Introductions and What MageCloud Does
Matt:
Today, we’ve had a seven‑figure business that’s been built from scratch by an immigrant entrepreneur: Paul from MageCloud. We’ve talked about everything from selling fruit and veg as a kid through to coming to the UK and the challenge of being able to stay here.
For people listening, MageCloud is, in my words, a digital agency that specialises in development work for online retailers, from about 100k a year up to, ideally, hundreds of millions in revenue. Is that roughly correct, Paul?
Paul:
I’d say we’re not just “development stuff”; we see ourselves as a partner in crime for our clients. We have around 40 developers working month in, month out to improve clients’ websites. On top of that, clients use my brain for SEO, conversion rate optimization and data‑driven decisions.
Realistically, a 100 million revenue company usually has its own in‑house team, so our sweet spot is e‑commerce brands doing up to around 10 million a year. And we’re becoming more than an agency now, through the community we’re building with our E‑commerce Camp; that focus on giving back is what makes us different.
Paul’s Early Years in Soviet Union Times
Matt:
I was stalking you on LinkedIn last night, and you’ve done a lot of different roles before founding MageCloud. What’s your story before the company?
Paul:
My entrepreneurial story started in school. I was born in the Soviet Union, and when it collapsed, life was very tough for my family. My parents moved from Siberia to the east of Ukraine when I was about two, into a city that today is only a few kilometres from the frontline.
We had absolutely no money, so I had to hustle from about ten years old. I’d go to the garden, grab fruit and apples, go to the market and sell them; I’d collect empty bottles from the street and return them for cash. At school, I realised I could also “sell” my brain: I started selling homework answers and even handwritten exam answer sheets I’d created, copied and distributed to classmates.
Matt:
Do you think that entrepreneurial drive was inherited or forced by circumstance?
Paul:
Both. I liked being on stage at school and in front of people, so I wasn’t shy, but the conditions pushed me. By ninth grade, I was reading agricultural magazines and dreaming of being a farmer because I knew: you grow tomatoes, you sell them, you reinvest, and you can scale.
Ukraine is a major agricultural country, a breadbasket of Europe, and I genuinely believe that if I’d gone into farming, I might be even more financially successful than in IT.
From IT University to Microsoft and Early Web Projects
Matt:
Did you study in Ukraine? What was your formal background?
Paul:
Yes, I studied in a relatively small city, around 200,000 people, at a machine‑building and IT‑focused academy. My core training was more like database engineering: assembler, CAD/CAM, SolidWorks and so on, but not really the internet, because it was still emerging then.
Outside of university, I entered national IT tournaments, won a couple, and that helped me get into my first real job as a web developer. Back then, marketplaces like Elance (now Upwork) were the main source of international projects, and I worked on everything: ASP, Flash, Perl, PHP—whatever the project needed.
One memorable project was a dating site called GuyParty.com, where my test profile ended up in the top five “most popular guys” on the platform simply because I kept refreshing the page while testing.
Matt:
What kind of work were you doing after university?
Paul:
I moved from pure development into project management and then sales over time. I worked on a large email platform sending about a million emails a day over 18 servers—no Git, no load balancers, just raw infrastructure we had to keep alive. That success allowed me to buy an apartment for around $6,000 at the time and even self‑fund a month‑long trip to the US to improve my English.
Silicon Valley, Burnout and Pivoting to E‑commerce
Matt:
You later moved to Silicon Valley. How did that happen?
Paul:
In 2012, I moved from Ukraine to Silicon Valley under the same company; by then, I owned about 30% of it. It was my dream—freedom, mindset, all of that. But the reality was different: we probably spent around $100,000 on that move, and it just didn’t work.
Being physically there didn’t magically close more deals, and after a while, I went back to Ukraine feeling pretty low. I was tired of selling development into startups—90% of them fail, and when you’ve built something for two years, and it dies, you feel like you’ve wasted part of your life.
Matt:
So, how did you make the pivot into e‑commerce and MageCloud?
Paul:
After leaving that first company, I joined the Ukrainian marketing agency Promodo for about a year and a half to gain real‑world marketing experience. That experience, combined with my development background, is now a big foundation of what I do.
E‑commerce appealed to me because it’s predictable: if you know traffic, conversion rate and margins, you can forecast revenue and profit. I didn’t want to build things I didn’t believe in anymore; I wanted businesses where data could prove the idea.
Founding MageCloud During War and the Original Product Vision
Matt:
When did MageCloud actually start?
Paul:
MageCloud, as a brand, really started when the war first broke out in eastern Ukraine, and I moved from the east to the west. I had about $100,000 saved, enough to feel stable for a while. I decided not to become an employee again and instead take the risk of building something of my own, together with my partner Yuri and one of our earliest hires, who has now been with the company for around ten years.
Originally, MageCloud wasn’t an agency; our first vision was a tool—a cloud platform to put Magento, an e‑commerce system, on autopilot. The idea was that a retailer with no technical skills could press a button and have a Magento store installed and ready, rather than needing a developer.
Matt:
And how did that product journey go?
Paul:
Developers ended up using it more than merchants. We tried pivoting to focus on them, then on hosting providers, and we never executed well enough. Another company, Cloudways, executed the same broad idea far better and eventually sold to DigitalOcean for about $350 million, while I couldn’t keep investing and had to pull back.
I take full responsibility for that; it’s my execution fault. But those mistakes taught me a lot, and they led to what MageCloud is today: a service business with great technical and marketing skills.
Leaving Ukraine Again: Italy, the UK and Homes for Ukraine
Matt:
Fast‑forwarding to the more recent war in 2022, how did you end up in the UK?
Paul:
After the full‑scale invasion in 2022, my wife and son left Ukraine for Italy within a couple of weeks. My mother moved from the east to the west of Ukraine, and I later joined my family in Italy.
Italy is beautiful—great food and weather—but working for UK clients from there is not that different from working from Ukraine. If I were already displaced, I wanted a location that made more sense for the business and for our family long‑term.
We looked at the US again, but eventually came to the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, which gave us a three‑year right to live and work here. The UK is close to Ukraine geographically and culturally, and if we need to fly back tomorrow, we can.
Matt:
How is MageCloud structured now between Ukraine, the UK and the US?
Paul:
Most of our engineering team is in Ukraine; they’re incredibly hardworking and talented and will happily go beyond 9–5 to get things done. In the UK, I’m currently self‑employed and work with contractors for roles like client management and sales.
We also have a legal presence in the US now via a company I registered remotely, mainly to support US clients more easily. I haven’t rushed to create a UK limited company partly because of my temporary immigration status and partly because I chose to focus on building relationships and revenue first; our US structure already covers financial operations.
The Global Talent Visa Rejection
Matt:
You recently messaged me saying your Global Talent visa got declined, and I could hear the frustration. What happened?
Paul:
The Homes for Ukraine scheme gives us three years here, but no guarantee we can stay after that. Every month my son spends at nursery, he becomes more British: he speaks English, he corrects my spelling, and he’s growing up in this culture. The idea of suddenly being told “go home” is painful.
To create a long‑term path, I applied for the UK Global Talent visa. I worked with an immigration consultancy, submitted financial statements, reference letters from serious people—including executives from a company worth around $1.4 billion—and evidence of what I’ve built.
The response was essentially: “There is not enough evidence that you personally are a talent recognised by the industry. Running a business and making money is not talent.” They wanted media mentions, conference keynotes, Forbes articles—things that often can be bought or manufactured.
My application focused more on the business than on me as an individual expert, which, in hindsight, was a mistake.
Matt:
So what are your options now?
Paul:
The good news is that the Homes for Ukraine scheme has been extended another 18 months, so we have some breathing room. I can reapply for Global Talent as many times as I like; the government doesn’t stop you, they just collect more fees.
If I reapply, I’ll rebuild the case around me personally: speaking slots, PR, my own site, clearer “personal brand” proof. Another route is to set up a UK company, sponsor myself as a skilled worker and go that way, but current rules are getting stricter, and the path to indefinite leave has been lengthened for some visas.
For now, I’m staying and building, but if at some point the system blocks us, I’d have to consider moving to somewhere like the US East Coast; I’ve been there, worked US hours, and I know it’s viable.
UK vs US Clients, Risk and Reputation
Matt:
From your perspective, how do UK and US clients differ?
Paul:
I don’t want to attack UK entrepreneurs, but there is a cultural difference. Right now, I have roughly £60,000 outstanding from UK clients who either delay or simply don’t pay; some have liquidated one company, reopened under a new name and left debts behind. In the US, I honestly can’t remember a situation where we weren’t paid.
My experience is that Americans typically don’t start projects they can’t afford, and if they’re unhappy with you, they will pay the bill and then say, “Thank you, but goodbye.” In the UK, it can be much easier not to pay and hide behind the process.
For me, my name is everything. We keep all our clients in a single shared chat; I speak at events; I never want a situation where someone stands up in a room and says, “Paul, you ruined my business.”
Matt:
Do you think UK conditions—tax, regulation—are holding people back?
Paul:
Some of it is policy. For example, if you’re a small garden contractor and you cross a certain revenue threshold, you’re forced into VAT, which suddenly adds 20% and makes your services more expensive; many people deliberately stay under that line.
I’ve literally had UK agency owners tell me, “I don’t want to grow because I won’t make more money after tax and benefits.” There’s also a mindset element. My wife is a fully qualified dentist from Ukraine who spent her first year here earning about £6 an hour as a dental nurse while retraining and navigating very bureaucratic pathways, and at the same time, the NHS is crying out for dentists and nurses.
I think governments should be more deliberate about supporting entrepreneurs and highly skilled professionals, especially in sectors they say are in crisis.
Rebranding to Comerix and Preparing for an AI Future
Matt:
Let’s look ahead. What’s the vision for the next five years?
Paul:
We’re at a major transition point. One big move is rebranding from MageCloud to Comerix because the old name ties us too closely to a single technology—Magento. I’m proud of owning the magecloud.com domain, but it also boxes us in.
With Comerix, we’re deliberately creating a brand that doesn’t limit us to development or even to IT. We’ve registered domains like comerix.ai, comerix.io and comerix.vc to keep the door open to marketing, CRO, investment, maybe even future industries like agriculture or physical businesses.
We’re already moving away from being “just developers” because AI is fundamentally changing software development. I genuinely think developers have built something—AI—that will significantly reduce the need for traditional development roles. Developers won’t disappear, but they’ll become AI implementers and integrators more than pure coders.
Matt:
Have you started investing as well?
Paul:
Yes, I’ve made two recent investments: one in an e‑commerce business and another in a CRM/automation platform. I’m not trying to be a big VC; I see it as “smart money”—I bring both capital and my experience in tech, marketing and operations.
I’m not interested in property because yields in the UK are low relative to risk. I’d rather put smaller cheques into businesses where I can increase value directly. Longer term, I like the idea of angel groups, as I’ve seen in Denmark and the US, where existing founders pool resources and back new entrepreneurs.
Mindset, Gratitude and Closing Thoughts
Matt:
You talk a lot about mindset and gratitude. How do you see your own position now?
Paul:
I’m 44 and, for the first time, I feel I have the three things I didn’t have when I was younger: time, experience and some money. I spent ten years in one company, then around two in a marketing agency, and now about eleven years building MageCloud; for a long time, I was focused on just one thing at a time, like many people raised in the Soviet mindset.
Now I have more freedom to explore: invest, test ideas, possibly build or buy my own e‑commerce brand one day. I’m doing a lot of this partly for fun and personal growth.
My son will have options I never did: a father who can support him to explore, try, fail and pivot early. That’s what I’m grateful for and what drives me now—to build something durable enough that he and others can stand on top of it and go further.
Tom:
It’s really interesting to hear the full story because I’ve worked with you for two years and didn’t know all of this—the hard work, the hustle, the desire and the energy. You just get stuff done, and you’re a great advert for entrepreneurship.
Matt:
Agreed. What a fantastic story, Paul. If any listeners want to reach out to you or ask a question, where’s the best place?
Paul:
If you Google “Paul Ryazanov,” you’ll find me—Ecommerce Camp, MageCloud, Comerix, and LinkedIn. Or just email me; I’m always open to conversations with serious founders and brands who want to grow.
Matt:
Perfect. Thanks so much for coming on, Paul, and maybe we’ll get you back in a year to talk about the pivot and how Comerix is going, and maybe do a deeper dive on AI as well.
Paul:
I promise I will.
