It all began with a guide to startup events in Hamburg; since then, found has grown into a community with over 1,400 members and a wide range of offerings. In this interview, founder Kyrylo Korsun explains how found came about and what his plans are for the future.
Kyrylo Korsun presents found at a meetup © found
First of all, tell us a little bit about you! What is your background and what are you doing?
I'm Kyrylo, a proud Ukrainian, founder, community builder, and passionate runner. Three things have fascinated me for as long as I can remember, and they ended up shaping my life: people, foreign cultures, and technology. Since I was a kid, I dreamt of going to places and seeing the world. So I studied Mandarin and international business, and spent several years in beautiful Hangzhou, China. I never had a well-defined career plan - I let curiosity lead. From teaching Chinese to working in IT to building my own startup, I tried many different things.
In 2019, I moved to Hamburg, just before COVID paralysed the whole world. I'm a very social guy, so those first years with periodic curfews were tough. I missed being around people. In between lockdowns, I worked on different projects: a platform for Ukrainian artists, an IT and marketing agency, and eventually startups. In 2024, I joined the incubator at Körber Start-Hub, building an AI platform that helped the film industry create accessible versions of movies for people with hearing or visual impairments.
Hugo Paquin and Kyrylo Korsun © found
What is found what was the reason to establish it?
When I really got into the startup world, I met a lot of incredibly talented founders and operators who had no idea where to start. Where to find the right people. Which room to walk into. The problem was unglamorous. The information was everywhere and nowhere at once, scattered across event apps and a handful of communities in Slack and WhatsApp. You would hear about the good event the day after it happened. So I started compiling a list of events and shared it with a couple of fellow founders on WhatsApp. The list got bigger and got reshared with others. At some point I decided to put it into a weekly newsletter: found Hamburg.
It quickly evolved into a five-minute weekly digest where I share everything around startups and community in Hamburg. My reflections, insights, events, jobs, and more. This year, my good friend Hugo Paquin has joined found as a co-founder, and we've had tremendous support from our community. Today found is the quintessence of everything Hugo and I are passionate about. It's a growing early-stage startup community of more than 1,400 people and a curated startup media.
At a Co-working Day © found
What are the current activities of found and what are the future plans?
Our mission is to connect startup founders, operators, and investors, help them build successful companies, and put Hamburg on the global startup map. The newsletter is not the only way we do this. Through our WhatsApp community we connect people online, and through our monthly Co-working Days we bring the community together in real life. We've launched the found podcast to spotlight the movers and shakers of the startup community. And there's also a job board with the best handpicked startup and tech jobs. From here, we want to open the newsletter to guest writers from the community, grow the job board into the default place to look for a startup job in Hamburg, and run more of our own events.
