Ivan is a serial entrepreneur and a designer of voice-first products. Ivan co-founded MyBuddy.ai -- a voice-based English tutor for kids. Since its launch in 2018, MyBuddy.ai's app has reached 15 thousand paying students and is growing by 20% per month. Buddy has received several international awards, including the Global EdTech Innovation Award (GESA) 2019. The product was inspired by Ivan's daughter's struggle to learn to speak English when they moved to the U.S. The desire to help his daughter speak English and a passion for voice technology turned into a mission -- to make English speaking practice affordable to over 500 million children around the globe. Before MyBuddy.ai, Ivan was a co-founder and CMO at Cubic.ai, the company that had been building an Amazon Echo-like smart speaker before Amazon announced the Echo. The company was acquired. Ivan moved to the U.S. from Siberia with his wife and daughters. This journey has made Ivan passionate about helping immigrant families.