The celebration of 10 years for the company was marked by its CEO, Katherine Kostereva, by pointing to a landmark – valuation has passed $1 billion, making the company Boston’s first unicorn of the year. Created in 2014, Creatio has discovered its niche in the low-code and no-code world of software, which empowers the community of non-developers to create applications thanks to intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces. This new strategy places Creatio head to head against market leaders like Salesforce and Microsoft, though the company continues to look forward to promoting that it can help its business clients speed up the development of their applications.
At the same time, during an interview for Boston Business Journal, Kostereva talked about her company’s journey, her passion for scaling businesses, and what she hopes for Ukraine. Founded in Boston, where the potential for a global reach was envisioned, Creatio today serves clients in over 100 countries and collaborates with nearly 800 partners worldwide.
Kostereva treasures the connection she feels to Boston from her first work experiences, such as an internship at IBM, which introduced her to appreciation for the city. Remembering the challenges of setting up Creatio, “it was rough during the first few years especially because the company was working on finding product-market fit and had to clearly identify what go-to-market strategy to go with,” she said. Scaling is so much more rewarding now, and has focused structures, systems, and what she called “healthy culture” of the company.
She does believe “the right combination of performance and real care for clients, partners, and employees is crucial for effective leadership.” The ethos she says are the basis of the operational success of Creatio.
Kostereva showed a deep emotional connection with her parent country and promised to offer support in all different forms of initiatives towards helping Ukraine.
Being asked to share advice with women who aspire to climb the ranks of technology leadership, she stressed the need for resilience and persistence when working through challenges. Kostereva said that the opportunities available for women within the tech industry were generally equal and then posited that success is often a question of getting a great many rejections before having the first yes.
Under Kostereva, leading Creatio to the future, its urge for growth and creativity in the competitive scope of the technology, has much to flourish.
