Yevhen Pulia: "I earned my first million at 25"

In an interview for Delo.ua Yevhen Pulia told about how he succeeded, about FinTech innovations, agribusiness, future technologies — the neurointerface, as well as about the life balance.

First earnings and motivation

Yevhen began to work at the age of 16. His family was lower-middle-class; they lived very modestly and had to save on everything. So, at a very early age, Yevhen realized that everything needed to be achieved by yourself. However, it was very difficult to find a good job in Kherson, where his family lived, and at the age of sixteen the young man began to earn extra money as a realtor assistant. Yevhen did not look closely at the work for a long time: soon he had already completed the first real estate purchase and sale transaction, earning the first money. Yevhen believes that an early start in an independent life allowed him to become successful until the age of 30. "I was very fond of mathematics, I graduated from the lyceum with a mathematical bias and entered the second year of university immediately. But after a while I realized that I had nothing to do there — we were taught theories, and I have already gone through all this in practice," says Yevhen. I should say so! At the age of 18, Yevhen has already opened his own real estate Agency "Sonnet", employees of which were also former classmates and even a school teacher. "So we worked for several years. In the process, I began to notice that real estate buyers often do not have enough money to purchase exactly the housing that they like. Many people then heard about lending, but did not know how to use this financial instrument, who to turn to, what privileges are provided by the state," — recalls Mr. Pulia. Then he decided to develop this area — he opened a consulting agency that helped people to apply for loans. He recalls that he helped to apply hundreds of fellow citizens for youth preferential loans.

Lessons from the Great Recession

Given the relevance of lending during the formation of the Ukrainian real estate market, there was a lot of work, and Yevhen managed to expand his business and open branches in ten other cities of Ukraine. At that time, Yevhen was not even twenty years old. While his peers had fun in the clubs, Mr. Pulia had dozens of people under his command and the company"s turnover was several million. The crisis of 2008 was approaching. It hit the young businessman with the force of tsunami — a sharp curtailment of bank lending, an increase in interest rates on loans led to the fact that borrowers stopped returning foreign currency loans. Yevhen Pulia had to close all branches, sell his property and spend almost all his personal savings in order to pay off his debts. "It was a strong psychological shock, a hard lesson. But if I could call myself today in 2008, I would advise myself to let go the situation and keep calm. Indeed, for a business, ups and downs — there is a normal situation. And each failure is a step towards the upcoming take-off, provided that the person accepted this problem as a lesson with gratitude! That"s how I feel about it today," — says Yevhen Pulia. After the crisis, he moved to Kyiv, where the only office of his consulting company remained. He began to develop the business, advising small and medium-sized businesses on issues in the field of lending, investment and taxation. Soon, the business began to grow, and by the age of 25, Yevhen got back on his feet again and earned his first million. In parallel, he received a higher legal education and began to actively engage in self-development in the field of finance and technology — he attended exhibitions and conferences. Three years ago, at one of these exhibitions in the United States, Yevhen Pulia saw a presentation of a payment system that allowed people to quickly and safely send payments to each other via a smartphone, even without a credit card number. "I came inspired by the idea of ​​opening an innovative payment company in Ukraine, and becoming one of the main drivers of building a digital economy in the country," says Yevhen. "The process of obtaining a license from the National Bank of Ukraine, as well as passing through numerous inspections of the financial services market regulator and other state bodies regarding software security, transparency of the ownership structure and the legality of the origin of the owner"s funds, capital adequacy, etc. lasted a year," - recalls Mr. Pulia. Thus, as a result of the long and painstaking work of a whole team of programmers, designers, financial consultants and undoubtedly successful leadership of this project, a new international payment system MOSST Payments began to work in Ukraine. Reference: The international payment system MOSST Payments was registered in 2017. It carries out transfers in Ukraine in UAH and cross-border transfers in foreign currency. This is one of the first companies in Ukraine and Europe that implemented a number of technological solutions for user authentication using Face ID, with the support of Visa, and created a service for accepting payments for goods and services using a fingerprint. To make a money transfer to the client MOSST Payments is enough to know only the mobile phone number or email of the recipient. The recipient is immediately notified of the transfer and, following a simple instruction, can receive their funds. The payee can be selected from the phone book of the smartphone for convenience. MOSST Payments, the only Ukrainian startup included in the TOP-17 fintech startups according to the version of "ElevatorLab" from Raiffeisen Bank International (336 participants from 56 countries; 2017, Austria). And already in 2018, after participating in two international acceleration programs in Kazakhstan, MOSST Payments became finalists and received grants, and as a result opened their representative office in Almaty (Kazakhstan). From grain to neurointerface Given that agriculture in our country is one of the most promising economic sectors, in 2018 Yevhen decided to take his first step in this area. "Many of my friends are engaged in this business, so I know firsthand about the success and great opportunities that can bring this direction. Having analyzed in detail all the pros and cons, I decided to develop the agricultural sector," — says Yevhen Pulia. But the businessman does not intend to stop there. Yevhen plans to invest in projects in the field of IT, FinTech, perhaps — in alternative energy sources, behind which Yevhen also sees the future.  In the foreseeable future — the implementation of a startup in the United States on the neurointerface. Reference: The neurointerface a "brain-computer", is a system for exchanging information between the human brain and an electronic device. This technology allows a person to interact with the outside world on the basis of registration of electrical activity of the brain — electroencephalogram (EEG). A key feature of the neurointerface is that it allows you to connect directly to the brain. To the question: "Why in the United States?!" Yevhen replies that the United States has more opportunities to capitalize the company and make it a global market player. But this does not mean at all that the entrepreneur plans to leave Ukraine or conduct his business exclusively abroad. "I love Kyiv and I have many plans to develop not only my business, but the country as a whole".

A glimpse of personal

Until recently, Yevhen spent the lion's share of time at work: daily he controlled every process and task, checked every report, every presentation. But he felt that burns out, and decided to get priorities in life. He works a lot and controls everything as well as before, but he began to spend much more time with his family, finds time for sports, hobbies and reading books. Yevhen"s favorite author is an Israeli historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari: "I consider him one of the best modern writers. I especially like his three books: "A Brief History of Humankind ", " A Brief History of Tomorrow", and "21 Lessons for the 21st Century". As for the hobby, Yevhen is fond of psychology, studies literature on this topic and periodically attends relevant trainings around the world. "I was faced with the fact that everything has a reason in this world and it"s interesting for me to fond it out," - he says.