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Наталя ХандусенкоStartup
19 June 2026, 10:00
2026-06-19
From personal need to the EU market: Ukrainian designer launches sports events calendar. How Startlek automates competition organization and becomes an ecosystem for participants
Senior UX/UI & Product Designer Andriy Kolodyazhensky created a platform for organizers of sports events. Currently, Startlek covers events in several EU countries. The idea for the project was born from Andriy's own experience, who has been running for many years. In 1.5 months of work with the involvement of Claude, the IT specialist created a full-fledged ecosystem for organizers and participants.
Senior UX/UI & Product Designer Andriy Kolodyazhensky created a platform for organizers of sports events. Currently, Startlek covers events in several EU countries. The idea for the project was born from Andriy's own experience, who has been running for many years. In 1.5 months of work with the involvement of Claude, the IT specialist created a full-fledged ecosystem for organizers and participants.
Andriy's main pain as a user was the lack of a single convenient platform in Ukraine that would collect all running events in one place. This created inconvenience for athletes when searching, and the organizers lacked a modern tool for publishing and managing events. Since the existing analogues had many disadvantages, at the end of 2021 Andriy had a desire to create a high-quality redesign of the vsiprobihy.org website, which at that time was the main platform for registering for races.
The first attempt to implement the plan was unsuccessful. At first, Andriy contacted the site owner Yuriy, developed the first mockups in Figma, but the work was stopped by the start of a full-scale war. In 2024, the IT guy returned to the idea, took on the role of leader and, through the TeamChallange platform and running communities, gathered a powerful team: 5 front-enders, 3 back-enders, a PM, two QA and a DevOps engineer. Based on Yuriy's 20 years of experience and feedback from other organizers, they completely designed the future platform. However, when direct development began on the created mockups, the team gradually disintegrated, and the project fell silent again.
In the end, the designer decided not to back down from his goal, brought the matter to a conclusion on his own, and in April launched his own calendar of sports events, Startlek.
How can Startlek be useful?
The Startlek platform is divided into three roles: participant, organizer, and admin.
For participants:
Viewing modes: the event calendar can be viewed in three formats - as a list with cards, as a classic calendar, or on an interactive map.
Personal account: you can maintain your profile, register for starts, and add events to your "favorites," creating your own competition schedule.
Event chats: each startup has its own internal chat for communication and information exchange, which replaces a bunch of disparate groups in Telegram or Viber.
Slots Flea Market: A handy bulletin board where members can safely resell or buy out registrations if plans change.
Routine automation: automatic re-registration, distance change, or event cancellation functions work without the involvement of organizers.
Clubs: You can create clubs or join existing ones. Each club has a public page, and membership is displayed on the runner's profile.
For organizers:
Team management: the "Organization" entity is not tied to one person - several managers can manage events in one office.
Flexible tools: detailed registration analytics, promotional code settings, automatic price changes, and auto-start or close registration for specific distances are available.
Communication and add-ons: the ability to set up email newsletters for participants and sell additional products or services directly during registration.
Public business card and results: each organization has a page with the history of its past and upcoming events, and competition results can be published directly on the website.
In addition, Andriy is currently working on creating a large-scale rating system for all types of competitions (analogous to the international UTMB system).
The project is currently in the process of attracting organizers and users. First of all, Startlek is designed to solve the problems of organizers, because where there is registration, there are also participants.
It is also worth adding that the site already covers events in several markets: Ukraine, Poland, Romania and the Baltic countries. This creates certain difficulties in marketing, since you have to reach all locations at the same time. Therefore, at this stage, a more effective development strategy is being developed - in simple terms, first conquer one market, and only then scale to others.
Technical side of the project and its cost
Andriy developed the entire project himself. Currently, his financial investments are minimal: $200 went to Claude subscription and $20 to purchase a domain. However, current expenses are not enough to further scale the platform. In the near future, the developer will have to switch to PRO versions of hosting and databases, which will increase monthly expenses by more than $40.
Andriy implemented the entire technical part himself, converting his own layouts from Figma into working code using Claude. In total, the development took him 1.5 months. Even despite the presence of a ready-made design system, the process required a lot of time, because the code that the artificial intelligence produced had to be constantly adjusted. The IT guy chose Vercel as hosting, and configured the database on Supabase, while simultaneously understanding all the technical intricacies of the site's architecture.
Since Startlek has a completely custom design, as soon as the AI deviated from the given styles, the designer personally drew the interface in Figma and translated it into code for the neural network. This is how new functions and pages appeared on the platform. However, Claude still performed some of the work autonomously, relying on the already formed styles. Andriy also fine-tuned security issues with the help of Claude, taking into account useful tips from the Threads community, and the advice of a familiar specialist helped to optimize SEO.
"Claude is capable of performing almost any task. However, when you create a product alone, AI remains your only source of information, and this is sometimes limiting. That is why tips from real experts in the field help to avoid architectural mistakes. In the end, the main thing is to correctly set the task for the neural network and clearly know what the final result should be," the IT expert concluded.
Monetization
The main monetization channel for the project at the start is a percentage of the participant's registration for the event, which is currently 1%. If the event is free or completely charitable, there is no commission.
In the future, it is planned to expand services, including promoting events on the platform, as well as integrating with accommodation booking services and sports brands.
The actual publication and management of events on the site is free for organizers.
Andriy considers the main advantage of his service to be simplicity and ease of use.
About plans
Andriy's next step is to attract organizers who will independently publish events and conduct registration through Startlek. This is his main task at the moment. To implement it, the IT professional is considering several ways: attracting investments, promotion through various marketing channels, and direct communication with organizers.
The designer emphasizes that at the start he will focus on only one market, but in the long term he plans to scale the project to Europe and the whole world.
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