Holia Artem Valeriiovych, 38 years

Today, I am an entrepreneur (Mega Motors,  Mega Credit,  MegaFinCapital,  MegaFinTech) for whom business is primarily about scale and impact. Money stops being an end in itself once basic needs are met. Then a different motivation emerges — why you do what you do, and the legacy you leave behind.

I see a business as a reflection of its owner. A company's scale is determined not just by its product or processes — it is limited by the scope of its owner's thinking, beliefs, ambitions, and willingness to take responsibility. For me, this is the foundation of business development. The drive to be an entrepreneur has been with me since childhood. Even then, I had my first side jobs and tried to come up with ideas and launch them. I was often the one initiating ideas, organizing the work, and bringing a team together. Alongside that, I had a simple but powerful source of motivation — the desire for a better life, because I grew up in a family of modest means. I arrived at my core business through several iterations. There were various entrepreneurial ventures, including a small network of coffee vending machines that I later sold. I also spent a brief period working as an employee.

Over time, I came to understand that business development always begins with the entrepreneur's own development. That is why it is important to keep broadening your thinking, setting more ambitious goals, and not settling for less. Looking ahead, in five years I see myself in a free and independent Ukraine, at peace and with a rapidly growing economy. I am convinced that our country has a unique geographical position and enormous potential to become Europe's new economic hub. I see Ukraine as a place attracting investment from around the world, where Ukrainian businesses grow and scale rapidly. And we, the entrepreneurs building our companies here and now, are already part of that future. Applying this vision to my own business, my goal is to grow it severalfold.

At the same time, I believe entrepreneurial success is primarily about consistent daily work. My advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to fill every day with concrete actions, even small ones. First, you set a big goal, then break it down into smaller tasks. If you take at least a few steps toward it every day — make a call, hold a meeting, read or research something — sooner or later you will inevitably achieve a result. Expanding your network is equally important.

Seek out people who have already traveled the path you are just beginning. One well-chosen question or conversation can save years of time and a great deal of money. It is also important to work on yourself. If you are shy or not particularly sociable, you need to consciously step outside your comfort zone. It is very difficult to achieve major results without other people. A strong network is one of the key resources for growth. But participation in communities must be reciprocal: not just taking, but giving too.

Energy, like money, thrives on movement and exchange. Where there is exchange, there is growth. As for happiness, to me it is not a permanent state, but brief moments of awareness of life. You cannot measure them over long stretches of time — you can only catch them in the moment. For example, this morning, as I left home and the sun was shining, I felt that way for a few seconds. As Taras Shevchenko wrote — «…I felt such joy, such joy…». It is precisely the ability to notice and hold on to these moments that makes life truly fulfilling.

How did the business idea come about?

Honestly, the idea of having my own business had always been somewhere inside me, ever since childhood. My first fairly serious business, though, involved coffee vending machines. A friend and I launched a small network of them and later sold it. Other ideas followed. For example, in 2012 I wanted to create a network of European-style lemonade stands, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

I then worked as an employee for a while before returning to entrepreneurship full-time. If I had to identify one key thing, it would be that I have always felt an inner drive to bring people together. I would not even call it «managing», because it is not really about control. It is more about taking the initiative and organizing people around an idea. So I think my management skills are innate to some extent.

The second factor was the desire to live better and earn more. I grew up in a family of modest means, and I always wanted to change that situation. My entrepreneurship grew out of the intersection of those two things — the desire to create and the aspiration for a better life. In 2013, while I was working as an employee, an acquaintance suggested opening a car dealership. I already had leadership and management experience, as well as personal experience with cars — I had bought and resold them.

As a result, this partner and I joined an existing car dealership to develop its marketing and sales operations. We later branched off and established our own dealership, then opened a car rental business. The financial business came after that, with product-market fit playing a key role.

What key skills helped you launch your business?

My growth was built on several skills that work together. First — leadership. Ever since childhood, I have often taken the initiative and organized people around an idea or activity.

Second — logical thinking: the ability to establish cause-and-effect relationships and reach decisions through analysis.

Third — vision: the ability to mentally model a reality that does not yet exist, map out possible scenarios, and, to some extent, «see ahead». 

Fourth — an eye for opportunities. For me, business begins where I see a need, a gap in service, or something that works inefficiently. You do not need to invent ideas — they are all around us. You simply need to train yourself to notice them and turn them into a product that meets market demand, in other words, find product-market fit.

What were the 3 toughest challenges you overcame in the early years?

One of my biggest challenges was a certain disillusionment with people. In business, I realized for the first time that not everyone shared my mindset, and not everyone acted honestly or with integrity. My first year in business was a time of «taking off the rose-tinted glasses». I realized that the business environment can be quite harsh and even abrasive — something you can easily catch yourself on and get hurt.

Until then, I had idealized people and assumed that everyone thought more or less the same way: seeking win-win outcomes, being friendly and open. But the reality is different. My first year in business effectively forced me to reconsider many beliefs and ingrained attitudes formed in childhood. It was a deeply transformative period when I had to start working on myself. Incidentally, the start of my business coincided with the extraordinary snowfall in the spring of 2013.

My first morning as an entrepreneur came after the day Kyiv was paralyzed by snowbound traffic. That was when I set out to handle my first business matters. It felt very symbolic — as if I had been thrown straight into difficult conditions. In a way, that captures how business transforms a person.

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

In fact, my business has barely had a single year in a stable, crisis-free environment. We started during the revolutionary events. Then, as the country gradually recovered, the pandemic began. After the pandemic came the full-scale war. If there was a relatively stable period, it was roughly from 2016 to 2019. But even that was more a post-crisis period than a completely calm one. So you could say the business has operated in permanent turbulence all this time. Honestly, I can hardly imagine any other state anymore.

Which decisions proved most effective in growing the company?

Honestly, the most important decisions have less to do with business than with working on myself. A business grows only as far as its owner's thinking reaches — it is, to some extent, a reflection of the person who creates it. If the owner lacks ambition or has not found an answer to the question «why», the business will not grow or expand either. Money is not really an end in itself. Until a person has met their basic needs in Maslow's hierarchy, money can indeed be the main motivator. But once those basic needs are covered, you begin looking for other sources of meaning. For me, growth and the opportunity to positively affect as many people as possible became important values.

A truly large business is one that reaches a broad audience and genuinely changes its customers' lives. Take the financial service monobank, for example. It may seem like just a financial product, but it affects millions of people: providing a convenient service, helping solve financial problems, and, in a sense, even teaching financial literacy. Another example is Zdesenko and his kitchen sponges for washing dishes. It seems like a very simple product. But if a company sells it in dozens of countries and affects tens or even hundreds of millions of people, the question becomes: will that sponge be environmentally friendly or not? That is already an impact on the environment and people's quality of life.

So for me, business scale is primarily an opportunity to affect many people's lives and make the world better. In this sense, financial performance is simply an indicator of the value you create. Business follows a simple formula: the more value you give people, the more money you receive in return.

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

When I was at university, many of my classmates went to the United States through the Work and Travel program. It was a time when the program had become very popular. I had every opportunity to go. A few friends and I planned to travel together. But at the last moment, things fell through for them: some did not receive money from their parents, while others faced different circumstances. For some reason, I decided I did not want to go alone, so I backed out too. Everyone who went came back very happy. They had a wonderful time and significantly improved their English. Most later secured good jobs at international companies precisely because of their English skills.

We studied at Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, so the combination of professional skills and English opened up excellent career opportunities for many of them. At the time, I deeply regretted not going. I then made myself a promise: it is better to do something and perhaps regret it than not do it and spend your whole life wondering what might have been. But the so-called butterfly effect is also at work.

Perhaps if I had gone, my life would have turned out completely differently. Perhaps I would have joined a large company and never become an entrepreneur. We do not know. And perhaps that is precisely why I am where I am today.