Dmytro Volodymyrovych Frolov, 31 years

My name is Dmytro Frolov, and I am a serial entrepreneur building businesses around online education and marketing infrastructure.

My core competency is creating systems that allow educational projects to scale without direct operational dependence on their owners. Today, I am developing several areas in parallel: the English school Makashovskiy School, Oleksandr Kuzhel’s AI School, the digital agency Infobiz Digital, the webinar platform Webi, and I am also a strategic partner of Anastasiia Sheremet’s SMM school. In most of these projects, I act as an owner or co-owner, shaping the strategy, business model architecture, and marketing system.

My entrepreneurial journey began early—I opened an offline business, a fishing shop, while still in the 11th grade. Later, events profoundly transformed my thinking: my father’s bankruptcy, meeting a mentor, the full-scale war, the breakdown of partnerships, and my own bankruptcy. Each of these stages became an opportunity for growth and a chance to rethink my approaches to risk, partnerships, and financial discipline. Migration was another strategic decision. I currently live in Vienna and plan to move to Warsaw, while continuing to develop businesses for Ukrainian audiences around the world. In business, I think in terms of infrastructure.

For me, the team and processes are not rigidly tied to a single product—they are a service system that can support several projects at once. For example, an English school can generate significant revenue with a minimal in-house team, while most functions are provided by agency infrastructure. This approach makes it possible to scale, diversify risk, and maintain the owner’s strategic position without getting involved in day-to-day operations. In recent years, my business model and focus have been entirely centered on online education as a transparent and ethical niche. I consciously distance myself from the toxic connotations associated with the term «infobiz», although information products can take many forms—from courses to books and platforms.

My firm position is to work exclusively in the «white-hat» segment, avoid creating questionable products, and not support unethical practices. My strength lies in combining entrepreneurial speed with systems thinking. I don’t just launch projects; I build infrastructure capable of scaling results.

How did you come up with the business idea?

I entered the agency business not as a «lifelong dream», but in a practical management role. After a conflict between partners in a previous project, there was a need for someone to join as a co-owner and build organizational processes. The agency story began back in 2016 with Periscope: we found a software solution for attracting audiences to live streams, packaged it as a service, and sold promotion. Later, we naturally moved into Instagram and SMM, and the agency gradually took shape. Online education was a logical extension of our expertise.

We understood SMM and marketing well, and when demand for online courses emerged, we began working actively with educational projects. After the full-scale war began, my team and I relaunched our operations in Europe, working with the local market in Austria and with global brands. At the same time, starting in February 2022, I regularly received requests from online schools about launches, cold traffic, automated sales funnels, and building sales processes. Eventually, I compared the workload of a European agency with the potential of online education and decided to refocus the agency and my own attention entirely on educational projects for Ukrainian audiences around the world.

What key skills helped you launch your business?

The foundation of my growth rests on three skills:

1. Confidence. Without giving yourself permission to act, it is impossible to launch projects, especially when you need to test hypotheses quickly.
2. Analytics and numbers. The winner is the one who calculates correctly, not the one who relies only on gut feeling.
3. The ability not to be the «hands» in operational processes. I build systems so that I am not physically involved in day-to-day operations. Otherwise, it is impossible to scale and preserve freedom as a value.

What are the 3 most challenging issues you resolved in the first years?

Consciously closing businesses. First, the offline shop, and later the European agency, which we had developed for two years but closed to move toward a stronger strategic focus. The early stage, when it is difficult even to articulate the problem itself. At the beginning, you simply act and test, without prolonged reflection.

What crises has your business faced, and how did you overcome them?

I have been through four cash-flow crises of varying scale—with court cases, conflicts, and situations where it became impossible to pay salaries. I was often left bearing responsibility for informal partnerships. The most difficult crisis coincided with the start of the war and led to deep depression.

As a result, I reached a pragmatic conclusion: sometimes it makes more sense not to plug a cash-flow gap, but to close the business itself and start from scratch—it is faster and more cost-effective. If a company needs to be saved, only strict discipline works: reviewing the financial model, sharply cutting costs, changing the business model to generate cash faster, planning for a pessimistic scenario, and launching products that quickly generate liquidity.

Which decisions proved most effective for company growth?

The greatest growth came from focusing on traffic and marketing as the main drivers of the business. If I see even a minimal Product Market Fit, I invest as many resources as possible to scale the results. My position on traffic is simple: you need to allow yourself to spend as much as the system can use effectively. Aggressive testing and scaling are key to rapid growth. Another critically important decision is to close down areas that are dragging the business down in time, even if years of work have gone into them. For me, closing something down is not a defeat but a strategic refocus.

What mistake do you now consider your most valuable learning experience?

The most valuable learning experience was placing too much trust in verbal agreements without having any leverage. When there are no legal mechanisms or formalized accountability, you have no means of protecting yourself if a conflict arises.