KSE Takes Future Founders Lab to Zaporizhzhia, Aiming at Young Talent in the Regions

More than 150 young Ukrainians spent October 23 building business solutions from scratch in Zaporizhzhia, as Kyiv School of Economics launched its first Future Founders Lab outside the capital. The event, run with the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration, marks the first stop of a regional tour that KSE plans to take to other cities across Ukraine.

The format is simple: a free, one-day business intensive for 16-to-22-year-olds. Participants ranged from 11th-graders to university students and young professionals. In a single day, they moved from idea to practical solution — analyzing cases from five Zaporizhzhia companies, working with state funding instruments, and defending their work before entrepreneurs, mentors, and government representatives. The cases spanned food production, agricultural machinery, branding, and other sectors.

What does the program actually teach?

The curriculum pushes a dual lens. KSE faculty delivered lectures and workshops on finding business opportunities under uncertainty, testing ideas, identifying first customers, and building business models — alongside how government decisions and support programs shape entrepreneurship.

Participants then ran a team entrepreneurship game: defining target audiences, adapting business models to real-world constraints, and hunting for state support instruments. Five mentors helped teams find weak spots in their solutions before a final pitch of city development projects to a jury.

Yuliia Svyrydenko, President of KSE Business School, framed the ambition plainly.

"This project is for young people from all over Ukraine, for those who want to run their own business and for those who want to work for the state. We want to give young people academic knowledge and a chance to talk with practitioners and entrepreneurs, so they can decide who they want to be and what suits them best. Young people in Zaporizhzhia are very optimistic. They all want to stay and work in Ukraine, they dream of starting their own businesses, and they ask a lot about competition and state support," Svyrydenko said.

Who spoke from the local business side?

A panel of Zaporizhzhia entrepreneurs, moderated by Svyrydenko, shared how they launched their ventures, found first customers, and operate in a frontline city:

• Polina Savicheva, founder of clothing brand and sewing production SAVI ATELIER
• Kyrylo Sukhatskyi, CEO of Brightmedia agency
• Kyrylo Krasnoselskyi, PhD, CEO of Triada-Welding
• Liudmyla Sirko, owner of the relocated Lazurna Raiduha children's recreation center (DOK Enerhodar LLC)

They discussed how they find opportunities where others see only problems — a message that lands differently in a city where security, economic, and reconstruction decisions affect residents daily.

Why Zaporizhzhia, and why now?

Future Founders Lab grew out of ThinkLab, an educational program KSE students built for students nationwide. ThinkLab 1.0 drew 100 participants to Kyiv in January 2026; ThinkLab 2.0 gathered 200 in July. After the second season, participants wrote that this format was missing outside the capital. So the team went to the regions, starting with Zaporizhzhia.

Ivan Fedorov, Head of the State Agency for Restoration and Development of Infrastructure of Ukraine and Co-Chair of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Defense Council, put the stakes in leadership terms.

"Responsibility isn't given; it's taken. Anyone who wants to change something must be ready to take responsibility for decisions. And the role of the leader is crucial here. A leader must support those who show initiative and are not afraid to make decisions. Even if a person makes a mistake, they shouldn't be scolded for it. What matters is that they took responsibility. That is how you build a team capable of acting and delivering results," Fedorov said.

What comes next for participants?

Attendees can now submit an essay and apply for the Future Founders Forum, a three-day business intensive in spring 2027 that will bring together young people from different regions of Ukraine.

For everyone else, the barrier to entry is deliberately low. Participation is free, and no specific major, entrepreneurial experience, business idea, or pre-formed team is required. Interested applicants fill out a form on the program page; when registration opens in their region, the team sends the details.

For practitioners watching Ukraine's talent pipeline, the signal is clear: KSE is betting that the country's next generation of founders and policymakers will come from the regions — and it's building the programming to prove it.