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Draft:Oleg Rogynskyy

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  • Comment: Article needs a fairly heavy rewrite to be a more neutral, encyclopedic tone before it can be considered for being accepted. Turnagra (talk) 08:58, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Oleg Rogynskyy (Ukrainian: Олег Рогинський; Russian: Олег Рогинский; born 1986 in what is now Dnipro, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur and investor. He has been the chief executive officer of People.ai since 2016.[1] Prior to People.ai, Rogynskyy was the chief executive officer of Semantria.[2]

Biography

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Rogynskyy was born in the town of Dnipro (then Dnepropetrovsk), Ukraine. He attended Boston University.[3][4] His wife is a physician.[5]

Career

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After graduating university, Rogynskyy moved to Canada where he joined Nstein Technologies (now a division of Open Text[6]).[4] He then founded Semantria, a SaaS sentiment analysis company, which was acquired by Lexalytics in 2014.[7][2] In an interview, Rogynskyy described how he was involved in an accident one month after launching Semantria, and had to relearn how to walk over the course of 6 months.[8] In 2016, he founded People.ai in San Francisco, a sales artificial intelligence software company.[3] People.ai participated in the YCombinator startup accelerator in 2016.[1] People.ai investors include venture capital firms GGV Capital[9], Andreesen Horowitz[10], Lightspeed Venture Partners, and ICONIQ Capital.[11] The Kyiv Post reported that William Griffith, founding partner of ICONIQ Capital, serves on the People.ai board of directors.[12][13] In 2021 it was valued at $1.1 billion USD.[11] People.ai has offices in San Francisco, Toronto, and prior to the Russian invasion, Ukraine.[14][15] Rogynskyy was involved in a patent dispute with Setsail Technologies on behalf of People.ai.[16] As of 2023 Rogynskyy is the holder of 6 patents.[17] He is also an angel investor.[18]

Other endeavors

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The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that, in the months before the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Rogynskyy helped his company's Ukrainian employees relocate to safer areas abroad.[5][14] In a podcast with The Wall Street Journal, Rogynskyy said People.ai had moved many of its Ukrainian employees to Prague or Toronto.[19] Rogynskyy described the war in Ukraine as "the first open-source war", due to the use of open source tools for communications based on civilian platforms such as smartphones and Starlink terminals.[20] He spoke at a private event hosted by Victor Pinchuk at the World Economic Forum 2022, moderated by Fareed Zakharia on the subject of the war in Ukraine.[21]

In 2022, Rogynskyy was credited by Time Magazine for having "organized the support from the tech world pouring into Ukraine".[22] That year, the Office of the President of Ukraine (at the time, Volodymyr Zelensky) awarded Rogynskyy the Order of Merit (Ukraine), 3rd degree.[23]

Rogynskyy is a Charter Member of The C100, a Canadian network of technology entrepreneurs.[24] The National Foundation for American Policy listed him as a foreign-born artificial intelligence entrepreneur, the only Ukrainian on the list.[25]

References

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  1. ^ a b "People.ai Helps Businesses Manage Their Sales Teams Through Behavioral Analytics". Y Combinator. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  2. ^ a b Russell, Kyle (2014-07-14). "Lexalytics Acquires Semantria To Bring Sentiment Analysis To The Masses". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  3. ^ a b "People.ai: Harnesses business activity to unlock growth". Y Combinator. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  4. ^ a b "Report: People.ai Business Breakdown & Founding Story". Contrary Research. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  5. ^ a b Jacobs, Emma (August 20, 2022). "Oleg Rogynskyy of People.ai: 'I had a gut feeling that a war was going to start'". Financial Times.
  6. ^ Rao, Leena (2010-02-22). "Open Text Buys Up Content Analysis Startup Nstein Technologies For $34 Million". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  7. ^ "Lexalytics buys Semantria, because you gotta be able to analyze text in the cloud". VentureBeat. 2014-07-16. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  8. ^ When Adversity Creates Opportunity, retrieved 2023-11-24
  9. ^ Escher, Anna (2018-10-23). "Predictive sales tool People.ai racks up $30M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  10. ^ "People.ai". Andreessen Horowitz. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  11. ^ a b Nishant, Niket (August 11, 2021). "Mubadala co-leads $100 mln capital raise for software firm People.ai". Reuters.
  12. ^ Krasnikov, Denys (2019-05-22). "Ukrainian startup People.ai raises $60 million, is valued at $500 million - May. 22, 2019". Kyiv Post. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  13. ^ "Meet the Team | Will". 1Password. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  14. ^ a b Somerville, Heather (March 20, 2022). "Ukraine Tech Startups Pivot From Software Code to Rescue Plans". The Wall Street Journal.
  15. ^ "Meet the Tech Companies and Entrepreneurs From Ukraine". THE ORG. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  16. ^ "People.ai v. Setsail Techs., 575 F. Supp. 3d 1193 | Casetext Search + Citator". casetext.com. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  17. ^ "Google Patents". patents.google.com. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  18. ^ "Oleg Rogynskyy's Investing Profile - Angel | Signal". Signal: where top founders find and get introduced to the right investors. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  19. ^ "Smartphones Emerge as Key Tool for War in Ukraine - Tech News Briefing - WSJ Podcasts". WSJ. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  20. ^ Tett, Gillian (2022-07-22). "Inside Ukraine's open-source war". Financial Times. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  21. ^ "Victor Pinchuk Foundation - Davos Ukrainian Breakfast: News". pinchukfund.org. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  22. ^ Vick, Karl (December 7, 2022). "2022 Person of the Year: The Spirit of Ukraine". Time Magazine.
  23. ^ "УКАЗ ПРЕЗИДЕНТА УКРАЇНИ №595/2022 Про відзначення державними нагородами України". ПРЕЗИДЕНТ УКРАЇНИ ВОЛОДИМИР ЗЕЛЕНСЬКИЙ, Офіційне інтернет-представництво (in Ukrainian). 2022-08-23. Retrieved 2023-06-18.
  24. ^ "The C100 by One Net". www.thec100.org. Retrieved 2023-11-24.
  25. ^ "NFAP Policy Brief, June 2023, AI and Immigrants" (PDF). National Foundation for American Policy. Retrieved Nov 23, 2023.