Career stories
Kirill, on what it's like to be a Universal Manager at Eyes of Wonder startup studio
Kirill is one of our studio's Universal Managers. He juggles several products at once, builds teams, kills what isn't working, and somehow fits a master's degree in between. We asked him five questions about what his work actually looks like from the inside.
How would you explain your role to your grandmother in one sentence?
I tell each person on the team which direction to pull so the whole thing keeps moving forward.
Walk us through a typical Tuesday.
I'm up early - hit the gym or take a walk, then have breakfast at home. Then I sit down to work.
First call is AI SMM. The team has trained a neural network to run social media independently: scrolling feeds, writing posts and comments, collecting upvotes.
Next up is a migration project: I go through support cases, track progress, and work through known issues.
After lunch comes the most technical project: an anti-detect browser for AI agents. It's my first product where the target audience isn't humans, it's computers running on agents. Beyond managing it, I took on building the website myself because I wanted to experience vibe coding firsthand.
Tuesday evenings I spend at university. I'm doing a master's in innovation management.
What's the last thing you brought to the founders — and what did they say?
I came in with an idea to change the call-to-action on a button. My reasoning was that it would improve conversion. I expected a quick "let's do it." Instead, I got 40 minutes of tough questions: Who exactly is this targeting? Why now? What happens if it doesn't work?
I left without a yes, but with a clear picture of what needed to be tightened up, which was worth a lot more. A week later I came back with data, and the idea got approved.
Have you ever launched a product and shut it down yourself?
Yes — more than once. One of them was a startup builder tool.
Here's what I took away from it:
A project can't survive without a clear vision.
Before you start, make sure there isn't already an AI doing exactly that.
The sooner you close a stalled project, the more you save — time, money, team energy.
Hire a great team once, and they'll build ten products for you.
What about EOW's culture have you never seen anywhere else?
The power of a good argument.
Hierarchy and bureaucracy take a back seat here. If you have a strong, data-backed case, it doesn't matter where you sit in the org chart — you will be heard.
Want in?
We're looking for another Universal Manager, someone ready to take a product from zero to launch and beyond. Apply right now, and try on the founder role for yourself at our studio 🤘🏻
