick used that for the fundraising and then he said I actually was hiring talents and I used it for that and the advices and there were ways to communicate.
We’re so deeply emotional and true that he was, as I said, like he, every other day he is texting us emotional messages. So, happy I am that we helped him as a founder and as a product, but also emotions. Like I know the pain. And now knowing that there is no more pain, but there is there kind of emotions, uh, I’m happy to build the product to scale this was not just as it was before.
When the knowledge, the, uh, the resources and the success were available to like 1% and 1%. What I, sorry, but I probably, I even can’t build something different because I am who I am. I know where I was born and I know my life path. So, I’m always building something to fix this and to democratize the technologies and help people.
Like just to unlock the talent, build value, and scale that to as many people as possible.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that. It again talks about that relationship and understanding people. I know you struggled with some anxiety and some things that you had some challenges about these conversations you had with people on the phone, but they might have triggered you or the other person.
It’s just amazing. Just great deep relationships that have come out of a lot of these, and I know you’re trying to make that human to human connection and communication better, so I appreciate that. And Vlad, looking ahead, what role do you believe AI will play in shaping the quality of human relationships over the next decade?
Is there any boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed? If you could just briefly share.
Volodymyr Panchenko: I think that the space where this question. Set is the same space where, for example, we’ll ask this question about electricity. So it’s from my standpoint, it’s all about how we humans are going to use it.
We do not blame electricity for some good stuff or bad stuff. It’s, it is what it is. And then how we human beings are gonna use it, what applications we’re gonna build, how we are gonna leverage the technology. That up, that’s up to us.
Brian Thomas: I like that analogy. Electricity, it’s how we use it, right.
Electricity, could be bad, right? Could kill somebody. ’cause of the superpower that electricity has behind it, the voltage, the amps, like you said, it’s, it’s about how we leverage the technology, and I really appreciate that analogy. And Vlad, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Volodymyr Panchenko: Thank you so much for the invitation. It was an honor, a pleasure, and I hope to speak to you soon again.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Volodymyr Panchenko Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
