Tatiana Fuforeva is an entrepreneur and COO at SharpShark.io – a WEB3 copyright protection tool // Techstars Seattle backed project.
She graduated from the Philosophy faculty but quickly got involved in business. She founded an offline project from scratch and ran it successfully for 6 years, and finally she sold it as a profitable working business. She has a fancy about studying blockchain technology and implementing all new information and skills in the project at once. Her personal interests range from Crypto, SMM to marketing hacks.
What were your initial years of growing up like? Tell us about your life before starting your corporate journey/venture/initiative.
I grew up in a small town where there was no sense at all that any future was possible.
The only option to develop myself was to study. So I started to study social science hard, I prepared for exams and managed to get into the best university in the country. And there I commenced my first project. Those were wondrous times.
Was there any turning point in your life that changed your journey? If so, what was it? Please tell us the backstory behind it.
All turning points in my life have been associated with certain people – partners in projects in every step of the way. This is why human relationships are the most valuable thing in the world to me. Interaction with people and the environment is always a process of accumulating experience, and when quantity is converted into quality, the slightest trigger is enough to start the processes of transformations.
For example, for sure the turning point was a meeting of my first partner in the strange place where people dance the Argentine tango. As well, the meeting of my second partner in Chile in the middle of a quarantine was also a life changing event.
Every industry that is now a large-scale, top-notch business once started as a small idea in the minds of entrepreneurs. What was that idea that made you start this brand? How did such a unique idea strike you, and what motivated you “YES, go for it?”
To be honest, nothing particularly unique was invented. There was just the idea of a hairdressing business, and a partner who knew hairdressing at the highest level. My job was to build a business process around it, which I did. That is my meta-skill.
Tell us something about your initiative or current role. What is it about, and what impact are you trying to make?
I suppose now the competition is not even at the level of companies, but at the level of business processes and the ability to build them antifragile. What I am doing now in our project is streamlining chaos. The CEO creates chaos, out of which I make orders and a working business process.
Everyone has their own set of challenges when starting an entrepreneurial journey. Still, the most essential part for others to learn is how you deal with those. Would you like to share with us your challenges and your coping mechanisms?
At the level where I am, all business challenges are a reflection of my personal challenges and the inefficient decision-making patterns that I have. My task now, and what I am working on with my coach, is to identify and correct those mechanisms.
While the global pandemic of COVID-19 is associated primarily with adversities, it has also brought about a true boom in startups, with successful entrepreneurship in many countries. The pandemic has impacted all of us in one way or another. Would you like to share your experience on a personal and professional level?
For me personally, the pandemic was a great challenge. I emotionally went through it hard and it was super LOW. Before the pandemic started, we successfully sold the beauty project that I had been managing for 6 years. And so it turned out that I was not able to readjust so quickly to a new rails i.e. to start a new project from scratch in a new market and in a new niche. In the midst of the quarantine, when I was looking for a new direction for development in the business I met Sasha – the CEO of SharpShark – and she suggested that I join. And together we created a lot more in the meantime.
Your journey and your vision are very inspiring, but are there any achievements or accomplishments you would like to mention?
The most significant recent achievements for me are associated with the SharpShark project. We won the ICEX programme in Spain, which gave us the opportunity for the Spanish government to offer us to relocate and develop the product in Europe. After that, we passed the Techstars Seattle accelerator and received an investment.
Would you like to share with our young budding women entrepreneurs the change you would like to see in the world if given an opportunity?
I would like to see our world as a loving, thinking and accepting one. So that discrimination by gender, race, passport, etc. could at least be reduced, if not eliminated altogether.
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in your personal life and professional journey? What is your personal motto in life?
The most important thing for me turned out to be listening to my condition and my intuition. We are all usually told to keep pushing forward and not to stop. But this strategy doesn’t always work. So now I’m learning to listen to myself and achieve my true goals, not those imposed by others.
Women are a growing force in the workplaces worldwide, standing shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. There are cracks in glass ceilings everywhere, with many women breaking through to carve out a space right at the top of the pyramid. What are your thoughts about women leadership today?
I think it’s lit and very inspiring. We really do business a little differently. And that’s cool. I think women are more inclined to do projects that heal this world, literally. I’m convinced that if business just doesn’t hurt, it’s still not enough in our world. Business should only heal. I would really like to see more women in the world, not only in economics and business, but also in politics. I am convinced that the world would change for the better in this manner.
With your grit and determination, you are making a considerable impact, breaking through, and serving as role models for many budding entrepreneurs. What would you want to say to our young women leaders/audience reading this?
Do your self-development, because any business and any project is a project of yours.
Study Philosophy, Psychology, Art, put it all into practice, and everything will be cool!
