Founder stories: How IKI.AI brings clarity to information overload

Entrepreneurship is your fuel to freedom

Poses Ivan Ilin. The Moscow-born scientist with a PhD in applied mathematics made an unexpected turn. From calculating trajectories for space telescopes, he went to building a digital library for professionals. With his startup IKI.AI he helps users gather their distributed knowledge and keep it organized with AI. A solution to a problem that he himself experienced for years.

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The math behind space missions

Ivan started his academic career in the complex world of space travel. “I calculated orbits for space telescopes and was lucky to have one of them launched in 2019, which are orbits around libration points: equilibrium points in space, with manifold dynamics and chaos theory. The same type of orbit used for the James Webb Telescope mission”, he says.

After six years of research and his PhD in his pocket, he suddenly felt an urge to become an entrepreneur. “I've been working on Natural Language Understanding for a while now. In 2015, I became fascinated by how we could use this to organize professional knowledge.” In 2016, he therefore launched together with co-founder Max a platform that helps professionals find various career opportunities.

“We built a system that not only recommends new positions, but also tells you exactly which micro-skills you need”, explains Ivan. “Do you want to work on self-driving cars at Tesla? Then you need specific skills in edge computer vision. Not in time series analysis. That's an entirely different area of machine learning.”

For one week, it was terrible. Then I calmed down again. It also feels affirming when someone steals your idea.

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Lessons from setbacks

“I pitched the idea to someone from a very large company. They interviewed me and later I found that they had copied our complete concept.” Ivan's voice still reveals some frustration, but above all acceptance.

“For one week, it was terrible. Then I calmed down again. It also feels affirming when someone steals your idea. It means you're doing a good job with innovation.” Instead of starting a legal battle, the team decided to go ahead.

With this experience under their belt, Ivan and Max spent some time focusing on machine learning consultancy for startups and large companies. Later, Ivan entered the business world. “I was responsible for building a major voice assistant with 30 million monthly active users. A system that was supposed to provide factual answers based on real-world knowledge. Exactly what I was interested in.”

The eureka moment

In 2023, the eureka moment came that led to IKI.AI. “We're all overflowing with content,” says Ivan. “You have 50 open tabs in your browser, valuable links that colleagues share, PDFs that your company emails around, but no time to read everything. You need a place to store all that information AND an assistant to help you make sense of it.”

This need resulted in IKI.AI: an LLM-native digital library that not only stores information, but also allows you to chat and perform complex reasoning tasks. “The system reads everything you save, even transcribes YouTube videos, and extracts full text from web pages. It then has all the knowledge you would have had if you had time to read it all.”

The program helped validate our idea and we met Tjarda from Founded, who brought us into contact with the right people.

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The Netherlands as a catalyst

Moving to the Netherlands was not on the agenda, but proved decisive. For a while, Ivan traveled around the world, such as San Francisco, Dubai and Bali, in search of a new home. “I was looking for the right environment to build our company”, he says. “I knew some French and wanted to go back to the western world.”

His trip eventually took him to Groningen, where he received an invitation from the NOM to their startup program. There he met Ytsen van der Meer, who later brought him into contact with Thomas Mensink. He wrote Golden Egg Capital's first check to IKI.AI. “I had already spent quite a bit of time in Western Europe and appreciated the culture. This was a great opportunity to dive in and become part of the Dutch startup scene.”

“The program helped validate our idea and we met Tjarda from Founded, who brought us into contact with the right people.” He liked the Dutch directness: “Here, people immediately say how things work. That saves you months of trying.”

“Create your own happiness”

If Ivan has learned one lesson in his entrepreneurial journey, it's that you have to create opportunities yourself. “In Silicon Valley, people are often 'hungry' when it comes to technology. Things are faster there and there are many more investors. Here in Europe, tech startups are less common, so we need to be even more proactive. No waiting for the perfect moment or that one connection. You have to take action and take responsibility.”

This philosophy is reflected in how he builds IKI.AI. “We've developed a great product by constantly refining it. First it was 3 out of 5, then 3.5, now 4 I think. Getting a little better every day: that's the secret.”

An important moment came when Ivan published a piece about Retrieval Augmented Generation and shortly afterwards a major post about Agents on X. These were emerging tech trends in 2023, so he got thousands of responses from engineers around the world. These posts went viral unexpectedly. “Those two posts got us around 3,000 subscribers before we even launched”, Ivan recalls. The team launched on Product Hunt and became Product of the Day. Would they be in the same position today without those viral moments? His answer is clear: “No.”

But he doesn't just attribute this success to luck. “It's about sharing your ideas, expertise, and vision in a way that resonates with people. We were talking about a problem that everyone has, but few had expressed.” His early interest was invaluable and gave IKI.AI an engaged user base ready to try their product as soon as it was there.

You need someone with complementary skills.

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Leading a remote team

The IKI.ai team consists of five full-time engineers who work completely remotely. “We work with sprints and goals. In the meantime, we have regular meetings, discuss ongoing tasks, develop features and set expectations for the sprint. Exactly how it works in larger companies, but I don't see my employees in the office. It's all about trust and clarity.”

According to Ivan, Max, co-founder of IKI.AI, is very important to success. “You need someone with complementary skills. Max is a world-class designer and, above all, a visionary. I would never have been able to do this alone.”

Vision for the future

Ivan's ambition for IKI.AI is clear: “We want to become the standard for personal knowledge management. Similar to Notion, but before the LLM era. Just like Superhuman is in a world where Gmail already exists.” But he remains realistic: “The game changes with every OpenAI or Anthropic release today. With all the developments of the major labs and other players, it's difficult to have a 5-year product plan, but you need to have a clear vision.”

In September 2024, after months of development, the team activated the paid subscriptions. “We already had 10,000 registered users when we set up Stripe. By collaborating with a marketing partner, we generated €200,000 in sales in a quarter. Proof that there is a demand for our solution.”

Advice for starters

Ivan's main advice for beginning entrepreneurs is direct: “Be honest and clear about what you want to achieve and what your plan looks like. Even if you have an idea or technology, you need to be able to spread it. And you need partners to build on because you can't control everything yourself.”

“Entrepreneurship is your fuel to freedom”, he insists again. “It's not just about the money, it's about the process. People sometimes spend 3, 5, or 10 years building something complex, even though they could have had a safe place in a large company. Invest in yourself, learn how to sell, and take the lead. But most importantly, enjoy that process.”

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Interview & text by Lars Meijer