From Developer to CTO and COO at Manychat

Alexander Polomodov and Dmitry Kushnikov start with the early web, Beeline’s mobile portal, and projects that closed. On one of them, pairing sped up engineering decisions, but the release failed to attract an audience. On another, the team kept payments outside its group-buying service even though its business depended on a commission.

Dmitry joined Manychat as a backend developer after leading teams elsewhere. He helped ship Flow Builder, a visual editor for messaging workflows. Building for marketers gave the team a basis for choosing what the editor should support. As the company grew, Kushnikov took on hiring and led development, while engineers took responsibility for quality across the delivery process.

The conversation turns to the values Manychat uses in interviews and performance reviews. Alexander brings up the risk of people following criteria by rote. Dmitry explains why he wants people to decide how to apply a principle. When opening international offices, he benefited from a co-founder’s trust and the freedom to make mistakes himself.

Dmitry closes by comparing predictable Flow Builder workflows with generative AI responses. A mistake in a conversation with an audience carries more risk than an internal experiment. He describes giving engineers time to try AI on their own work before deciding what to bring into the product.