ITExpert

ITExpert is a full-cycle recruitment company that has been helping partners such as Deloitte, Ring, and others with industry-best professionals in the field of software development/engineering for more than 8 years.
We are used to working under time-constrained conditions. We believe in recruiting you need to work fast, although without compromising quality.

Customer needs and convenience above all!

Co-Founder

Deloitte

Deloitte’s R&D department, a division of the audit firm, was searching for a recruitment ally to establish its inaugural office and bolster its hiring squad. This department is engaged in project development for Deloitte’s internal clientele and its offices globally, focusing on the candidates’ proficiency and experience during recruitment.
In collaboration with the recruitment team from ITExpert, Deloitte has effectively onboarded more than 80 competent professionals, including Software Engineers, DevOps, QA engineers, Cybersecurity experts, IT auditors, and other IT specialists. The successful launch of Deloitte’s R&D department is a testament to our fruitful partnership.

Tech Recruiting Consultant

BNP Paribas

Our team helps build a new team of IT developers to develop new banking products.

Verbit.ai

The Verbit Company serves as an essential partner to 2,000+ businesses and institutions. Verbit’s vertical-built voice AI solutions provide its partners with the tools they need to offer engaging and equitable experiences that not only meet accessibility guidelines, but make verbal information searchable and actionable. In just a few years since its founding in 2017, Verbit has grown into a unicorn company with a $2B valuation and a global presence. Verbit employs the largest professional captioner workforce in the world and has emerged as the leader in the $30B transcription industry.

Erste Bank und Sparkasse

Our team has helped to find several IT specialists in the IT department of Erste Bank

Ring

Ring is now a part of Amazon, but when we started cooperating, the startup was just at the beginning of its journey. The company searched for key performers who would develop the product and quickly show results in all major areas: Product, Mobile, Backend, and Frontend.

ITExpert's recruitment team has successfully filled all needed vacancies for Ring. The company soon attracted $160 million in investment. A year later, Amazon bought it for $1 billion.

As co-founder of ITExpert, I have a passion for connecting top tech talent with amazing companies in the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, the UK, Poland, Romania, Portugal, Ukraine and other European countries. For over 8 years, I have been involved in managing and recruiting teams, teaching and mentoring newbies, and filling roles for Deloitte, Ring (Amazon), Verbit, Emerson, Erste Bank, BNP Paribas, Sisense and others.

🎯I started my career in 2015 when I co-founded ITExpert with a vision to match the best developers with the coolest companies. Now, I help businesses scale and succeed by coordinating our external recruitment team of 40 tech Recruiters with expertise in FinTech, Web3, E-commerce, SaaS and PaaS products, Machine Learning, AI, and others.
 
If you need help with setting up your IT-recruitment process, getting management advice on team leading, recruitment, and HRM, or outsourcing your open positions to professional recruiters, I'm here to assist you.✌

📧 You can email me at ihor.shykhov@itexperts.work
| Check out the website: https://itexpert.work/ |

Ihor Shykhov

Cosmin Rusu

Transforming Visions into AI MVPs & Products | Founder @Duty Ventures | Ex {Google, Apple and Amazon}

Hi, I’m Cosmin, the Founder and Lead Engineer of Duty Ventures. 

After some experience as a software developer in companies such as Google, Apple, and Amazon, I decided to launch my project.

With several former colleagues and college friends, we launched our own startup specializing in software development for entrepreneurs and customers needing software development services. 

Duty Ventures is all about developing software products from start to finish, thanks to the experiences we have all acquired in the past years.

One of our most successful services is aimed at entrepreneurs and early-stage founders, for whom we provide an MVP-builder service getting their product from 0 to 1 within weeks!

However, our services are not limited to that. The teams we create do much more than just create MVPs and are able to adapt to the different technologies requested, all of this in an agile way.

Our most recurrent services are the following:
- MVP creation
- Custom Software Development
- Blockchain Development
- Mobile Development
- Checkout pages
- E-Commerce

And our most used technologies are:
- Ruby on Rails
- React
- React Native
- Java
- NodeJS


If you want to learn more about how we can help you, head over to: https://dutyventures.com


Phone: (+1) 669 200 9568 / (+40) 754 973 314
Email: cosmin@dutyventures.com

Founder & Lead software engineer

I'm leading a software development agency focused on fast iterations. Most of our clients are shipping more features, responding faster to support tickets, and have accelerated growth because of us.

We focused on HealthCare a lot lately due to the accelerated digitalization in this industry. I am a strong believer that we can make healthcare more technically advanced via pure software. 

In terms of technologies, our previous projects involved Ruby on Rails, React, React Native, Scala, Java, Kubernetes, GCP, AWS (ECS, RDS, AKS), Stripe Connect, HIPAA compliance.

Some of our previous clients: 
- Spotify
- Colgate
- Go4Ellis (incl. HIPAA compliance)
- KindBody (+1 HIPAA)
- NXT Sports
- Noom (Healthcare)
- Mochila Fulfillment
- 3Step
- Mylk Guys (YCombinator)
- NLV Productions
- SH Technologies
- One Step Software (Techstars)
- Ergodic Labs
- Med Prep
- Testing Psych
- Abundance Digital
- Tookitaki

I upgraded to a Standing Desk half a year ago! Worth it? Not really - I find I very rarely use it, and recently just thought about it... We tend to stick to what we're comfortable with, to what we are used to. It's hard to get into a new habit. But once it becomes a habit, it's almost like second nature. In 2026, I plan to use it more often.

Product-minded Devs | Founder @Duty Ventures | Ex {Google, Apple and Amazon}

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I didn't expect an AI to actually surprise me.

But Claude AI did.

Here's the thing. Most AI tools look good on paper, but break down fast when you push them. Claude is different. Not perfect, but actually useful. And that's rare.

I tried running complex code reviews, drafting technical architecture docs, even brainstorming product names. Tasks that suck hours from any founder or engineer. Claude cut through the mess.

What's different? It understands not just syntax, but context. It connects the dots. I threw it a messy requirements doc. Got back actionable user stories, tech stack suggestions, and edge case checks that would have taken my team half a day.

I used it to write test cases for a React component. Spotted bugs I'd missed. It's not replacing anyone on my team, but it's like running with an extra brain at the table.

You can call it "just a tool." Fine. But founders ignoring this are already falling behind. Speed matters.

Building an MVP? You can go from idea to working prototype in days, not weeks. Reviewing code or writing docs at 11pm? No longer a lonely job.

The ones who win aren't the ones afraid of AI. It's those who ask, What can this thing do for me?

Or better: What can I do now, that I couldn't do before?

WordPress is dead? That's wishful thinking from the new tool crowd.

Every week, someone claims WordPress is outdated. Meanwhile, I keep seeing founders and companies waste time on custom stacks or fancy page builders that sound innovative but end up costing more and breaking the basics.

Here's the reality nobody wants to admit: WordPress is, hands down, still one of the best options for landing pages and presentation sites.

Why? 

Setup takes minutes, not days. Anyone can manage content. No dev required. The UI is simple enough your intern or your grandma can update a headline.

The plugin ecosystem is a cheat code. Want to add forms, analytics, booking, e-commerce, CRM, SEO, or pretty much anything else? It's a few clicks away. Most alternatives don't even come close, or require you to glue together five different SaaS subscriptions.

SEO is baked in, not bolted on. Out of the box, you're ahead of most custom sites. Add Yoast or RankMath and you're miles ahead of the average "modern" landing page slapped together in Webflow or some VC-backed platform.

Cost is the final killer feature. You can launch a polished, fast, SEO-friendly site for pocket change. No designer or developer on retainer. No recurring fees that balloon over time.

The dirty secret: Most people don't need a custom stack or a shiny new no-code platform. They need something that works, right now, and keeps working for years.

WordPress still delivers. Ignore the hype.

I run a tech company.

And I just updated my MacOS for the first time in 2 years.

Here's my confession:

I'm not an early adopter.

Never have been. Never will be.

While everyone rushes to install the latest update on day one, I wait.

Why?

Because I've learned something painful:

Being first doesn't mean being smart.

Every major OS update comes with:
→ Broken apps
→ Battery drain issues
→ Compatibility nightmares
→ Hours of troubleshooting

My team can't afford that downtime.

Neither can yours.

The best founders I know share this trait:

They separate "exciting" from "essential."

New and shiny != Better for business.

I'll let others beta test with their productivity.

I'll upgrade when it's stable.

Call it boring. Call it cautious.

I call it protecting what matters.

AI made me do it! Built in ~15 minutes 🤯

Palantir is no longer just “another AI stock”, but the perfect example of how technology, geopolitics, and investor greed intersect in 2026.

In a world where stock markets are two steps away from all-time highs and everyone is hunting for “the next Nvidia”, Palantir has just reported its best results of the last decade: 25 cents per share and 1.3 billion USD in quarterly revenues, with the stock up 11% on the day.
More interesting than the numbers, however, is Alex Karp’s message: “the results are pure and unmanipulated” – a sentence that says more about the fear in the market than about investor peace of mind.

Palantir is growing in a very uncomfortable place: at the intersection of government money, security, and near-total surveillance. Around 500 million of its quarterly revenues come directly from the state – military, agencies, ICE – in a context where “more geopolitical chaos” paradoxically means “more Palantir”.
If it manages to replicate this model in as many governments as possible, a single man (Peter Thiel) could end up knowing in real time what millions of people are doing, from their taxes to their personal lives.

At the same time, we see a familiar pattern: investors are selling the healthy winners and buying “the rest”, exactly as happened in crypto – Bitcoin stayed high, but many altcoins disappeared or crashed from hundreds of dollars to just a few.
The AI boom is starting to look more and more like a desperate race “not to miss the train”: companies over-investing, CEOs justifying spending with “paper money”, and a market that hopes the story will last long enough.

In conclusion, this feels like the essence of this moment: Palantir wins if the world becomes more chaotic, because it is the company that promises to bring order and to say “who is good and who is bad”.
The question for us, as investors and as people working in technology, is not just “how much more can Palantir grow?”, but “how comfortable are we with a future where AI becomes the moral, economic, and geopolitical arbiter?”

Funny how much attention still goes to glossy web design.

You'd think every important detail in your product boils down to some Pantone color code or hero graphic above the fold.

I know founders who obsess about the shade of a PNG, but haven't checked if their signup actually works.

It takes five seconds to make a slick mockup. Less to copy a homepage from any trendy open-source kit. 

Looks impressive in a deck. Zero use in production with half-baked onboarding and buggy forms.

Ugly websites can be clunky and dodgy. Seen plenty. Usually e-commerce scams or legacy hospital portals.

But there’s this myth in tech circles: appearances trump everything under the hood.

Ask someone burned by conversion dropoffs from a UI update how useful design awards feel at 2am cleaning up a backend meltdown.

People cheat metrics chasing aesthetics.

The peak irony? More leads bounce because of slow loading times, dead links, or convoluted account flows than mediocre typography. Anyone checking real funnel metrics gets this.

Solid products keep the real unspectacular gears *moving authorization, payments, workflows*. Peace of mind in operation mode beats pretty-color dopamine hits.

Seen too many falling for shimmer over function.

Distraction never fixes fundamentals.

Objections aren't obstacles,they're missed signals.

Most people hear "no" and check out. That's a mistake. Every objection is a shortcut to the real conversation.

The trick is to treat every "no" as unfinished business. Not a rejection, but an invitation to dig deeper.

Here's what actually works:

1. Don't flinch. When you hear an objection, pause. Resist the urge to jump in and defend. Let it land. People know when you're gearing up to bulldoze them.

2. Ask for the story behind the "no". There's always a reason, even if it's not obvious. "Can you walk me through your concerns?" works better than any script.

3. Mirror, don't argue. Repeat what you're hearing, in your own words. Let them know you get it. Most people just want to be understood. Genuine empathy kills tension.

4. Reframe, then respond. Once you get the real reason, reframe the problem in their terms. Now you're not just another salesperson,you're the one who actually listened.

The best deals I've made never started with a yes. They started with an honest objection and a willingness to stick with the conversation.

You want more yeses? Get obsessed with the "why" behind every "no".

Are you behind on your Stripe API upgrades? Be careful! Stripe is sunsetting some very important and widely used features.

Stripe::Charges, Stripe::Sources are being deprecated and replaced with the more modern equivalent, the Stripe::PaymentIntents and Stripe::PaymentMethods. While you can still use them, you should plan to upgrade your integrations to avoid imposed deadlines during your busiest season...

In fact, one of my long-term clients started contracting us for a challenging Stripe Connect upgrade, back in the days when Stripe rolled out mandatory Know-Your-Customer (KYC) flows. 

To learn more, keep an eye on the Stripe Change Log: https://lnkd.in/dBm7PKvf

How do we work remotely as a team? What tools to do we use? Let me break it down to you.

- Communication: Slack
- Email: GSuite
- Meetings: Google Meet
- Project Management: Trello - very simple and clean. For more complex projects - JIRA
- Code Editor: Windsurf

That's it - nothing fancy, nothing complex. This is our "productivity" stack. Next, it's up to the individual to figure out what works for them. We don't want to force anyone into using anything that they aren't excited about.

In B2B sales, I learned a valuable lesson: it's easy to focus on getting new customers, but super hard to get them to sign up. However, it's hard to focus on existing (or past) customers, but super easy to get them to sign.

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Learning from others' mistakes! Here's another example of failures in marketing that will lead to bad outcomes.

I got a cold email from a company selling cybersecurity services. I clicked on their website, and I got this pop-up.

I get that sometimes marketing emails don't go through strong security checks, but you can imagine how a lead would react if you send such emails.

Are you rich when you make 25x your annual spending? Is that the "golden ratio" of financial independence?

Careful - we re getting replaces with cached code written by AI - so all our code will have the same bugs and issues that we will have to fix… that would be a cool service businss idea: bug fixes for your AI agentic coder

Cute how devs think they’re gaming the system with $200/month for unlimited Claude Code. ”Oh, I’m burning $2K in tokens with 6 Claude Codes before breakfast!”

Buddy, you’re not burning tokens. You’re burning markup.

I wired Claude Code into a dedicated vLLM to see what’s really under the hood. Six hours of pure coding and debugging later:

- 47M prompt tokens
- 45M prefix-cache hits
- 96.39% cache hit rate (token-weighted)
- Actual compute: 1.3M prefill + 300K generation tokens

That’s not GPUs working hard. That’s a cache with delusions of grandeur.

Anthropic’s “subsidized” coding plan isn’t subsidized; it’s a cache lottery. When they serve you a well-quantized Haiku/Opus hybrid that’s 96% memorized boilerplate, the marginal cost rounds to zero. The limits are fake scarcity. The $100 and $200 tiers are merely psychological anchors.

You’re not paying for compute. You’re paying for the feeling of unlimited power while they throttle you at 5 hours/week limits to protect GPU margins.

Agentic coding is a brilliant pricing hack. Just don’t confuse it with actual token economics 🤡

Make sure you own your AI. AI in the cloud is not aligned with you; it’s aligned with the company that owns it.

Here's a great hack I naturally learned that improved my sales skills:

Whenever you get a cold email, cold LinkedIn message, or even a cold call, answer and be receptive - be the buyer!

I'm almost always doing this, just to see how the best salespeople perform. If I forget about them, do they follow up? How many times? If I simply forgot to sign the papers, how do they gently ask me to sign?

I'll give you an example: I get called a few times per quarter from mobile carriers that are trying to sell me their phone services, like SMS, voice, and internet. I almost immediately say:

- I'm not interested - I already have an unlimited cheap subscription, thanks! 

However, last time I got a call, I asked them to tell me more, and asked:

- How are you better than this other subscrption I have?

Next time I send a message regarding custom software development work, I'll understand that most people like where they are at and don't want to change their teams. However, if you approach the conversation from their angle, you'll find that if you can tell them something that they don't know already, you might at least have a small conversation.

Doing this will make you more empathetic to your next clients, and you'll learn faster what works, and what doesn't work in sales.

Not to mention you'll see how easy it is to "slip" through the funnel 😆!

We just made a new hire. He doesn't have a proper name yet.

But he's already doing the work nobody wants to do: checking deadlines, scanning GitHub, pinging developers for updates, asking why that feature took 3x longer than expected, and giving our clients a clear picture of what's happening in their projects.

Basically, he runs Software Delivery ops for us.

The catch? He's not human. He's an AI agent.

And honestly, he's more consistent than most project managers I've worked with. No ego, no missed standups, no "I forgot to update the ticket."

If this works out (and so far it is), we're bringing in a few of his friends. He says he knows some agents who do marketing and business development.

I'll keep you posted on how the team grows.

taplio

The Battle

Ihor Shykhov

Cosmin Rusu

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taplio

The Battle

Ihor Shykhov

Cosmin Rusu

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Cosmin Rusu's LinkedIn Performance

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