This article was originally published in Authority Magazine on 17 June 2021.
Authority Magazine devoted to sharing interesting feature interviews of people who are authorities in Business, Film, Sports and Tech.

Know yourself, and know that whatever you don’t know about yourself, you are going to learn the hard way. I made a conclusion that YOU are YOUR company. If you lie to yourself about your weaknesses, you will kill your business in the process.

As a part of Authority Magazine’s series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, they had the pleasure of interviewing Daria Dmytrenko.

Daria Dmytrenko is a serial technologist and entrepreneur who focuses on innovations that strongly impact culture and society. She is a strong force of nature who specializes in taking tech companies from idea to deployment, and at only 26 years old, Ms. Dmytrenko already has an impressive track record of success stories. She helped develop UNIT.City, the first innovation park in Ukraine, which created the infrastructure and ecosystem for startup companies across central and eastern Europe to scale and have access to better resources. She also worked with the teams building Prozorro, a Ukrainian Governmental platform that received the Distinguished International Award at the Global Summit in Paris for its aid in the development of national transparency. She is skilled at managing large development teams to scale and deploy technology platforms.

She now focuses on platform-enabled marketing, managing The Global Ads Network, the first AI powered digital marketplace, and as the COO of IGnation, a company she co-created with the vision of creating a perfect recipe whereby anyone can become a social media influencer.

I grew up surrounded by business owners and innovation in all things, and while traveling around the world and seeing how entrepreneurs are different in all places, I loved how people were making something out of nothing in food, music, paintings and in technology.

I spent 4 years in Greece and studied to develop a solid understanding of numerous core business concepts from a global perspective.

Later, while I was working in the first innovation park in Ukraine — which created the infrastructure and ecosystem for startup companies across central and eastern Europe — I discovered my own talent and thought, “why be busy developing ideas for others when I could turn my own creativity into a reality people will love?!”

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

We’re on a mission to remove the barriers that hinder Instagram bloggers of any level from doing business globally — especially at the local level. By cutting out the red tape and complexities that hamper Instagram bloggers’ business from expanding internationally, my team and I are trying to help our users organically conduct Instagram business around the world.

We all need a little help along the journey — who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?

Mentorship is incredibly important and it can shave years off my learning curve, but I’m a big fan of self-education, most knowledge isn’t accessible in books, schools and mentors.

Lately I have stopped seeking mentors in the hopes that they will lift me up. Instead, I go out and create a community that will push me, support me, and teach me.

Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.

1. Know yourself, and know that whatever you don’t know about yourself, you are going to learn the hard way. I made a conclusion that YOU are YOUR company. If you lie to yourself about your weaknesses, you will kill your business in the process.
2. View failure as a gift. When the business is in pain, it will force you into submission, and if you listen, it will give back to you.
3. Don’t forget to give back and give help to those who are looking for it. The more you can learn and the more you can be involved is essential to continually educate yourself.

How are you going to shake things up next?

Marketing is the lifeblood of business. The aim of IGnation.me is to bring smart marketing to brands and everyday people alike. Therefore, our next major milestone is to reach a significant threshold of people so that we can help marketers and individuals alike to create sales by simply developing their Instagram profiles.

Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari.

I receive it as a present last year from my co-founder, Andrew. For me this book is a bible of mankind’s cultural and economic and philosophical evolution.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

The way social movements are created now is that you release an idea that other people take up as their own. And social media is the new heart of political protests. So if I could inspire a movement about critical thinking, about carefully analyzing, processing and making sense of information, it will be more than wonderful.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

In one of his interviews, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s advice was “trust yourself”.

When you’re young, you hear that you don’t have experience to do things, that there are people that have more experience than you. But Zuckerberg started Facebook when he was just 19. His success is an important reminder for me that you are never too young (or too old) to achieve something significant in your own life.

If you have a clear vision, and you know what it is that you are trying to achieve, listen to your instincts and have faith in yourself.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dmytrenko.daria

Instagram: Instagram.com/_dm.daria_

Instagam.com/IGNATION.ME

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Authority Magazine is all about Leadership Lessons from Authorities in Business, Pop Culture, Wellness, Social Impact, and Tech. They use interviews to draw out stories that are both empowering and actionable. For more inspiring stories visit their website. 

This WBS Blog version was edited by Kasia Kicinska and published under our Student Minds column series.