# Etha Spotlight: COO Dimitry Kushelevsky on Startups, AI, and the Future of Media

**Published by:** [Etha One](https://paragraph.com/@ethaone/)
**Published on:** 2022-05-02
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@ethaone/team-member-spotlight-coo-dimitry-kushelevsky-on-startups%2C-ai%2C-and-the-future-of-media

## Content

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/a8453a8d40acec928ebd09100f478221) __[Etha](https://etha.one/)__ is on the verge of changing the way we interact with media and politics. It is a platform by the people for the people which promotes political transparency and journalistic accountability to the public. How is it we do this? As an unbiased medium, we crowdsource news and provide unfiltered, real-time analytics on current political events. Our platform conveys an honest public perspective, rather than the agenda of wealthy partisans. Behind every great endeavor is a team of dedicated innovators with the drive and desire to make that change a reality. Etha’s team includes professionals from across various industries all united around the core mission of socio-political change. As we prepare for the next steps in the company and the platform’s realization, we invited some of the brilliant minds behind Etha to elaborate on their role and vision. Chief Operating Officer (COO) Dimitry Kushelevsky elaborated on his insights on the product and his own ethos in startup building, AI integration, and the power of Etha’s mission. ## **What is COO at Etha?** **Dimitry:** COO is a pretty exciting role. It gives me a great opportunity to take the wealth of experience I gained from building a number of startups, and develop this potent idea into an air-tight business model that’s powered by a rock-solid value proposition. My goal is not just to focus on stand-alone ideas or objectives but, together with my co-founders, to develop and execute a strong company vision that's squarely based on our shared purpose and values. I then get to interpret that foundation into a series of strategic milestones that our team must hit on its way to building a thriving company that makes a real difference." Immediately, Dimitry recalled being taken with the idea of Etha. He knew he could take this idea and cultivate the right type of chemistry within the executive team to bring this platform to life. So what’s his approach when taking on such a compelling task? **Dimitry:** My approach stems from a realization that I don’t know all the answers. However, having led this process before, I know the right questions to ask, which immediately puts us on the right path. I can also facilitate the process of putting an idea through the rigor of brainstorming, then prioritizing and executing the resulting series of steps needed to bring our business model to life. For Dimitry, when looking into his earlier entrepreneurial journey, it’s all in the attitude. **Dimitry:** If you approach life with a positive, entrepreneurial attitude, there is no such thing as a failure. Looking into all of my past initiatives, I realized early-on that every start-up, even those that didn't work out, made for powerful learning experiences. As a matter of fact, I learned more from my failures than I did from my successes! Since we already had our project at Etha mapped out up-front, our next strategic goal is to formally validate our core business model assumptions. I am a big fan of the Lean Start-up methodology, which offers an outstanding path to success, thanks to the collective wisdom of highly successful entrepreneurs. Of course, this starts with confirming that our users and business customers agree that we have great value to add to them personally, as well as to their business and political initiatives. For our user community, we must deliver something that will help them improve their lives, and to ensure that they continue to enjoy living in a free, prosperous and thriving democracy. Likewise, for our business customers, we must deliver powerful, innovative solutions that help them achieve success in their respective organizations. Our overarching goal, of course, is to make a major contribution by greatly increasing transparency and accountability in the world of politics and news media, along with bringing all people of the world closer together by exposing bias, and facilitating more constructive political discourse, accomplished at scale. ## A Passion for Growth Dimitry’s solid background in corporate business environments prepared him to help mold startups into flourishing companies. While much of his enterprise experience is rooted in technology-based companies, he’s led or worked with companies addressing the needs of a diverse range of industries and solution areas. **Dimitry:** I received my MBA with an official concentration in finance and investment, but I also had enough classes for secondary concentration in sales and marketing. Initially, I started out my career in a large corporate setting with AT&T. I was hired into their leadership fast track program. It was an incredible opportunity, and I developed a passion for leadership very quickly. I remember feeling extremely honored that they felt me, a kid straight out of college, being worthy of such intensive and world-class leadership training. It turned out to be one of the major defining moments of my career, and I am still grateful to AT&T, and the team that welcomed me, to this day. With a newfound love for leadership and working with innovative ideas, Dimitry started his first company. Shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain, he saw a great need for professionals familiar with life, culture and rapidly-evolving business environment inside the newly-formed independent states of the former Warsaw pact. It didn’t take him long to apply his leadership and business skills, along with a passion to help people in difficult circumstances, to meet the opportunity head-on. The company he formed with a childhood friend has provided an unprecedented ability for skilled individuals and organizations from the former Soviet Union to gain access to the tools, resources and expertise they desperately needed to ensure a smooth transition to a stable and prosperous post-communist life for their respective nations. Later on, with years of corporate and personal ventures under his belt, Dimitry’s unquenchable passion for startups has, once again, changed his professional trajectory. **Dimitry:** In late 2015, I decided to take a brief pause from my corporate career and see if I can do something really impactful by, once again, building and leading my own company. One great thing that I always loved about entrepreneurship is how big of an impact you stand to make in other people’s lives. So far it’s been an incredible ride that allowed me to build several truly exciting companies by working with very talented, and passionate people, armed with big ideas to solve some of the worlds’ most pressing challenges. Etha certainly fits that description. ## Why Etha? When Dimitry discovered Etha, he knew that this could be one of those big impact-making moments in his entrepreneurial life. **Dimitry:** Right off the bat I couldn’t help but realize that they’re addressing a massive problem. As a follower of politics and observer of the political events that shape our world, it was really disheartening for me to watch mainstream media, on both sides of the political spectrum, descending further and further down this rabbit hole of pumping out polarized, highly biased news pieces designed to mislead and aggravate their audiences. The sad reality of this phenomenon is that not only is it disturbing to watch, but it literally started to tear our country’s national identity apart by sowing painful, destructive divisions along the seams of opposing political ideologies. What was held to (mostly) civil debate for over 100 years has now turned to an unending stream of sheer animosity and war cries, emitted at a fever pitch, fueled in large part by what’s going on in our political news media, along with seemingly uncontrolled flames of destructive discourse around all the major political developments of the day. There is no political news platform in existence today, certainly no major platform, that can claim to be completely impartial. If we can make this work, it can be an incredibly powerful force for a positive change - in an industry that seems to be in a desperate need of some sort of positive disruption, before it causes any irreparable damage to our nation’s social fabric. By helping to obliterate the biased nature of the news from the major outlets, as well as fostering civility and a constructive spirit of direct discourse among people on social media, I believe we stand to deliver a massive benefit to our country, as well as countless other democracies. For my piece, this is a great opportunity to really make my mark, creating a very meaningful difference, that enriches the lives of millions, both in the US and around the globe. ## AI Integration and Etha One of the key components to Etha’s neutrality and moderating capabilities is innovation and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. In his business and entrepreneurial background, Dimitry has been working with AI innovators for years. He recognizes the potential for several excellent use cases for AI, when integrated into Etha’s core value proposition, as an incredibly powerful tool for good. **Dimitry:** The potential uses of AI in our platform are many. For instance, we could support millions of virtual chat rooms and simultaneous conversations at any given time, and moderate them to ensure that they don’t become abusive or destructive. If we see strongly partisan participants engaged in an increasingly contentious situation that turns uncivil, or toxic, we can use our AI to call that out, and take steps that will still allow people to voice their opinions, but without compromising the constructive spirit of discourse around them. Likewise, we are working on innovative capabilities that will combine the power of AI and crowdsourcing to maximize both the reliability and accuracy of Etha’s analytics. **Dimitry:** There’s a great benefit to combining crowdsourcing and AI. The great thing about using “the wisdom of the crowd” is that it is extremely powerful and it can produce valuable insights. However, it can also be quite difficult to harness in a meaningful and reliable manner. The larger the “crowd”, the harder it is to manage, and to ultimately learn from that community. However, AI provides a very potent suite of tools and capabilities that allows us to get it done in a way that no “legacy” (i.e., deterministic) software solutions ever could, with significantly better results. AI is a very powerful technology. If we design, train and tune it properly, with strict adherence to neutrality and freedom of expression, we know that we can manage news distribution and our public discourse much more effectively, and fairly, than any deterministic software, or a group of humans doing it manually. Dimitry believes in safe and constructive AI use cases. To those who are weary of AI Dimitry says that, like with every innovation, there is potential for good and bad outcomes, and it’s up to both the platform’s creators and its users to ensure it produces a positive, constructive outcome. **Dimitry:** There are certainly people who are weary of AI, and accuse it, as a technology, of being sinister. To that my answer is, it’s what we make of it. Every new innovation was presented with this dilemma. For example, nuclear energy can obliterate entire cities in milliseconds… yet nuclear energy can feed billions of people, when produced safely and administered responsibly. AI is going to be no exception. The technology is already here, and we can’t make it go away. Just like every major innovation prior to AI, it’s up to us — the leaders and innovators in this space - to ensure that we create AI as a force of good. And the onus is on us to use the algorithms that we create for positive, constructive purposes that will benefit billions of people in the process. It’s a big responsibility that we certainly don’t take lightly. ## The Future of Media with Etha Through AI-based moderation, Etha has the ability to change the landscape of political accountability and transparency in news media not only in the United States, but the entire world. For the founders, this change is the heart of the mission for a better, more truthful future. **Dimitry:** I envision a change, there’s no question about it. More importantly, I envision a great deal of improvement in how we view our political representatives and the news media that covers them. By design, we’re not trying to change the news. As matter of fact, our goal is to be an impartial observer, and a transparent curator of the news. We strive to present the news without bias, and whenever we do detect bias in our curated news feed, we will expose it and let our readers make appropriate conclusions about its content. That’s the really exciting part about what we do. In essence, we foster better behavior among news sources, along with a greater sense of responsibility and accountability for what’s being published. However, this changes more than the media and public discourse. We also offer a significant improvement in the way politicians themselves communicate with the people they serve. **Dimitry:** Another great benefit we deliver with our solution is through accountability our platform imposes on our politicians. That’s another solution area where it really hits home. When we introduce this type of transparency and oversight to the political news media, it makes a direct impact on the thought process that the individual politicians and government agencies have to go through before they make a key decision or publish their next statement. This is yet another direct, and impactful benefit that I strongly feel we can, and will bring to the political community in the U.S. and around the globe. As you can tell, we have big plans, innovative ideas, and a highly capable team to make a big difference in the way people get their political news, process them, and communicate with their political representatives. There’s clearly no lack of problems in this space, and we are more than up to the task! ***Join us!*** *Dimitry is one of many like-minded innovators behind the vision of Etha. We are a collective with a vision to greatly improve the reality of media and political relationships. As we prepare to take this platform into the future, we want you to join us.* *Download the app on __[Apple](https://apps.apple.com/me/app/etha/id1588384989)__ or __[Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=one.etha.app)__ devices to experience the beginning of the future.* *Follow us on __[Twitter](https://twitter.com/getEtha)__, __[Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/ethaofficialapp/)__, __[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/EthaOfficialApp)__, or __[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethaofficialapp)__.* *Written by the team @ __[etha.one](https://etha.one/)__* *[Buy us a coffee!](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/infoYyMk)*

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