The story of an Uzbek who managed to attract 3.4 million dollars in his project!

IT Park together with the Venture Capital Investment Association of Uzbekistan and the Youth Union of Uzbekistan organized an interview with a successful entrepreneur, originally from Bukhara, Anatoly Kochnev, who was able to attract investments in the amount of 3.4 million dollars in the A round!

First of all, it should be noted that Anatoly Kochnev has studied English since childhood, as he studied in a specialized school with a bias in English, as well as his mother was a teacher of this language. Therefore, his first acquaintance with the United States was due to the English language and competition, which Anatoly won. Thanks to this, he was able to fly to the United States to study by exchange.

One of the key points in his life was admission to a simple institute in Bukhara - Bukhara Institute of Technology, where he was lucky to find good friends and teachers who sought to help their students and give them not only knowledge, but also to look for various programs and other opportunities for them to contribute to their development.

In 2008, Anatoly moved with his family to the United States, Connecticut, where they live to this day.

After moving to the United States and starting work for the company, Anatoly decided that he needed to do his own business and founded his first company with his former classmate, with whom he attended school in America. Anatoly together with his classmate began to create systems for various companies, which needed to get their internal system.

Despite the fact that at that time the concepts of "analytics" and "e-learning" were completely unknown, everyone still wanted to know how people work, pupils and students study. Anatoly was able to help other companies track and monitor the right data with reports.

After the end of time Anatoly realized that it is necessary to create a single system where all reports for various companies to which they help will be organized. So the system was built, which they later called "IntelliBoard."

"IntelliBoard" was founded in 2015. At the very beginning of development, the company employed only 3 people. Today, after almost 5 years, more than 50 people from different countries are employees of the company. "IntelliBoard" is a system which allows school students, students, teachers, administrators of the companies and any other people to find statistical data necessary to them and also to expand the reporting and analytics.

The client base of the "IntelliBoard" are: institutions, including educational institutions, private companies and organizations. Currently, the company does not work in the B2C format, but they plan to develop the industry in a very short time. To date, the company serves more than 20 million users. Their goal is to develop the direction of B2B so that in the future the company can move to individual users, i.e. B2C.

The "IntelliBoard" project works entirely online. The company doesn't have an office. As Anatoly says: "The office is additional expenses, if for us it is additional expenses, it is also for our clients, why it is necessary?." It is very important for Anatoly that the employees of his company keep in touch with their families, so that they do not have to spend a lot of time working and returning home. 'We want them to have the opportunity to spend time with their children and take them to school. We have a lot of workers with kids. I think that this is very important, and that is why the idea of creating an online business was born from the very beginning, Anatoly said.

When moving to the United States, Anatoly had one thought - to succeed. "If I came here, I have to achieve something," Anatoly said. He wanted not only to receive, but also to give, to which he eventually managed to come.

Speaking of success, we must not forget that IntelliBoard has just closed a $3.4 million investment round. In our interview Anatoly noted that one of the most important things to do always if you want to attract investments is to maintain relations with your investors and trust each other. Indeed, how can you get an investment if you don’t know how to maintain good relationships with people?

According to Anatoly, the main factor for him was the help of his family, especially when he was in trouble. Anatoly 's wife was always with him in difficult times and supported him, which gave him the strength to keep working and not give up.

To the question of Dilshod Zufarov, Director of the Venture Capital Investment Association of Uzbekistan - "Why not Silicon Valley?" Anatoly answered quite simply: "I choose children, and here (in Connecticut) for children much more conditions than there (in Silicon Valley)."

It should be noted that at the very beginning of launching the company, "IntelliBoard" did not undergo an acceleration programm. Anatoly explained that initially their company made a profit, the profit was not so big, but they were not in the minus. Although their development was slow, there was enough money for them. According to Anatoly, business should always start on its own, and you don 't need to spend millions to run your company. "You just need to come and start," Anatoly added. According to Anatoly, life has a greater impact than any accelerator.

At the end of our interview, the founder of the network of training centers "Cambridge" in Tashkent, Jahangir Pulatov, joined us, who presented his project and told about how he managed to transform his project into online mode. Jahangir also expressed admiration for Anatoly’s results and asked how online education would develop in the future?

According to Anatoly, in the future online education will be a new alternative to standard education. There will be new companies that will contribute to the process of transferring offline education to a new level. Anatoly also noted the importance of the profession of teacher and the fact that teachers do very painstaking and hard work, receiving a small fee for it. Anatoly added that it is necessary to help teachers first of all, facilitating their work and making it more interesting.

At the very end, interviewers managed to ask a couple of questions from the viewers who watched the live broadcast.

Anatoly showed his interest and shared experience and knowledge with start-ups from Uzbekistan, and promised to attract his team, which can also help and share useful advice.

You can watch the interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMCl51y6ETg&t=2145s