Starting Again
I got into startups almost by accident in 2011. I was reading Wired UK and started getting curious. I remember thinking, “Man, this is something I’ve got to do.”
I was a student at Durham and started taking buses to tech events around the North East. Later, I’d go down to London for startup events and meetups too.
Back home in Almaty, I think the scene was still pretty small. In the North East, it already seemed really developed, with big data events and stuff like that happening in 2011. I gradually got to know people and became more involved, especially around Durham and Tyneside.
Around then, I came up with my first startup idea, which I called RecruitmentBloc. I was twenty at the time.
The idea was a mobile-first alternative to Blackboard, combining coursework, university life, and graduate recruitment. It was a lot to take on for someone who had never built software before.
I could write business plans, pitch the idea, talk to mentors, and imagine what the product should look like. But I couldn’t build it. I didn’t know how to code, and I never found a technical co-founder, so the project didn’t go much further.
After Durham, I went to Boston for my master’s and tried to start a marketing agency, which didn’t work out. I moved back to Kazakhstan and worked in marketing, analytics, and product at a few early-stage companies. I still wanted to be able to build things myself, so I eventually learned to code.
By then, I had more experience too. Learning to code meant I could put that to use and try ideas out myself.
These days, I’m spending a lot of time learning about AI agents and experimenting with personal projects. I’m also heading back to Durham for postgraduate study, which I wrote about in Going Back to Durham.
I’ll use this blog to write about those projects, what I’m learning, and what’s happening in the North East tech scene.