Igor Shatalkin

AI-native procurement platform that automates the entire purchasing workflow for small and medium businesses — from supplier discovery to shipment delivery. Achievements: Recruited a technical co-founder and built the product demo in 1 week. Shared the demo with 12 potential users and gathered first feedback. Refined positioning and roadmap across 6 reviews with founders and mentors. Currently onboarding design partners and validating willingness to pay.

I'm a PhD economist who studied transaction-cost friction, then spent 15 years building supply-chain software and 3 years personally living procurement pain as an e-commerce operator — now automating it with AI agents

Custis builds enterprise systems across FinTech, EdTech, and Supply Chain Management. Achievements: Architected and deployed an internal LLM platform used by 58% of employees, saving an estimated 13–19% of their working time. Led a 12-month R&D cycle to deploy the platform under strict compliance constraints. Optimized a major supply-chain planning algorithm, cutting runtime from 8 hours to 13 minutes and enabling near-real-time inventory planning

E-commerce business specializing in consumer electronics on Wildberries, the leading CIS marketplace. Achievements: Built and operated a profitable e-commerce business from scratch. Spent year one in the red; iterated on pricing, sourcing, and promotion until profitability. Grew revenue 4× and net profit 15× YoY (2025 vs. 2024). Managed supplier sourcing, inventory planning, pricing, advertising, and logistics. Built operational systems that reduced founder involvement to ~8 hours/week

13 years building enterprise software and leading engineering teams across retail, FinTech, and EdTech. Achievements: Grew an engineering organization from 3 to 20 engineers. Contributed to large-scale enterprise systems used by major retailers. Reduced build times by 6× and automated manual business processes. Created open-source developer tools and launched dozens of projects. Mentored engineers and shared knowledge through internal talks and workshops

Employer-backed EdTech product helping parents verify and review their children's homework. Achievements: Drove 40,000 user sessions in 2 months with nearly zero marketing spend. Ranked #1 in organic search on Yandex for top target keywords. Surveyed 1,000 parents and ran 16 deep customer-development interviews. Secured $35K internal build budget to launch as a dedicated product venture. Shut down after clear evidence of insufficient willingness to pay

Retail electronics business specializing in GPS navigation and multimedia players. Achievements: Launched my first retail business at age 20, scaling to 5 physical shops. Built custom inventory and management systems to run operations 100% remotely

Thesis: "Transaction Costs of the Firm: The Impact of Information Technologies"

Graduated with honors · 3 scholarships