Location Scottsdale, Arizona, United States Regions Greater Phoenix Area, Western US Gender Male Also Known As Rogi
Website www.tknmcs.com/ Facebook View on Facebook LinkedIn View on LinkedIn X (Twitter) View on X
Born in Odessa Ukraine, Igor immigrated to Brooklyn New York as a Soviet Refugee in July of 1979 with his mother, grandmother and aunt's family. An only child of a single parent, Igor grew up in Borough Park and attended Bialik School. His mom worked at the clothing store Rachel's by days and went to programming school at night, which
framed both his work ethic and penchant for computers. He began programming at an early age, but was also gifted in the Arts, having been awarded design accolades by then NYC mayor Ed Koch. Igor tested into the specialized Engineering program at Brooklyn Technical High School, and later majored in Applied Mathematics & Statistics at top Engineering school SUNY Stony Brook where he studied combinatorics, graph theory and coding theory under acclaimed subject matter expert Alan Tucker. He also minored in Computer Science, studying assembly under professor Larry Witte, but claims most of his learning at the time was outside of class: "I was enamoured with the internet - but there were no classes - so I spent most of my time in the computer labs, teaching myself HTML, PERL, ServerSide Javascript and building websites for my rock band, fraternity, and any business that would let me." After a few years working in the enterprise, he jumped between a few startups in Silicon Alley, and then began consulting. He was working at CSFB on 9/11 which prompted him to take a journey that would change his life. He then met his future wife, and ultimately moved to her city of Chicago, where they opened a coffee shop and had two children. The next move was to Highland Park, IL and ultimately, Scottsdale Arizona.
In 2006 Igor built FirmWise, one of the first SaaS platforms - it was focused on facilitating Law Firm Marketing. The product achieved $1M ARR with only 3 FT staff and serviced 500+ law firms as well as over 15K attorneys. Igor began focusing on blockchain tech in 2020 and became a vocal advocate for DAOs. He organized the first live DAO focused conference, and was emcee for the event where he interviewed the leaders of some of the most prolific projects at the time, including Charles Hoskinson of Cardano.
In 2022, with the mentorship of Augmented Reality Pioneer, Louis Rosenberg, Igor founded ListenUp to democratize the world's information via audio (initially) and Augmented Reality (eventually).
