“We give entrepreneurs competence, then they earn money on their own,” Artem Makeev, CEO of UNIT School of Business
The UNIT School of Business, based at the UNIT.City, has been teaching micro, small and medium business entrepreneurs for about two years using the methodology of the University of California – Berkeley, and has 650 graduates already. Artem Makeev, co-founder and CEO of USB, told MC.today how he met the founder of the UFuture holding company Vasyl Khmelnytsky, why he decided to open a business school, and how it differs from others.
Life road
Artem loved to earn money since childhood. At the age of 10, he and his friends handed over the waste paper and spent the money on ice cream and cartoons. Until the age of 23, he was engaged in sales, then grew oyster mushrooms, worked as a radio host, for six years working in the restaurant and then in the banking sector.
“My team and I built a credit network across the country and earned $100K a day,” said the CEO of USB.
In 2008, Artem created canteens for the homeless and low-income. Since 2014, he has been engaged in cottage construction, metal-plastic windows, selling products wholesale and retail.
Mentorship
After working for a year in various businesses, Artem noted that entrepreneurs who knew how to make good money made basic mistakes in management, planning, teamwork. Artem started to consult entrepreneurs on various business issues, and they got back to him for advice again and again. For four years he studied the basics of coaching, read dozens of books on applied psychology and therapy, and business literature.
UNIT School of Business
“Over time, I realized that I wanted to help more. Experience in consulting prompted me to create a business school. I was working on its prototype for about three months when I met my future business partner Vlad Nozdrachev. He offered to found a school at the UNIT.City,” says Artem.
Together with Vlad, they presented the project to Vasyl Khmelnytsky, the founder of UFuture.
The school helps entrepreneurs to get, first of all, competencies, and then they earn money on their own. If the number of entrepreneurs in Ukraine will increase so that the GDP created by small and medium-sized businesses reaches 80%, it would be a victory for the USB team.
At the USB, students find partners and contractors for their projects, attract investments in accelerators, investment funds or create new companies or startups with other residents of the UNIT.City innovation park. In one and a half years, the school successfully trained 650 entrepreneurs. 52% of them are owners of restaurants, beauty salons, video, and design studios, fitness clubs, etc. 33% of students are manufacturers of furniture, jewelry, clothing, etc., and 14% are owners of the distribution businesses.
Artem believes:
“Entrepreneurs are the driving force that will make Ukraine weighty in the world.”
Read more about how USB helps Ukrainian businesses become successful via the link.