As part of the joint project by Digital Business and Astana Hub, “100 Startup Stories of Central Asia,” he spoke about what happened to his first projects, what makes JobEscape valuable for everyday users, and why this startup could potentially reach hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in the future.
“We Received an Offer and Decided It Was the Right Time to Cash Out”
— Miras, your startup journey began with an agriculture-focused project. Can you tell us how it turned out?
— At the beginning, everything was going quite well. After launching the platform, we quickly acquired paying customers, and later we raised $150,000 in investment from an Australian venture fund based in Hong Kong.
However, it soon became clear that scaling the project required significantly more capital. For example, our closest competitor around the same time closed a $10 million round without even having revenue. At that time—and perhaps even now—there simply isn’t that kind of money available in our market. As a result, we had to shut the project down.
— What happened next? When did you decide to launch a new startup?
— Almost immediately. At that time, my current JobEscape co-founder, Margulan Yermek, was working on a facial recognition project for BI Group. The issue was that apartment renovations “turnkey” in their buildings were handled by a single contractor. BI Group needed a tool to track whether a worker actually showed up for their shift, since this directly affected whether a project could be delivered on time.
It quickly became clear, however, that apart from BI Group, almost no one in Kazakhstan really needed such a solution. When I was shutting down my AgriTech project, Margulan asked me to help him on the business side. As a result, we pivoted toward education—a market that seemed more promising to us.
Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic had just begun, and many things were rapidly moving online. That’s when we decided to build an anti-cheating system for online exams.
— How successful was that project?
— We managed to exit. It was a reasonable exit by Kazakhstan market standards. The buyers reviewed our profits, modeled a valuation, and acquired the company as a private equity deal. The amount was six figures, but still under one million dollars.
Why did we decide to sell? We received an offer and felt that it made sense to cash out at that point. At the time, it was unclear what would happen to exams after the pandemic. So we decided to sell the project and move on.
For me, as a 23-year-old at the time, the exit money was a significant sum—enough for bread with butter and black caviar. Overall, everything was great.
“At the Start, My Co-Founder and I Put in $20,000 of Our Own Money”
— Did the JobEscape story begin right after the exit?
— No. I felt a bit burned out from startups and decided to try working a regular job—for the first time in my life. I moved to Dubai, where I worked in the strategy department, internal consulting, at DIFC (Dubai International Financial Centre).
But I didn’t like it there. Most of my responsibilities involved creating presentations for the CEO, who would look at the first and last slides and then say, “OK, cool.” That was the last thing I wanted to spend my time on.
At the same time, Margulan was working within the Ukrainian holding company Genesis, focusing on performance marketing—running ads on Google, Meta, and other platforms. Eventually, he suggested launching a B2C project in Kazakhstan with a strong focus on performance marketing.
We brainstormed several ideas and narrowed them down to two products. We built MVPs and launched them as tests to gauge demand.
The first was Bloomy—a service for pregnant women with various tips and exercises. However, we quickly realized that such a product comes with a high level of responsibility, as every woman requires an individual approach. We didn’t want to get into something overly complex, even though from a user acquisition standpoint the product performed well.
The second product was a platform for teaching freelance career skills using AI, where users were provided with video lessons and the necessary tools for hands-on practice. This was JobEscape. We decided to focus on it more closely because it also started attracting users right away and was simpler to scale. Later, we became residents of Astana Hub.
— Since you launched two products at once, how much money did you need at the start?
— Initially, Margulan and I invested around $20,000 of our own money. Then we completed a small contract for a client and earned another $15,000. That became our initial operating budget.
A bit later, we raised external funding—$300,000 in total—from White Hill Capital, Caucasus Ventures, and business angel Eldar Tolesh. We used this capital to run experiments with both products.
Later, we raised an additional $1 million, which we allocated specifically to the development of JobEscape. However, not long ago, we pivoted the business. Instead of teaching freelance professions, we now train people to build AI bots for businesses using no-code platforms like Make.com and n8n. We saw strong demand and significant potential in this direction.
Read more on Digitalbusiness.kz
As part of the joint project by Digital Business and Astana Hub, “100 Startup Stories of Central Asia,” he spoke about what happened to his first projects, what makes JobEscape valuable for everyday users, and why this startup could potentially reach hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in the future.
“We Received an Offer and Decided It Was the Right Time to Cash Out”
— Miras, your startup journey began with an agriculture-focused project. Can you tell us how it turned out?
— At the beginning, everything was going quite well. After launching the platform, we quickly acquired paying customers, and later we raised $150,000 in investment from an Australian venture fund based in Hong Kong.
However, it soon became clear that scaling the project required significantly more capital. For example, our closest competitor around the same time closed a $10 million round without even having revenue. At that time—and perhaps even now—there simply isn’t that kind of money available in our market. As a result, we had to shut the project down.
— What happened next? When did you decide to launch a new startup?
— Almost immediately. At that time, my current JobEscape co-founder, Margulan Yermek, was working on a facial recognition project for BI Group. The issue was that apartment renovations “turnkey” in their buildings were handled by a single contractor. BI Group needed a tool to track whether a worker actually showed up for their shift, since this directly affected whether a project could be delivered on time.
It quickly became clear, however, that apart from BI Group, almost no one in Kazakhstan really needed such a solution. When I was shutting down my AgriTech project, Margulan asked me to help him on the business side. As a result, we pivoted toward education—a market that seemed more promising to us.
Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic had just begun, and many things were rapidly moving online. That’s when we decided to build an anti-cheating system for online exams.
— How successful was that project?
— We managed to exit. It was a reasonable exit by Kazakhstan market standards. The buyers reviewed our profits, modeled a valuation, and acquired the company as a private equity deal. The amount was six figures, but still under one million dollars.
Why did we decide to sell? We received an offer and felt that it made sense to cash out at that point. At the time, it was unclear what would happen to exams after the pandemic. So we decided to sell the project and move on.
For me, as a 23-year-old at the time, the exit money was a significant sum—enough for bread with butter and black caviar. Overall, everything was great.
“At the Start, My Co-Founder and I Put in $20,000 of Our Own Money”
— Did the JobEscape story begin right after the exit?
— No. I felt a bit burned out from startups and decided to try working a regular job—for the first time in my life. I moved to Dubai, where I worked in the strategy department, internal consulting, at DIFC (Dubai International Financial Centre).
But I didn’t like it there. Most of my responsibilities involved creating presentations for the CEO, who would look at the first and last slides and then say, “OK, cool.” That was the last thing I wanted to spend my time on.
At the same time, Margulan was working within the Ukrainian holding company Genesis, focusing on performance marketing—running ads on Google, Meta, and other platforms. Eventually, he suggested launching a B2C project in Kazakhstan with a strong focus on performance marketing.
We brainstormed several ideas and narrowed them down to two products. We built MVPs and launched them as tests to gauge demand.
The first was Bloomy—a service for pregnant women with various tips and exercises. However, we quickly realized that such a product comes with a high level of responsibility, as every woman requires an individual approach. We didn’t want to get into something overly complex, even though from a user acquisition standpoint the product performed well.
The second product was a platform for teaching freelance career skills using AI, where users were provided with video lessons and the necessary tools for hands-on practice. This was JobEscape. We decided to focus on it more closely because it also started attracting users right away and was simpler to scale. Later, we became residents of Astana Hub.
— Since you launched two products at once, how much money did you need at the start?
— Initially, Margulan and I invested around $20,000 of our own money. Then we completed a small contract for a client and earned another $15,000. That became our initial operating budget.
A bit later, we raised external funding—$300,000 in total—from White Hill Capital, Caucasus Ventures, and business angel Eldar Tolesh. We used this capital to run experiments with both products.
Later, we raised an additional $1 million, which we allocated specifically to the development of JobEscape. However, not long ago, we pivoted the business. Instead of teaching freelance professions, we now train people to build AI bots for businesses using no-code platforms like Make.com and n8n. We saw strong demand and significant potential in this direction.
Read more on Digitalbusiness.kz
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