More often than not, making the perfect transition from the classroom into the real world proves to be a bit of a challenge. Typically, school would provide a slew of theoretical knowledge but much of the professional world is unscripted and theories don’t always cut it.
Every now and then, however, there are people who manage to turn complex numbers in class into practical ideas and actions that have a real effect on the projects they involve themselves in.
Pavlo Pechenyi is one such individual and his impact is directly quantifiable, with his technical efforts in their series A funding round leading to $5m in investment at OneNotary.
His story is one that begins in Zhytomyr, Ukraine and culminates in over a decade of technical expertise acquired from building scalable systems with machine learning and AI.
The Journey so Far: From the Classroom to Raising for a Multimillion Dollar Company
Education
Pavlo Pechenyi educational pursuits predate his professional achievements by nearly a decade but they created the foundation he needed to become the technical leader he has evolved into today.
During his Master’s studies in Applied Mathematics, he began exploring neural networks and artificial intelligence long before these fields became mainstream. This early exposure to AI laid the groundwork for his analytical and problem-solving skills.
Speaking further on how his education impacted his career, Pavlo stated: “I’m very grateful for my education. ‘Cause the approaches that I mastered in university – like finding a solution in an environment with a large number of unknowns, and creating a system based on rules that are far from reality – helped me a lot not only at work but also in life in general.”
One of his first major academic undertakings saw him spend six years at the National Technical University of Ukraine, ‘Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.’ There, he emerged with a Master’s Degree in Applied Mathematics. In the course of getting this degree, he occupied himself momentarily with roles like Risk Manager at a bank and Analyst at a media agency. Both of these are something of a far cry from CTO at OneNotary but they offered him the chance to apply his mathematical expertise to real-world challenges, developing his skills in data analysis and strategic decision-making.
Between 2022 and 2024, he put his passion for learning to the test and got two certificates from Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and one from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. They were:
- Business Development for Founders and Partners
- Strategic Marketing for Top Management
- Advanced Executive Presence Program certificate
Career
Early Days
After honing his analytical and problem-solving skills in the banking and media industries, he made the transition into IT in 2011. His debut position was as a software engineer at ITDoors, closely followed by a senior software engineer position at CloneFish. At the former, he developed a helpdesk system that reduced labor costs and at the latter, he worked on a game development engine while delivering optimized solutions for high-end web services.
Where he really started to make a difference, though, was at Tonic Health. At TonicHealth, he served as a Tech Lead, leading a team of 10 senior developers and overseeing high-impact projects, such as building healthcare notification systems that interacted with over 200,000 patients daily. He noted that his technical contributions and strategic insights played a significant role in the company’s growth and its eventual acquisition.
This was the first instance where his efforts contributed in no small amount to a company’s success and, while it took about five years to get to the point of acquisition, it proved to be a rewarding time.
OneNotary – Pavlo’s Magnum Opus
Finally, in 2020, in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unique challenges to businesses that it posed, Pavlo gathered his technical expertise and co-founded OneNotary, serving as the CTO.
Beyond the millions of dollars invested and the partnership with Docusign as a result, one of the most peculiar things about Pavlo’s work at OneNotary is the sophistication of his idea and approach to improving notarization.
It wasn’t enough for Pavlo to simply create another notarization software. It’s an idea that’s already been executed, after all. The problem, however, is that standard solutions that other companies typically use like AWS Textract, among others, are not cost efficient and simply did not match OneNotary’s needs. Things needed to be better.
Speaking on his idea, Pavlo stated that he had developed a custom machine-learning model combining XGBoost binary classification, computer vision, and optical character recognition (OCR). He explained that this proprietary solution automatically tagged and prefilled documents, reducing preparation time from three hours to just one minute.
That represents a 99.44% decrease in preparation time.
As far as unquantifiable results go, Pavlo mentions that, unlike traditional approaches, his model processes data on-premises, eliminating reliance on external services. He highlighted that this significantly enhances data security, which is a critical requirement in notarization.
His Impact Summarized
While his work at Tonic Health saw him build a notification system that interacted with 200,000 patients daily, Pavlo’s work at OneNotary led to a 99.44% reduction in average notarization time.
This, in turn, allowed them to support more than 10,000 transactions per month and serve enterprise-level clients with zero concerns about speed or efficiency. OneNotary formed a partnership with DocuSign, a multibillion-dollar publicly listed company, and successfully closed its Series A funding round with $5 million secured.
Pavlo’s Dreams for the Future
Even with experience that spans decades and impact that’s recognized in his industry, Pavlo still dreams of more success with the OneNotary business. This could look like anything from an exit that allows him to build more products to an IPO in less than a decade. Either way, an angel investor role is certainly in his line of sight. In the meantime, he’ll continue to meditate, travel, study at business schools and work hard to provide value to people.
