Product Strategy in Kropyvnytskyi

Product strategy in Kropyvnytskyi: why this is not Kyiv or San Francisco

In Kropyvnytskyi product strategy works differently than in capitals. In Kyiv you have hundreds of startups, dozens of funds, the UVCA ecosystem, regular meetups and easy access to a mentor of any profile. In Kropyvnytskyi all this is limited — several active teams, mostly KNTU graduates, several angel investors from the agricultural business and a very specific advantage: proximity to the real economy. If in Kyiv your neighbor builds yet another fintech or marketplace, then in Kropyvnytskyi your neighbor is a farmer with 800 hectares, a parts dealer with 4 million EUR turnover, a director of a processing workshop. This means you have unique access to problems not seen in Kyiv or Berlin. The task of product strategy is to turn this proximity into competitive advantage.

Product genres I see in Kropyvnytskyi

The first genre is agritech. This is the most natural genre for the region: accounting SaaS for farms, GPS field monitoring, seed and pesticide marketplaces, computer vision for pest and disease recognition, drones for precision farming. Here Kropyvnytskyi advantages are real validation on real fields. A Kyiv startup with an agri product often goes for 'a check' with a familiar farmer in Poltava, and that is fine, but a Kropyvnytskyi startup literally lives among clients. The second genre is machinery B2B products: SaaS for agri equipment dealers, parts marketplaces, service maintenance accounting systems. Here the legacy of Chervona Zirka and proximity to AGCO, JCB, John Deere dealers give expertise that Kyiv frontend developers do not have. The third genre is educational and B2C products from KNTU graduates: courses, services, mobile apps. This genre is the hardest because it competes with the global market. Business model details are described in business consulting.

How I run a discovery sprint

A classic discovery sprint lasts 4 weeks and has a clear structure. Week 1: recruitment of 20-30 potential users through the founder network, LinkedIn, Telegram communities, personal contacts. I personally write cold messages because most founders cannot. Conversion from cold contact to interview is 25-35%, so to get 20 conversations one has to write 60-80 messages. Week 2-3: running interviews 5-7 per week, each 45-60 minutes. I either run them personally or together with the founder, teaching how to ask the right questions. Week 4: synthesis — transcripts, tagging by categories (user type, pain, current solution, willingness to pay), pattern search. The output is a JTBD (Jobs to Be Done) map, segmentation with priorities, value hypothesis, draft positioning. This is the foundation on which everything next is built. Without this foundation it is impossible to move further. If a landing for validation is needed in the project — I plug in web design.

Specifics of agri-SaaS on Kirovohrad oblast fields

Agri-SaaS is a complex segment for several reasons. First: your user is often 50-65 years old, not friendly with technology, uses a button phone or a basic smartphone. The UI must be simpler than Telegram. Second: internet in the field is unreliable, so the application must work offline-first with sync upon network appearance. Third: sale is not self-service, it is personal meetings, field demos, tractor operator training. CAC is high but LTV is also high — a farmer who connected the system rarely disconnects. Fourth: seasonality — sales are concentrated in March-April (preparation for sowing) and September-October (preparation for harvest). I help plan the product roadmap with seasonality, build sales channels through agri equipment dealers and cooperatives, set up customer success so that users do not disappear between seasons. If we need to optimize the funnel in parallel — I plug in CRO.

MVP for tractor operators: technical decisions

I build first MVPs for the agricultural segment on the simplest possible technologies. Backend — Django or Rails because it is fast and reliable. Frontend — plain HTML+TailwindCSS, without React, without single-page application: works on old smartphones, loads in 2 seconds, does not break on bad 3G. Mobile app — Progressive Web App or React Native only if really needed. Database — Postgres with a simple schema. Auth — via SMS because many users have no email or rarely check it. Payments — LiqPay or Fondy for the Ukrainian market, Stripe if you plan export. Hosting — Hetzner or DigitalOcean, without overengineering like Kubernetes at early stage. I personally help founders pick the stack and do not let the CTO dream about microservices until there are 1000 paying clients. Stack details for the web part — in web design.

Product metrics and the founder dashboard

The founder of a product company should live with 5-7 metrics, no more. The first — Weekly Active Users / Monthly Active Users (for B2B SaaS) or Daily Active Users / Monthly (for consumer). The second — retention cohorts: what share of users who registered in January is active in February, March, April. This is the most important metric — if retention drops to zero in 4 weeks, you have no PMF. The third — activation rate: what share of new users performs the key action (for example, adds the first field to the system) in the first 24-48 hours. The fourth — paid conversion: what share of trial users becomes paying. The fifth — Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and its MoM growth. The sixth — Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV) — ratio should be 1:3 or better. The seventh — NPS and churn reasons (churn interviews). I build this dashboard in Mixpanel or PostHog with auto-update, and the founder looks at it daily over coffee. Metrics approach in the business part — in business consulting.

First 50 paying clients: manual sales

The most common illusion of product founders — 'we will make a landing, turn on ads, and clients will come'. In reality the first 50 paying clients are sold manually through personal calls, demos, letters, exhibitions. For the agricultural segment in Kropyvnytskyi this means trips to farmers, demos in the field, presentations at agro conferences in Kyiv and Dnipro (AgroExpo, AgroSpring), partnerships with equipment dealers. I help the founder establish a rhythm of cold outreach: 30-50 touches per week, scripts, CRM, conversion tracking at each funnel stage. Often this is the most painful phase for technical founders who love code, not people. I either personally take on the first 20-30 sales or hire a sales freelancer at half rate. Without this phase the product does not take off no matter how much you invest in Google Ads. Lead generation details — in CRO.

Transition from MVP to product: when and how

If the MVP reached 30-50 paying clients with stable retention in 3-6 months, time to transition to a full product. This means: rewriting critical modules on a stable stack (from no-code to code, from prototype to production), hiring the first full-time developer or tech lead, building automated tests and CI/CD, organizing the backend to support 1000+ users. Here I help with stack choice, hiring, setting up engineering processes (Linear or Jira, Notion for documentation, GitHub with a PR flow). In parallel we build a product roadmap for 12 months with quarterly goals, describe the product process discovery -> design -> dev -> launch -> measure. This is the phase where the company stops being a startup and becomes an organization. Team management details — in business consulting.

Positioning agri-SaaS on the Ukrainian market

The Ukrainian agri market looks homogeneous from outside, but inside it is 4-5 different segments with different economics and behavior. Small farms 100-500 hectares — private holdings, often family-run, decision is taken by one person, technology budget is 50-300 EUR per year. Mid farms 1-3 thousand hectares — the best segment for SaaS: there is money for 100-500 EUR monthly subscription, there is an accounting problem, there is openness to new things. Large agriholdings 5-50 thousand hectares — IT department, tenders, complex procurement, sales cycle 6-12 months, contracts from 5000 EUR per month. Very large holdings 50+ thousand hectares (MHP, Kernel, Astarta) — closed systems, ERP from SAP or 1C, selling SaaS to them is almost impossible, you have to integrate as a module. I help pick one target segment rather than trying to sell to everyone — that is the classic mistake that kills agritech startups. Positioning is written not from features ('we have GPS monitoring') but from outcome ('save 18% on fuel per season'). I gather real phrases from Kirovohrad oblast farm owners during field interviews and embed them into positioning. It sounds simple, but it gives a 2-3x conversion difference compared to abstract 'innovative solution' wording. Copy details — in CRO.

Turning farm bookkeeping into a product

One of the most interesting genres in Kropyvnytskyi — a farmer who kept his own farm accounting in Excel for 5-10 years, built a working system, and now thinks 'maybe this is a product for the neighbors'. I treat such ideas carefully, but sometimes they turn into strong businesses. Validation questions to answer honestly. First: does your system work only because YOU run it, or could another person use it without you? If it breaks without you, it is not a product, it is your work process. Second: how long does onboarding take for a new farm? If 3-7 days of training, it is a product. If months of consulting, it is a service masked as a product. Third: are 5-10 of your fellow farmers ready to pay 100-200 EUR per month right now, before the product exists? If no, there is no market. If yes, there is a chance. I help validate each of these questions through customer interviews and pre-sales: we make a simple landing with a feature promise, collect pre-orders with 50% prepayment. If 5-10 farms pay upfront, we start building the MVP. If not, we either return to research or drop the idea. This is a harsh but honest filter.

Field research with tractor operators and agronomists

Research work for an agri product is different from typical B2B interviews. First, your user often cannot be reached through LinkedIn or email — he has no LinkedIn and email is checked once a month. I find respondents through agri equipment dealers on Velyka Perspektyvna, through district agronomic services, through fellow farmers who 'count among ourselves'. Second, the interview does not happen on Zoom — it goes to the field or the farm. A tractor operator will not sit on camera but will gladly talk while filling fuel into the tank. The founder and I spend 2-3 working days on 'field trips' to 4-6 farms within 100 km of Kropyvnytskyi (Oleksandrivskyi, Znamianskyi, Novoukrainskyi, Bobrynetskyi districts). Third, you have to understand seasonal context: an interview in March (sowing prep) and September (harvest) will give completely different answers. Fourth specific: the respondent does not like theoretical questions like 'what would you want from an ideal app'. He wants concrete 'show how you count fuel for one field now' — and he starts showing the real process with paper, pencil, memory. These are golden data you cannot get from any survey. Design details — in web design.

MVP for tractor operators: what works and what fails

Over 4 years of work with agri products in the region I have seen dozens of MVPs and have a clear list of what works and what fails. Works: SMS interface for basic functions (the operator presses 1-2-3 on a button phone and logs fueling), voice input through bots (the agronomist dictates to a Telegram bot instead of filling a form), simple mobile app with 3-5 screens without menu (one task — one screen), offline mode with sync upon network appearance (the field is often without 4G). Does not work: complex dashboards with 20 metrics (the manager does not look at them), web apps on desktop (the farmer is in the field, not the office), systems requiring daily data entry (it is perceived as work, not help), iOS-only apps (Android dominates the region), complex registration with email and password (SMS auth is needed). I personally help founders avoid these traps because the logic of an urban product manager contradicts the logic of a field user. The best agri products in Kropyvnytskyi look like an exaggerated simple Telegram bot, not like a SaaS from SF — and that is exactly why they work.

Monetization for niche SaaS in the region

Niche B2B SaaS in Kropyvnytskyi has specific monetization models. Classic 'X EUR per user per month' subscription works poorly — a farmer has 1-3 users, so ARPU is small while support is costly. Better — per-farm or per-hectare subscription. For example, '1 EUR per hectare per year' for an accounting SaaS: a 1500-hectare farm pays 1500 EUR a year, which gives acceptable economics. Second model — combined: a fixed account fee (50-100 EUR per month) + transactional commission on each operation or volume (0.1-0.3% of the turnover passing through the platform). Third model — freemium with premium features: basic accounting free, analytics and forecasting paid. This works for the mass segment but requires large user volume. Fourth — selling data: we aggregate anonymized info about yields, prices, technologies and sell to insurers, banks, pesticide and seed suppliers. This is the hardest model but gives 3-5x higher LTV than direct subscription. I help pick the right model and validate it through 10-20 conversations with clients and competitors. Economics details — in business consulting.

Common mistakes of Kropyvnytskyi founders

Over years of observation I have collected the top mistakes I see regularly. First: building a product for 'farmers in general' rather than for a concrete segment (a mid 1-3 thousand hectare farm growing winter wheat and sunflower). Second: hiring a CTO and developer team before the first 5-10 paying clients are found. Third: investing 6-9 months in beautiful UI before feature value is validated. Fourth: building a native mobile app from scratch instead of a Progressive Web App — months of extra work without added value. Fifth: taking seed investment before PMF is found — money burns, investors push, the product suffers. Sixth: ignoring customer success — assuming the user will figure it out himself. In the agri segment without personal support 70% of users abandon the product in the first 90 days. Seventh: overestimating TAM (total addressable market) — '40 thousand farms in Ukraine' actually means 'our real paying segment is 3-5 thousand farms'. Look at a realistic SAM, not the TAM from pitch decks.

How to start working together

The first step is a 30-minute Zoom call where you tell about the idea or current product, I ask questions and give an honest assessment. Often on this call I say 'do not start' — if the idea is weak, the market is small or you are not ready to dedicate 2-3 years of your life to it. This is free and honest. If there is mutual interest, I prepare a short discovery sprint or strategy engagement plan, send a commercial proposal. We sign the contract and NDA, and start in 5-7 days. I take a maximum of 3-4 product clients at a time, so the queue can be 1-2 months. Teams from the agri segment and KNTU graduates are especially welcome — for them I sometimes do pro bono first 4 weeks if the idea is strong. Write me by email, I reply personally within 24 hours. If you are from Kropyvnytskyi, we can meet in person at a coworking or in your office.