Initially, it was the “Internet of Machines”, when the network connected only powerful scientific and military centers. Next came the “Internet of People” – the system that allowed people across the globe to communicate and share ideas. Then came the “Internet of Things”, which gathered many items and gadgets online: from watches and navigators to toasters and fridges. And the next stage may be the “Internet of Animals”, which will closer connect them with humans. According to many researchers, the connection of animals to the network will be the next round of evolution of the digital world.
One of the leaders of the “Internet of Animals” is the Ukrainian company Petcube. As it often happens with successful businesses, it all started with a trouble. In 2012, Alex Neskin, from Dnipro, faced one of the most serious things that can happen to people – his dog was sad. At the time, Alex was professionally engaged in site development and collaborated with such major customers as Microsoft, Discovery channel, Kyivstar and X-Factor. And his dog was sitting at home alone and was suffering. He suffered so much that he spoiled things and barked about the house, and once the neighbours even called the police.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

In his youth, Andrii Tymoshenko dreamed of being a military officer, so he enrolled in Kyiv Higher Tank Engineering School. However, he finally realized that he did not want to devote his whole life to doing it, and went into business.
Before creating Live Animations, Andrii managed to try his hand at other businesses 13 times. They were completely different, by the way: he rented apartments, repaired and let them daily, sold air purifiers, rented cars, and launched a factory for the production of machines for advertising and souvenir production (he developed the machines himself).
According to Andrii, he stopped doing some business because he was bored with doing monotonous job. So when one day he saw how augmented reality technology works, he realized that he wanted to try himself in this area. He initially offered to cooperate with the British company Zappar, but his partnership was refused. Then Tymoshenko decided to start a business from scratch.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

Grammarly co-founders Oleksii Shevchenko and Max Lytvyn met and became friends in Kyiv while studying at International Christian University, where Americans provided tutoring in English. The friends noted that many students downloaded reports from the Internet, and as the boys themselves tried to study honestly, this practice somewhat embarrassed them. Therefore, in the early 2000s, they decided to develop a system for checking texts for plagiarism. At the time, it was a breakthrough idea, because such a service had almost no competitors.
In a few years, Shevchenko went to study in Canada, and Lytvyn went to the United States. They continued to develop their product remotely, turning it into a service called My Dropbox. It effectively tested texts for plagiarism, and that is why, it quickly became popular among numerous universities around the world.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

Jan Koum was born in a Jewish family in Kyiv. His father worked as a builder and his mother kept the household. Koum’s childhood was in the town of Fastiv and it was very poor – electricity and heating often did not function in the house.
So in the early 1990s, when he was 16, he moved with his mother to California. In the US, it was not easy at first: under the social support program, they got a small apartment, his mother got a job of a baby-sitter, and the teenager worked as a cleaner in a store.
But the immigrants were fortunate enough to accidentally settle in Mountain View, located in Silicon Valley. It was there where there were offices of the largest technology companies and the atmosphere of startups reigned.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

Maksymilian Levchin was born in 1974 in Kyiv in an extraordinary Jewish family: his mother devoted herself to Physics and Programming and his father wrote poetry and prose. The son was named after his father’s literary preferences – in honour of poet Maximilian Voloshin. The future startupper loved technology from early age, and with his father he even belonged to the Kyiv sci-fi fans club “Star Trek”.
In 1991, when Levchin junior was 16, his family moved to the United States. After finishing Chicago high school, Max entered the prestigious University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and graduated receiving Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.
While studying, he took up technological startups. Later, Max mentioned that he had set up four companies at the university, including a developer service and advertising space. They all failed, but they gave the student an understanding of what he wanted to do – to create new products and develop them. Moreover, it is preferable to succeed.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

I am a native inhabitant of Kyiv, so I studied in a school of the capital. Then I joined the faculty of Physics at Kyiv National University, graduating in 1967. My future conscious life was connected to the Institute of Biochemistry, although I worked for some time in France and Turkey. After returning to Ukraine, I created a nanotechnology laboratory. And now I have retired so as not to be distracted, because it takes me a while to complete several research projects.
In particular, I plan to prepare the third edition of my book for scientists on fluorescence technologies. The first two were released by the well-known “Springer” publishing house, and now – by “Nature”. It is a pleasure that the book is on the list of the most successful books of this publishing house, of the best scientific books of the world.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

As a kid, I dreamed of becoming an artist because I once saw a painter with an easel in the street and was amazed by the appearance of the painting on a blank sheet. Once in 6th grade, a biology teacher brought a microscope and a skin of onion to a lesson. Seeing the micro-world with my own eyes, I was no longer able to recover – and still cannot. I was amazed that there was a whole microcosm right in front of us. We do not see or feel it, but it surrounds us, fights with competitors and collaborates with symbiotes. It also controls our life and health.
In fact, we exist because cells, according to very simple rules, organize themselves into new-level structures – organisms that, in turn, are organized according to the same rules into groups, ecosystem populations. This is the same way that individuals organize themselves into work teams – in such an analogy the city will be an organism and the individual citizen – a living cell, a structural cog of the system. But we, humans, can negotiate and get organized. However, why are unicellular organisms also capable of such a super-organization? Unfortunately, we do not know it today.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

I was an excellent student at school. But then, a fairly typical story happened to me when an ordinary school student transferred to the one specializing in Physics and Mathematics – and stopped receiving high marks. But later, at university, I went to “excellent” again.
I could never even imagine being able to leave Physics. Therefore, in order not to change the profession, I had to change the country for a while. I left when Ukraine offered no opportunity to do science, I worked in South Africa, Switzerland, USA, Canada and Italy, but eventually I returned.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

I have always had an “excel syndrome”: I finished school with a gold medal, graduated from MSc with honours. The fact is that learning has always seemed like a game to me – it is extremely interesting: to learn new.
For a very long time I could not decide what I wanted to become: my interests ranged from journalism to political science. However, from the 8th to 9th grade I was interested in scientific research and participated in the work of the Junior Academy of Sciences. My love for literature and the humanities has never disappeared, but professionally I do biology.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.

At school, I did not really like History. When I chose what to be, I wanted to join the Faculty of Geography, but fortunately, I met archaeologists who said that is the craft, but this is science and creativity. Then, using my parents acquaintances’ connections, I got to the first expedition to the Kerch Peninsula. After that, I finally got hooked on archaeology – and that is how I dig my whole life.
Over the years, our science has become more thorough. Previously, the expeditions were often “rescue” when it was necessary to find and uphold artifacts as a matter of urgency so that they would not simply disappear, and the trifles were not taken into consideration. Besides, it seems awful now, but in Soviet times archaeology was also needed to change the historic landscape. We were required to demolish mounds to clear the fields for agriculture. And only recently it has been realized that this is barbarism. Let’s say, we managed to at least partially return the height of the Oguz mound. It is desirable that it be 24 meters, but we managed to get only 12. However, now Oguz is no longer lost in the steppe – it towers, powerful and great.

Read more in the book “Буде тобі наука”.