Hey, I’m Igor. Made in Ukraine, based in Montenegro. I build products and keep them alive.
I started by building and operating a profitable content website. It grew large enough to teach me development, SEO, monetisation, and production operations in the same live system. A Google ranking update later removed most of its traffic and taught me how fragile borrowed distribution can be.
After that I ran developers and marketers across several internet businesses. The title was fuzzy. The responsibility wasn’t. I coordinated the people, priorities, and delivery.
Earth Roulette got me back into hands-on engineering. I later joined Magic Toolbox as a marketer, moved to Sirv, and took on growth, product, and operations.
As coding models improved, I built more of my own ideas: BudJet, SlovoCard, Viddl, Travel Bot, and others. When the models were good enough for production work, I used the same approach to build Sirv Studio, which I conceived, shipped, and now lead.
I also build ImageGuide and Press for image auditing and conversion. Sirv Marketing Machine covers internal reporting and marketing work.
Today I use AI heavily. I write the product intent, agents do much of the implementation, tests and reviews try to break it, and I decide what ships. AI makes me faster. It did not teach me how to build products.
I also enjoy photography and building and flying drones. I write about products, software stewardship, AI-assisted engineering, e-commerce imagery, and old advice worth reconsidering.
Russia is still waging war against Ukraine. Here’s how you can help.
Get in touch, email igor@varyvoda.com, or find me on GitHub.