User:Willyhaase/Max Polyakov

Max Polyakov (born 30 June 1977) is a Ukrainian and American entrepreneur in the field of space technology and IT, economist, public figure, investor, philanthropist.

He is a founder and co-founder of the aerospace company Firefly Aerospace, IT companies EOS DATA Analytics, HitDynamics, Maxymiser, Murka LLC, Cupid Plc, Renatus Media. He is an inspirer of the Noosphere Association non-profit civil organization, Noosphere Engineering School  (Ukraine) and a General Partner in the Noosphere Ventures Partners LP Venture Fund.

Education and Research
Max Polyakov was born in the city of Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine. His parents were engineers at JSC "Khartron" (Hartron), one of the leading enterprises in the Ukrainian rocket and space industry, engaged in the development of control systems and electronics.

In 2000, he graduated from Zaporizhzhya State Medical University.

From 2009 to 2011, he graduated from the graduate school of Dnipro National University.

In 2013, Polyakov received a degree in the field of international economics, having defended his thesis “Paradigm - A Model For The Development Of Information Technologies In The Global Economy, And Forms Of Its Realization”.

He is the author of several scientific papers and co-authored 10 patents for inventions, including a unique ID system for personal data management.

Business
After graduating from high school, in 2001, Polyakov created his first outsourcing company AlarIT Ukraine, which was engaged in developing software for foreign clients. In three years, the company grew from 6 to 100 employees. AlarIT had a wide client network in the USA and Europe.

In 2005, Max Polyakov, in partnership with a foreign investor from the United Kingdom, Bill Dobby, founded the IDE Group with its head office in Edinburgh. The business group included such projects as EasyDate (renamed Cupid plc in 2010), Murka, HitDynamics, Maxymiser.

In 2006, the partners sold their project HitDynamics to a large British business analyst company Hitwise. Later, in 2015, another project, Maxymiser, was bought by the American corporation Oracle.

Since 2006, Polyakov develops his own national IT projects in Ukraine, such aggregator sites as: price.ua, avtopoisk.ru, trud.com, naydidom.com, sravni.com. Project offices were located in Dnipro, Kharkov, Zaporizhzhya and Kiev.

In 2010, Cupid PLC service managed by Polyakov goes from IPO (Initial Public Offering) to the London Stock Exchange. A year later, the company was recognized as the fastest growing technology project according to the auditing company Deloitte.

In 2012, Max Polyakov creates Renatus Media - a company to publish social and mobile games. First, the project develops software for the post-Soviet countries, but later begins to publish products for the Apple Store, Google Play, Amazon and Facebook.

In the same year, Polyakov moves to the United States, in Silicon Valley, Menlo Park, California. There he becomes a co-founder of the Noosphere Ventures Partners Venture Capital Fund.

EOS DA
Since 2015, Polyakov turns from IT projects to space technologies and creates EOS DATA Analytics with offices in the USA and Ukraine. The project is developing and implementing a cloud platform for processing and analyzing satellite data. There are several hundreds of Earth remote sensing satellites in Earth orbits, and the EOS Platform is designed to help use the information obtained from them for useful purposes. EOS DA tools are used by hundreds of state institutions, commercial companies, public and scientific organizations around the world.

Firefly Aerospace
In 2017, Polyakov and Noosphere Ventures acquire American space startup Firefly Space Systems from a rocket engineer Tom Markusic, who had previously worked at Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, SpaceX.

Inspired by the idea of New Space movement - cheaper space launches due to the introduction of innovations in space technology, Markusic creates his own company in 2014 to build light and middle class launch vehicles Alpha and Beta. But due to the lack of investments, the project is on the verge of closure in two years. Max Polyakov supported the ideas of Markusic, gave the company a second wind and a new name - Firefly Aerospace.

The businessman attracted Ukrainian scientists and engineers to work on the Firefly Alpha launch vehicle, which significantly accelerated the process of its creation. In May 2018, the Firefly R & D Center was opened in the city of Dnipro, which today employs 140 Ukrainian specialists. Recall that Dnipro is the cradle of the Ukrainian astronautics, which presented the world with such giants of the rocket and space industry as PA Yuzhmash (Production Association Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant named after A.M. Makarov) and ‘Yuzhnoye Design Office’ ('State design bureau "Southern", named after M. K. Yangel').

The first launch of the Firefly Alpha PH is scheduled for the end of 2019. In the spring, the Firefly test site in Texas successfully passed tests of 1 and 2 stage engines. Firefly has signed start-up service contracts with companies such as D-Orbit, AirBus, SSTL.

NES
In 2014, Polyakov laid the foundation of the engineering school in Dnipro (Ukraine) - the Noosphere Engineering School (NES). The project is a network of laboratories created on the basis of technical departments of the leading universities in Ukraine, where students have the opportunity to acquire special knowledge in the field of engineering and advanced technologies, to test and implement their innovative ideas. For 5 years, NES has opened 7 laboratories in Dnipro, Cherkasy, Kiev, Zhytomyr and Rivne.

Association "Noosphere"
In 2016, Polyakov creates a non-profit public organization Association “Noosphere”, which is engaged in the organization and holding of specialized scientific and technical events. Since 2015, the Association begins to cooperate with the World Air sports Federation (FAI) and annually organizes event management and scoring system competitions - Cup Navigator.

Family
He is married, and is a father of 4 children.

Awards and Achievements
2009 - Max Polyakov gets ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ in Scotland according to Ernst & Young.

2017 - Max Polyakov was awarded with the title of FAI Companion of Honour for a significant contribution to the improvement of sports event management systems and scoring.

2018 – He was awarded with the national prize of Ukraine ‘Man of the Year’ for a significant contribution to the revival of the Ukrainian space.