Sergey Kartashov: IT entrepreneurs should look not for constraints but for new opportunities

IT industry is on the up. No one can call the market with over $4.5 billion of spendings a down one. The variety of start-ups makes the investor’s task really difficult. An IT investor and the Senior Partner at the technology company Roosh Sergey Kartashov knows what can entrepreneurs expect in 2022 and where to invest their own money.

There is no business left not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Under numerous restrictions, companies have to optimize their workflows as much as possible. AI, the great and terrible, can help, Kartashov says. In 2022, investment in this sphere of IT will exceed $20 billion, with most of that aimed at health care, customer service, and sales optimization. However, Sergey Kartashov knows some less obvious cases. For example, the German Football Association actively uses AI to monitor the situation on the field in real time, while companies like Amazon help Bundesliga fans get accurate and targeted statistics about specific matches.

Sergey Kartashov believes some pre-crisis business strategies to be completely irrelevant nowadays. Although, IT can help. The so-called Decision Intelligence is a relatively new sphere. Nevertheless, it is based on the same AI, allowing for much more precise goal building, making the right decisions, and managing projects. Kartashov predicts a third of the world’s companies to resort to DI for short-term and strategic purposes in the coming years. But already today projects like medical start-up Enlitic Cure help doctors diagnose patients or prescribe treatments using digital technologies.

The growth of corporate software and cloud technologies Sergey Kartashov also associates with the pandemic. In the first case, everything is obvious. More and more companies allow employees from all over the world to implement the same project simultaneously, without being attached to a physical location or office. By 2023, approximately 75% of businesses will have switched to remote or hybrid models.

Finding corporate software on the market is not a problem. Today, there are many. But how to choose the optimal one? In response to this question, Sergey Kartashov gives the example of another startup. The TextBox service, which managed to raise $2.7 million, helps companies to select the corporate software they need and even test it before purchasing.

However, complete remote work is impossible without cloud technologies, Sergey says. Data volumes are increasing, with their management becoming more complex. No one can do without tools like AI, ML, or serverless computing. Lots of companies have already grasped this trend, including true giants. Netflix, for example, uses the serverless computing system AWS Lambda to broadcast video content worldwide.

Along with the information flow extension, the threat of hacking them rises. In the last year and in finances alone, the number of cyberattacks has increased 400 times. About 60% of the top IT entrepreneurs consider themselves insufficiently protected. Thus, more money will be invested in projects like Cybersecurity Mesh, which experts estimate can reduce the risk of cyberattacks by 90%.

Sergey Kartashov considers the mobile gaming industry to be equally promising. And it is not just the growing number of smartphones users or 5G. During the COVID-19 era, mobile games have become a substitute for the real world, a platform for socialization, with new digital solutions like augmented reality allowing developers to create not just games but the whole world.

In general, the business has fallen on hard times today. However, Sergey Kartashov strongly believes it to be an opportunity rather than a death sentence for the IT industry.