Ambition A.M. meets Svetlana Tarnagurskaja, co-founder of Dot Collective and Pipeliner, to discuss how she’s on a mission to unlock business potential.
Why take two days to work on a project, when technology could help you complete it in just a few seconds?
Entrepreneurs and business leaders alike are often known for being time-poor, but for Svetlana Tarnagurskaja, the challenge of productivity seems to be far from an obstacle.
Tarnagurskaja founded her data and cloud engineering consultancy Dot Collective in 2021 with a mission to unlock business potential – streamlining how data platforms are built for large enterprises.
After growing the firm to over 70 employees worldwide with a turnover of £6.5m, the 40-year-old Belarus-born entrepreneur, who also recently secured a spot on the Telegraph and Natwest’s 100 Female Entrepreneurs to Watch list, now finds herself more than fascinated with the start-up buzz.
In 2022, she embarked on yet another business venture, spearheading the launch of her new start-up, now known as Pipeliner.
It is a service that she says helps firms automate “mundane tasks” across the board, with a focus on the automation of cloud data lake infrastructure.
“One [start-up] is just not enough,” Tarnagurskaja tells me, with a smile.
Unlocking business potential
Tarnagurskaja is no stranger to leading a high-performing venture alongside a highly-skilled team.
Before leaving her corporate 9-5 behind, the budding entrepreneur found herself running the London division of tech-firm BJSS, where she looked after a team of over 350 technologists, a portfolio of 50 projects and a P&L sheet of £70m.
“I’m not scared of big numbers,” Tarnagurskaja says.
“For me, that is more comfortable… we’ve been quite clever from [the] beginning how we design the organisation, how to position ourselves so that we can continue on this fast track growth, but in a manageable way, without killing the culture.”
“For me, that is more comfortable… we’ve been quite clever from [the] beginning how we design the organisation, how to position ourselves so that we can continue on this fast track growth, but in a manageable way, without killing the culture.”
Pipliner was originally developed as an “internal accelerator” product for her team at Dot Collective, which allowed the team to automate and deliver projects faster while putting their focus on more “complex and valuable” work.
“This internal use proved its efficacy, leading to its development as a marketable product,” she says.
“What would take two days to achieve can now be completed in 30 seconds.”
Standing out from competition
Data management solutions are nothing new, Tarnagurskaja admits, which is why she says she put a focus on data control retention, quality and security from the start.
“Pipeliner stands out from its competition by focusing on operational efficiency and automation of routine tasks related to cloud infrastructure provisioning, while retaining full control of the code and without compromising on quality or security, fostering an environment of efficiency and precision,” she says.
“There are other tools in the market capable of doing similar things that Pipeliner can do, but invariably it leads to vendor lock-in and a loss of control of the code for the engineering team, which is really suboptimal.”
Building a high-performing team in a fast-paced environment
Tarnagurskaja is noticeably passionate about how she builds and manages a diverse and successful team.
In fact, with the tech industry being notorious for having a rather large gender pay gap, Tarnagurskaja is on a mission to ensure her tech company doesn’t.
According to an Pinsent Masons analysis of 605 salary reports from 2022 to 2023, women working for large technology, media & telecommunications firms were paid 15.6 per cent less per hour than men.
“Building a good team takes some thought, you cannot just bring random people together and hope for the best… representation matters.”
“Building a good team takes some thought, you cannot just bring random people together and hope for the best… representation matters,” Targnagurskaja says.
“I think building high performing gel teams in 2024 requires special attention paid to inclusivity [and] diversity because diversity brings diversity of thought and this is what you want.”
The challenges of building (two) start-ups
Tarnagurskaja reflects back to the early days of Dot Collective when it was just her and her co-founder, a memory she coins as a “typical two idiots and a dog start-up”.
Tarnagurskaja on unlocking business potential.
What she says was one of the most challenging decisions yet, the “bootstrapped consultancy with big aspirations” had to carefully decide where to allocate their minimal resources, especially when considering whether their accelerator project would be an internal product of their own or a marketable service for others.
She adds: “Despite the risks, coming into our second year of running the business, we chose to invest in developing the product, which required diverting our limited funds and manpower into product development, not to mention many late nights and early mornings for our two founding engineers, Xavi and Jon.
“It also led us to raising a small seed round from a VC. This decision paid off as the tool, now known as Pipeliner, has opened new market opportunities as it is now available as a stand-alone product to anyone to use, supporting our mission of making high-quality cloud-native bespoke data platforms more affordable to any organisation.”
Despite having too many ambitions to count and needing to resist the urge to start yet another passionate venture, the founder says the next stage in building out her entrepreneurial success is getting her current services in front of as many people as she can.
“I’ve asked my partner to stop me if I ever decide that building another product while running a fast-growing business is a good idea – it’s been busy to say the least.”
CV
Name: Svetlana Tarnagurskaja
Company: Pipeliner and Dot Collective
Founded: Pipeliner – 2022 / Dot Collective -2021
Staff: Pipeliner = 3 / Dot Collective = 70+
Title: Co-founder and CEO
Age: 40
Born: Belarus
Lives: London
Studied: BSc in Physics then a MSc in Computer Science
Talents: Bringing amazing people together and making things happen
Motto: Everything will be fine in the end (and if it’s not fine, it’s not the end)
Most known for: Having strong opinions, can bake a decent cake too!
First ambition: To be a fashion designer
Favourite book: Too many to list, anything by Kazuo Ishiguro or Jonathan Franzen
Best piece of advice: Don’t betray yourself and dare to dream big