Section 1: About me. Dossier.
«Leaving my IT career completely and focusing on growing my own business, despite the uncertainty of the outcome.»
Serhii Tymoshchuk
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Join the clubSection 2. About the business. Dossier.
Section 3: Biography.
I am Serhii Tymoshchuk, founder of AMS Pilot — a company that helps entrepreneurs scale their businesses in international markets. Together with my team, we are creating an ecosystem of services for growing e-commerce businesses. We help companies enter European and U.S. markets, grow sales on Amazon and TikTok Shop, and help authors create and publish books. My journey in technology began back in second grade. A neighbor who had returned from San Francisco introduced me to programming and the C++ language. From then on, technology became the pursuit that shaped my professional future.
I worked in cybersecurity for 15 years. This shaped my systems thinking, taught me to find weak points in complex processes, and to build solutions that can scale. In 2015, I decided to leave a stable career in IT and devote myself fully to growing my own business. It was not an easy step, because no one could guarantee the outcome. Together with my partners, we gradually built a business that eventually grew into an international ecosystem of companies in e-commerce. Working on myself was another important part of my personal development.
More than six years ago, I gave up alcohol completely, and later began working regularly with a psychologist and exercising consistently. This helped me look differently at my own effectiveness, discipline, and quality of life.
The Young Business Club community also played an important role in my development as an entrepreneur. It was here, in 2018-2019, that like-minded people and I formed one of the first peer-to-peer groups, which has remained a space for sharing experience, support, and collective growth for many years.
The business idea first came to me while I was working in IT. My friends and I regularly met in a small peer-to-peer group, where we shared our goals, plans, and experiences. One of the members, who worked at Microsoft, said he planned to leave the company and start earning money by creating books for Amazon. At first, the idea seemed strange to me. But he showed me a short training course, and within six months I had my first results. At the time, I worked full-time in IT and spent about six more hours after work developing my own project. Together with my business partner, I gradually built a business that eventually grew into an entire ecosystem of e-commerce solutions.
My greatest asset is my experience in cybersecurity. Fifteen years of work taught me to think systematically, find weak points, and build solutions that can scale. This technical expertise became our competitive advantage at the outset. We understood how complex digital systems worked and could create solutions that were beyond the reach of most competitors. I always say: «I know how to look for vulnerabilities in systems. And a business is a system, too.» Partnership also played a distinct role. Practically all of my businesses were created with partners, and I am convinced that combining the strengths of different people makes it possible to grow much faster.
The first challenge was leaving a stable job in IT. I enjoyed my profession and earned a good income, but I decided to devote myself fully to entrepreneurship. The hardest part was accepting uncertainty and responsibility for the eventual outcome. The second challenge was building a strong team. At the outset, the business did not yet have a strong reputation, so attracting talented specialists was difficult. The third challenge was learning to build effective partnerships. Over the years, I realized that they had become one of the main drivers of my companies’ growth.
One of the most serious crises was the suspension of an account that generated a significant share of the company’s revenue. Rather than depend on a single channel, we completely changed our approach and built a system of several dozen accounts. This made the business much more resilient to similar risks. Another challenge was winning our first major clients. Without a strong portfolio and reputation, it is hard for a company to earn the market’s trust. After selling one of our own brands, we established an agency and began offering prospective clients a detailed audit of their businesses. We worked on a model in which most of our revenue depended on the results we delivered for the client. This approach enabled us to demonstrate our effectiveness quickly and secure our first long-term partners.
The most important decision was to divide responsibilities between the partners effectively. I realized that my strength lies in operational management and process oversight. I can get into the details of how the team works and have a good understanding of everything happening within the company. My partner, by contrast, is stronger at building systems, delegating responsibility, and scaling the business. Combining these strengths allowed the company to move from hands-on management to systematic growth.
The most valuable lesson for me is to agree on everything at the outset of a partnership. All important terms, roles, and potential risks should be discussed and put in writing before work begins. This helps avoid future conflicts and preserve the partnership.
I earned my first money back in school. My friends and I unloaded trucks and were paid for it. That’s when I realized that physical labor wasn’t the path for me. I wanted to earn money with my knowledge, not my hands.
I earned my first $1 000 at the beginning of my career in information technology.
I also earned my first $10 000 while working in information technology. It was the result of professional development and steady career growth.
I earned my first $100 000 thanks to Amazon. One of our books was bringing the company around $300 000 in revenue per month.
I reached my first $1 000 000 approximately five years after starting the business. The foundation for this achievement was our book business on Amazon, which later grew into a broad ecosystem of e-commerce products.
Section 4: How can I be useful? Experience I can share.
My main area of expertise is helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses in international markets without costly mistakes. Thanks to my many years of experience in cybersecurity, I understand how to build secure digital systems, protect businesses from risks, and identify weaknesses before they become problems. I also help Ukrainian companies enter the European and US markets. Together with my team, we calculate unit economics, assess a product's potential, develop a launch strategy, and help avoid mistakes that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Another area of our work is creating books for Amazon. We help with the entire journey, from the idea to publication and scaling sales.
Every business sooner or later needs to move from manual management to systematic operations. Today, artificial intelligence makes it possible to automate many processes that, just a few years ago, required a large number of people. Companies once created dozens of job descriptions that had to be constantly updated, but now many routine processes can be delegated to AI. Our company has its own in-house AI assistant, Big Brother. It analyzes managers' calls with clients, draws on the company's accumulated knowledge base, suggests better ways to handle objections, helps monitor sales quality, and supports the team in its day-to-day work. Systematization starts not with documents, but with well-designed processes and the delegation of repetitive tasks to technology.
Many people think that growth simply means increasing the number of clients. In reality, that is not always the case. In the consulting business, it is far more effective to focus on increasing the average transaction value and moving into more complex projects. We made this transition gradually: first we worked with small-scale entrepreneurs, then with companies with revenues of millions of dollars, and today our clients include investment funds with portfolios worth several billion dollars. The time the team spends on a large contract does not increase in proportion to its value. That is why growing by serving higher-value clients often proves more effective than simply increasing their number.
Section 5: Club value
