After graduating from UCL School of Management’s MSc Entrepreneurship programme in 2021, Aliaksandr Kazhamiakin and Altynay Ashimbayeva launched Yotewo, an online platform revolutionising tech recruitment through connecting businesses of all sizes with experienced tech professionals. Since its conception, Yotewo has seen incredible growth and recently secured a £250,000 investment from London-based VC Symvan Capital.

We recently caught up with Aliaksandr and Altynay to find out more about their entrepreneurial journey so far. They share their ambitious plans for 2025 - including the ways in which their recent investment success will support the development of a fully automated platform - as well as the challenges they’ve faced in adapting to the venture capital funding stage and their decision to initially target the UK market.

Can you tell us about yourselveS?

Our team is pretty diverse. Aliaksandr is Belarusian; he is from Minsk and his ethnicity is also mixed with Armenian roots. Altynay is originally from Astana, the capitcal city of Kazakhstan.

However, we’ve been in the UK for a couple of years now. Aliaksandr did his BSc in International Business Management at the University of Surrey and spent some time at HKU in Hong Kong as an overseas student. Altynay studied the BBA programme at Boston University and we met when we both joined the MSc Entrepreneurship programme at UCL School of Management in 2021. In Altynay’s free time, she likes to run, do yoga and cook, while Aliaksandr enjoys travelling.

have you both always shown signs of entrepreneurial talent?

Definitely, yes! We have always wanted to get into building our own business, and have had a lot of trial and error experiences - from some ventures at rather young ages to more adventurous projects throughout our studies.

Altynay and I also both connected through the fact that our families are entrepreneurial and run their own businesses, which we think has also helped develop our own entrepreneurial mindsets.

can you tell us about yotewo? How did the business come about?

Yotewo is a platform that solves the problems surrounding tech recruitment. Before starting the company, we undertook extensive market research and it turned out that this particular market is full of various pains, starting from a complete lack of automation (despite that fact that it is TECH recruitment) and ending with simple lack of trust.

We wanted to challenge this. We created a product that makes the hiring of tech talents as simple, efficient and transparent as possible. It is used by startups, scale ups, software houses, agencies – essentially anyone who needs on-demand talent. Aliaksandr came up with the idea at the beginning of his Master’s programme and spent the year researching.

After the concept was proven by the market and the business was ready to be built, Altynay was invited to join as a Co-Founder, and our partnership officially began around 18 months ago once we had graduated from our MSc Entrepreneurship programme. However, we already knew the direction we wanted to move in - even before graduating we had already registeredthe company, got accepted into UCL’s incubator programme and even obtained the innovator visa.

why did you decide to target this market in particular?

At the moment, we are only focusing on the UK market. Firstly, we are based here and secondly, we believe there is the highest potential here. We know this market very well and we have a good chance of establishing our position and gaining a significant piece of the market. In the near future, we may start looking at the EU and US markets, followed by MENA and Asia further down the road.

tell us about the challenges you’ve faced so far

The transition from bootstrapping to the venture capital funding stage was the most challenging hurdle we’ve faced. We knew going into this business that, in order to build the product, we needed to raise funds as it requires significant amount of resources.

The process from building an MVP and gaining our first traction to closing the round was a rollercoaster experience for all team members as we had to face a lot of daily challenges and overcome them - especially considering that this was our first-ever funding round. We didn’t have any previous experience in raising capital, so we had to learn all the ins and outs of the funding process and how it works in order to be successful. 

tell us about your recent pitch - what was the focus and how will the funds help grow yotewo?

On the pitch aspect, our strongest assets were our core team, product positioning and current traction. By the time of active raise, we had gained our first clients, started receiving revenue, grown the team organically to 8 people and explicitly positioned ourselves as disruptors within the UK market.

This combination really helped and we were lucky to get very intelligent and contributing investors on board. On the funds aspect, our goal is to create a fully automated platform, continue to grow our team and increase our brand awareness in the UK market by attending a number of different in-person networking events. In our view, the best way to create new business is through networking.

what’s next for yotewo?

We definitely have some exciting projecst coming up. As soon as 2025 began, we got to work. We’re actively looking for new clients and planning ahead for 2025. Next on our agenda is to focus on impactful and organic growth and market penetration. We are excited to continue growing our business and - most importantly - help our clients find the right talent for their projects.

Find out more about UCL School of Management’s MSc Entrepreneurship programme.