Valentyn Vakatsiienko B9234821b

Who they are

Valentyn Vakatsiienko is at Factorial — he built and shipped 8x3, an iPhone app that ran from 2021 to 2025 and earned a 4.95/5 rating from 400 users before being unpublished.

Person

Valentyn is currently at Factorial. Before or alongside that, he shipped 8x3 — a solo iPhone app he published to the App Store in November 2021. It ran for nearly four years, accumulating 400 ratings and a 4.95/5 score, before being unpublished on July 7, 2025. That rating puts it in rare company: a near-perfect score at that volume is hard to fake and suggests a tight, genuinely useful tool. Possibly — the specialist role pattern on GitHub and the absence of public writing suggest someone who builds quietly rather than narrates loudly. The through-line is craft over profile: ship something, make it good, let the ratings speak.

How they likely show up

  • Solo-shipped 8x3 and maintained it for nearly four years → self-directed, comfortable owning the full product lifecycle without a team.
  • 8x3 earned a 4.95/5 rating from 400 users → sweats the details; that score reflects iteration on feedback, not a one-shot release.
  • App was unpublished rather than kept live in a degraded state → likely holds a high bar for what should be in front of users — pulls things when they're not right.
  • Possibly — specialist role pattern on GitHub with no public writing → probably works heads-down, communicates through output rather than commentary.

Conversation tips

  • → Ask specifically about 8x3 — what the app did, why he built it, and why he unpublished it in July 2025. The decision to pull a well-rated app is a window into how he thinks.
  • → Don't expect him to have a polished personal narrative — he doesn't appear to write publicly, so open-ended questions will land better than prompts to 'tell your story'.
  • → If you want to earn his attention, come with a specific technical or product question rather than a broad conversation starter — the signals point to someone who engages through substance.
  • → Reference the 4.95 rating concretely — it's a real signal of quality and he'll know you actually looked, not just skimmed his profile.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on 8x3's rating — 4.95/5 from 400 users on the App Store is an unusually high quality signal for a solo-built app, and it's a natural anchor for talking about what he actually builds and cares about.
  • Lead with the decision to unpublish 8x3 on July 7, 2025 — pulling a well-rated, actively used app is a deliberate choice and the reasoning behind it will reveal a lot about how he thinks about product quality and maintenance.
  • Reference the timeline: he shipped 8x3 in November 2021 and kept it running for nearly four years alongside whatever else he was doing — ask what motivated sustaining a side project that long.

Discovery questions

  1. What did 8x3 do, and what made you decide to unpublish it in July 2025 rather than keep it running?
  2. How do you approach maintaining a solo-shipped app over multiple years while working a day job — what does that discipline actually look like?
  3. What's the gap between what 8x3 became and what you originally intended it to be?

Avoid

Don't treat the unpublishing of 8x3 as a failure to gloss over — it was a deliberate decision on a well-rated product, and framing it as a setback will misread both the signal and the person.

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Sources

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Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on June 4, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →