Today is a big day for the Artifakt team as I am announcing the promotion of our very own Svetlana Pogodina from COO to Managing Director and late founder. 

I couldn’t be more happy and proud of this decision. Svetlana (or Lana, as we affectionately call her!) has become a vital part of Artifakt—in many ways she is the soul and mind of this family. When she first joined our small team, back in 2017, her uniqueness and intelligence were inspiring. Lana has made her mark in Artifakt, not only as an accomplished professional but more so as a leader. Lana’s diverse cultural and professional background has given Artifakt this standout international character we all are so proud of. 

And now, through her new position as Managing Director and late founder, she can have an even bigger impact on the vision and mission of Artifakt, our strategic choices, as well as business development.

But I talked long enough already! Let’s give the floor to Svetlana herself and have a look at the future of Artifakt through her eyes. 

Meeting Lana, Managing Director at Artifakt

So, I joined Artifakt back in 2017 coming from a very diverse background, both personal and professional. I have French and Russian heritage and I have done studies and worked in a variety of different fields including international business, public relations, communications, linguistics, and international affairs. I believe it’s this diverse background that got me this position! 

It’s quite normal for me to work on an international level and in a multicultural environment. So, building a company on a national level, within the French borders, was of no interest to me. Thankfully, Aymeric and I were aligned on this vision to build a product-first, global company.

I did not want the industry to view Artifakt as another French company, based in Paris. Our product serves a global need—a real need developers and companies are dealing with on a global scale. So, we need to go bold and we need to go big! 

We have definitely faced challenges and we will face even more. We are experimenting, exploring, and discovering ourselves every day. But we are definitely staying true to that global vision!

What makes Artifakt unique—company culture and future plans

Building a global company is not important only when designing the product, in the sense of making sure our product indeed meets a global need. This is also important when building the team and company culture, and when hiring people. My vision is to have an internationally distributed team of experts, contributing to our multicultural character. And here I want to clarify what I mean when I say “experts”. 

Artifakt needs people who are not only good at what they do but also love what they do! We need tech-savvy, passionate people that will take ownership and just run with it! Let’s say you are a content manager. You owning the Artifakt content means you own a part of the company—you are managing a micro version of Artifakt, in a sense. When you love what you do, you do it well. And this makes your job profitable and so is the company. If you are in a certain position only to do what you are asked to do, you have no desire to grow and evolve, it is a loss to the employee and the employer alike. 

A company can have the perfect product, tools, momentum, etc. but with the wrong people, it’s going to be a loss every time. More important than product and tools, is having the right people, in the right position, at the right time.

Artifakt is not trying to become an international company—we already are! But part of my mission is to make sure we keep growing and evolving in the right direction.

Artifakt as a product-first company—vision and scope

Going back to the point about building a product-first company, I want to make sure we have all the right recipes to scale and evolve. 

For me, 2021 will be all about making Artifakt the right product for the right target market. I want Artifakt to be the go-to solution for developers. And this is the main driver behind the complete platform rebuild we are currently working on. 

Our Engineering Team is currently migrating our platform to unleash the power of container technology and offer our users the most efficient, scalable, and resilient product possible.

My mission for 2021 is to make sure the Artifakt teams have no obstacles in building and scaling not only our product itself but our product culture as well.