In February 2026, Nazar Gulyk gave someone else the job he had spent years defending. Empat, the software company he helped assemble from a web studio and several startup teams, would have a new chief executive. Igor Repeta would run the business. Gulyk would remain Founder and Partner. For an entrepreneur whose company had survived a sudden collapse in revenue, it was a curious next move: make the business larger by making his own daily role smaller.
The announcement contained no farewell. It described a division of labour. Repeta, previously chief operating officer, would concentrate on delivery, quality and the processes needed to manage complex projects. Gulyk would concentrate on partnerships and the longer view. The company said it had nearly 200 people in its global structure and was targeting eight-figure revenue in 2026. A target is a promise to do the work; it is not money already in the bank.
That distinction suits this story. Gulyk's career contains plenty of ambition, but its interesting turns concern the things ambition cannot accomplish alone: keeping a team together, finding people who can disagree usefully, and knowing when another person should hold the wheel.
The people survived the startups
Gulyk grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. An early computer introduced him to Macromedia Flash, with which he made website banners. He entered school competitions in mathematics and computer science. There is something pleasantly period-specific about this beginning. Before software promised to rearrange every industry, a young enthusiast could make a little rectangle move across a screen and feel that a useful door had opened.
In 2007, he moved from Ivano-Frankivsk to Kyiv and entered the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He had already spent a year at another university. The move was deliberate: he wanted room to develop. Years later, he recalled the academy as a place where he found both his direction and people who became close to him. Education, in his telling, has repeatedly supplied a community as well as a curriculum.
The business that became Empat has roots in a boutique web studio established in 2013. Gulyk's account of the following years is refreshingly untidy. He founded three startups; two failed and one was sold. In 2018, the studio and those startup teams came together under the Empat name. The ventures had different outcomes. The people still had something to build together.
A failed startup usually receives a short sentence in a founder's biography, preferably followed by a success. Here, failure belongs in the company's construction history. The developers and designers were a reason to continue. The organisational question became how to give that accumulated experience another setting in which it could work.
Two months on the clock
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced a much harsher question. Gulyk later described a company of 40 employees, with reserves sufficient for two months. Ukrainian clients, responsible for 80 percent of revenue, stopped their projects. Those numbers describe an immediate commercial predicament: a payroll still existed, while much of the work supporting it had disappeared.
In his later account of the rebuilding, Gulyk said the company chose to avoid layoffs and fought for new contracts. International business became central to its recovery. The people who had made the company possible were also the people it chose to retain when the arithmetic became uncomfortable. Empathy, a word embedded in the brand, had acquired an expensive test.
The same period made him reconsider what a small company could contribute outside its commercial work. He said he lacked experience with grants and fundraising, and could not simply donate large amounts. What the business did possess was technical expertise and a partnership network. Those were resources it could put to use. Its earlier work had included the portal of Plast, Ukraine's scouting organisation, and the military news publication Militarnyi.
There is no need to turn this into a tidy lesson about adversity. A two-month reserve is not an inspirational accessory. It is a deadline. What matters about Gulyk's response is its specificity: retain people, seek work elsewhere, and use the skills already available. The story moves through decisions rather than through reassuring adjectives.
The sales pitch that allows an argument
Gulyk's advice to other founders starts with an uncomfortable possibility: the team they hire may enthusiastically help them build the wrong thing. He asks them to examine how a prospective development partner reasons, explains tradeoffs and preserves knowledge. Agreement can be bought quite easily. Useful judgement is a more demanding purchase.
“A startup cannot afford the wrong partner.”
Nazar Gulyk
His warning signs are concrete. A partner says yes to everything. The people introduced during the sale differ from the people doing the work. Important information remains trapped in someone's head. A feature list grows while the value to users remains vague. These are ordinary problems, which is precisely why they deserve attention before a contract becomes a costly relationship.
That advice has a personal backstory. In 2026, Gulyk described an earlier financial mistake: reinvesting everything he earned into startups while neglecting his own financial discipline. He discussed it with Alyona Mysko, a friend from their college days. He said he recovered, but the lesson was expensive. His public account makes room for a founder who can misjudge his own resources as well as advise someone else about theirs.
The caution is useful because entrepreneurship rewards confidence in public. A founder can become remarkably articulate about someone else's risks while avoiding his own. Gulyk's admission gives the advice some friction. The person recommending better decisions has had to revise decisions himself.
A room is something you can build
San Francisco is now his base, and gathering people has become a visible part of his work. He serves as a Techstars community leader there. Startup Weekend events place aspiring founders alongside mentors and working entrepreneurs. The format gives an idea company: people to question it, improve it and help turn it into a product.
In October 2024, the IT Ukraine Association named him among its first ambassadors to the United States. The role involves developing international partnerships and representing Ukraine's technology industry. The association's updated June 2026 roster again included him. This is a voluntary industry position, with its usefulness dependent on the relationships its holder actually creates.
Another gathering required an unusually large venue. On November 23 and 24, 2024, a defence technology hackathon took place aboard the USS Hornet in California. Victoria Tech, co-founded by Gulyk and Artur Kiulian, helped organise it. Participants tackled challenges informed by Ukrainian defence needs. Thirty-seven teams presented projects; eleven reached the final round.
An aircraft carrier is an extravagant answer to the familiar question of where to hold a meeting. Yet the purpose was practical: place engineers and people with direct knowledge of the problems in the same working environment. Gulyk's contribution here was organising access and attention. The outcome was a set of proposed projects, with the work of implementation still ahead.
Homework on both sides of the desk
His interest in learning reaches in two directions. Empat School, founded in 2022, offers free technical training built around real company cases. Its published programme includes web development and Flutter, mentor feedback, practical assignments and a finished project. Strong students can receive an offer for a trainee position. A beginning programmer gets a chance to make something that can be examined.
Gulyk has also continued to be a student. He earned an MBA at the Kyiv School of Economics in 2017 and began Stanford's year-long LEAD programme in 2023. In 2026, he returned for the Stanford-Endeavor Ukraine Innovation and Growth programme. The return suggests that learning remains part of the job even after the title on the business card changes.
Inside Empat, he has discussed the PARC framework: People, Architecture, Routines and Culture. Those four words give management a less glamorous but more usable vocabulary. Who joins? How is responsibility arranged? Which behaviours happen regularly? What becomes normal? They are questions a company must keep answering as it gets larger.
Alongside that framework sits a less solemn detail. Gulyk has described an internal culture in which anyone can share a meme. A company has policies, meetings and reporting lines; it also has jokes. The latter are rather harder to commission from a consultant.
Six cities, and a folder of running notes
Gulyk's other long project has finish lines. In 2024, he wrote about his goal of completing the six original World Marathon Majors. His race history runs from Chicago in 2017 through Berlin, New York, London and Tokyo to Boston in 2026. By June 2026, the IT Ukraine Association described him as a Six Star Finisher.
He has explained that running creates time away from messages and notifications. Ideas go into a phone folder called “Running Notes”. He began with a running club and ran several marathons with a close friend. The private pursuit has a social structure too: companions and coaches, alongside the hours only the runner can put in.
One coaching experience stays with him. Faced with a challenge before a marathon, he questioned whether he could achieve it. His coach's confidence helped him attempt it, and he finished in three hours and forty minutes. The useful detail is the conversation before the result. Someone else could see a possibility he had not yet accepted.
The CEO handover offers a different version of that exchange. Repeta takes responsibility for the operating business. Gulyk retains a role in its future while making space for another person's judgement. After years of building teams, convening rooms and collecting finish lines, his next chapter begins with a decision about who gets to lead.
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