Vertex Female Founder Series | Elena Ionenko – Growth Mindset: Being Comfortable with the Uncomfortable

In continuation of our International Women’s Day 2022, and part of our monthly Vertex Female Founder Series, we are sharing beautiful, untold stories of our female founders overcoming the odds and obstacles to build businesses that are disruptive, yet transformative to the lives of many. Today we are proud to feature Elena Ionenko.

Elena Ionenko is the co-founder and COO of TurnKey Lender, a global B2B SaaS company that offers an AI-powered lending automation platform and decision management solutions and services in more than 50 countries. The company's flexible SaaS platform is able to support numerous credit products, and can automate both the entire lending process, from end to end. Recently, they raised a US$10 M round led by OTB Ventures and Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia also participated in the round.

Elena has overcome numerous odds in co-founding Turnkey Lender, a startup that operates in the niche lending segment. Recently, she also managed to pull off a colossal plan to relocate her company out of Eastern Ukraine, due to the war. Curious to learn more about Elena and her journey, and her active mentorship of female entrepreneurs, I am grateful for the opportunity to interview her to find out more.

Growing up, Role Model and Sole Focus on a Corporate Career

While most entrepreneurs we see today often grow up in family businesses or with strong entrepreneurial influence from role models in their life, Elena clearly breaks from the mould. Interestingly, she did not harbor entrepreneurial ambitions from young (previously we wrote about Roshni Mahtani,  CEO and founder of Parentinc, whose childhood dream was to be an entrepreneur, read here).

Born and raised in the former Soviet Union, entrepreneurship was a completely foreign concept to her– growing up in a communist state where private property was banned and economic activity was organized by state owned enterprises.

Elena shared “As a child, I looked up to my mother as a role model and inspiration.”

Her mother was the CFO of a large manufacturing plant. It’s fascinating that despite not being a member of the Communist Party – often a prerequisite for ascending high ranking positions in state owned enterprises – and being a female, Elena’s mother rose to the top through a combination of sheer diligence and her own talents. The rarity of her accomplishments and the odds she had to overcome in achieving them left an indelible mark on the psyche of Elena— living proof that one’s hard work, talents and merits were sufficient ingredients for success.

 

The turning point came when her husband encouraged Elena to “work for herself instead of working for someone else”, given her intelligence and talents, as he enjoyed building companies himself. Elena contemplated but later thought that it wasn’t the right time. She believed that before one can become a successful entrepreneur, one has to hone his/ her skills and mature to a certain level as a professional within a corporate environment.

Co-founding Turnkey Lender: Transitioning from Corporates to the World of Startups

Undergoing her MBA at Santa Clara University in 2002, Elena finally thought the time was right for her to start her first company. Santa Clara is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, and the entire MBA program was structured around entrepreneurship. It was the hub of entrepreneurship and innovation, “where great companies like Apple, Google and Facebook all started out”. During the MBA course, every single student was essentially encouraged and inspired to be an entrepreneur. With the kind of environment and curriculum of her MBA, it was so tempting to become a founder as Elena observed that everyone “has this drive and this entrepreneurship bug in them”.

Elena then co-founded her first startup with her university friends, a hardware startup that was one of the first in the world to focus on chip on film technology.

 

 

Her Guiding Compass: Seeking Growth, Discomfort, and Resilience

 

In Elena’s first startup which she co-founded with two other male co-founders, she was very comfortable in being behind the scenes – not being involved in the technical aspect of the business but complementing the team through a business management, strategy and marketing role. However, she quickly learnt the importance of putting herself in uncomfortable situations to aid her personal growth to become a better leader. As the COO at Turnkey Lender, she has had little choice but to put herself in stressful situations and pick up the skills to navigate and make hard decisions – from public speaking in front of many investors, to making the hiring and firing decisions.

“Naturally, people prefer things that are easy to do, and avoid stressful experiences. But there are so many challenges in running a startup, and you cannot shy away from these challenges, otherwise, you will be out of business before you know it.”

 

 

“Success isn’t something you achieve suddenly, but built up over time, little by little. You need to persist to finally reach the end point.”

Parallels between being a Mother and a Founder

I admire how Elena juggles her priorities. She is also a mother to three children – two daughters aged 20 and 22, and an 11 year old son. When quizzed about what some of the common skill sets of being a mother and running a company are, Elena jokingly answered: “patience. Parents would know that our children tend to do things or ask you those questions that are meant to test your temper”. Expanding on her initial quip, it is clear that exuding calmness and confidence as a mother in front of her children, and maintaining calmness and confidence in the face of challenges as the leader of a company, are equally important— whether it’s her children or employees, they would look to her and respond accordingly during times of “crisis”.

While co-founders ought to discuss the challenges amongst themselves, she felt airing the vulnerabilities and insecurities in front of employees is not an option, as “people look up to you as a leader, and you must make sure that the team remains confident and calm because that is what keeps people productive”.

Capturing the heavy responsibilities of a founder and leader in a startup, Elena says that the stress is unparalleled and cautioned anyone who’s interested to start a business. “You have people who entrust their lives to you, because they are dependent on you for their salary, and these are individuals who have their own families to support as well”.

Her biggest challenge – migrating the entire company from Ukraine to US

The Russia-Ukraine war had disrupted the lives of many, and unfortunately Turnkey Lender included, as their business operations were mainly based in Eastern part of Ukraine. Elena and her cofounder Dmitry started monitoring the political situation closely as the rumours of Russia attacking Ukraine began to spread. It was a confusing time for them, and in a world where the last war happened decades ago, most people were in denial– nobody wanted to believe that a war would actually happen. Nevertheless, Elena and Dmitry started developing a massive contingency plan - to relocate their staff.

Like mother hens, they quickly devised a quick and efficient evacuation plan from Eastern part of Ukraine to the Western part and other countries. One part of the plan involved providing relocation support and incentives with their staff. At that point, it was a few months before the crisis happened. Several employees took the opportunity to relocate to Poland where they opened an office in 2021.

The other part of the plan involved detailed communication and evacuation process for the emergency situation. It was an intricate plan, going down to the details such as the specific communication channels to use and specific evacuation routes by cars and buses. Fortunately, they rolled out their plan successfully and as many as 90% of their employees located in Eastern Ukraine were able to leave within two hours once the war broke out, before all the roads were closed.

Elena shares, “I’m glad that everything was coordinated in real time – my staff was able to report their whereabouts until everyone arrived safely in the new locations. But it wasn’t easy. Everyone was stressed out and some refused to leave for various (often irrational) reasons. It took a lot of effort – conversations, encouragement and persuasion – to convince them to finally evacuate and to arrange for additional means of evacuation.”

“I’m relieved that everyone’s safe, and thankfully, our operations were back to normal by April 2022. I know some businesses choose not to deal with the relocations and simply inform their employees that evacuating is their own problem. They actually said that anyone who isn’t back to work 1 week later would be laid off. That’s not our style”

“We chose not to abandon our team as we strongly value our team’s loyalty and dedication – many of them have supported us through difficult times during our company building journey. Taking care of them during times of crisis was the only option for us. It wasn’t easy to move everyone but I’m glad that they appreciated all the efforts and continued to work hard once they were able to. It is heartwarming to see the multiple posts with words of gratitude on social media and internal channels.”

Partnership with Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India (VVSEAI)

(Photo of Carmen Yuen with Turnkey Lender team)

VVSEAI has been one of Turnkey Lender’s earliest investors, having led its Series A round back in 2017.

 

What transpired was that Carmen took a few months to study this niche segment – involving a sound understanding of different types of lending, credit risk concepts and how lending decisions are made in non-banks and banks, amongst others.

Elena and co-founder Dmitry were extremely grateful, as they tried to fundraise from multiple investors but none seemed to appreciate their business. Carmen and VVSEAI stood out as investors who were “curious and interested enough to learn” even in domains previously foreign to them. Instead of stopping at the first pitch like many others, VVSEAI went the extra mile to understand the space, when they had a hunch that the founders, business and technology are building something revolutionary.

What Lies Ahead?

Turnkey Lender recently closed a $10 million funding round, as mentioned earlier and the new funds would serve to expand its presence in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia, capitalising on new opportunities in these regions enabled by the macro trends in embedded lending adoption. It also announced the expansion of its team with the appointment of Christian Morales as Chairman of the Board, a senior executive with over 40 years of experience in leading global tech institutions.

VVSEAI shares Elena and Turnkey Lender’s excitement towards the new wave of embedded lending evolution, and cannot wait to see them continue building their solutions in service of the greater good.

Like this story? Please like, comment and share. And read our other stories of our portfolio female founders here.

Edited by Elise Tan

**For the latest news on Vertex Ventures SE Asia and India and our portfolio companies, follow us on Linkedin or  **subscribe to our monthly newsletter.