Father Bohdan

Bohdan Hnatiuk

FounderTechnologistOrthodox Priest

Father Bohdan Hnatiuk — Founder, Technologist, Orthodox Priest

For more than twenty-five years, Bohdan Hnatiuk has been building at the intersection of technology, media, communication and human communities.

His path began before the Internet became part of everyday life and has passed through broadcasting, early online communities, web services, technology companies, media, analytics, digital products and artificial intelligence.

Alongside that technological journey, another path developed in parallel: faith, service and eventually the Orthodox priesthood.

Today, those two paths are no longer separate.

He builds technology.He builds institutions.He serves people.

One life. Two paths.

At first glance, technology entrepreneurship and Orthodox priesthood may appear to belong to different worlds.

For Bohdan, they grew from many of the same questions.

  • How do complex systems work?
  • How do people organise themselves?
  • How does information move?
  • What creates trust?
  • Why do some communities endure while others disappear?

And, eventually:

What responsibility do we have for the systems we create?

For decades, Bohdan approached these questions through technology, business, media and organisations.

Faith gradually added another dimension.

The technologies changed.

The questions became deeper.

01

Origins

1990s

Looking beyond the world immediately around him

Bohdan's interest in technology began long before he founded a company.

At the age of 13, he travelled from Ukraine to Brighton, United Kingdom, to study English.

The experience exposed him to an international educational and technological environment at a formative age.

A few years later, at around 15, he returned to Brighton and explored the intersection of business, technology and management.

These experiences happened while the commercial Internet itself was still emerging.

Looking beyond the world immediately around him, 1990s
02

Early Internet

Late 1990s

Broadcasting before networking

Before launching his first Internet project, Bohdan was already working with electronic media in Odesa.

While still at school, he worked with local television channel MOST, including participation in television broadcasts and the development of a programme about the emerging Internet.

He later worked with Gala Radio, focusing on servers and technology.

This experience connected three worlds that would remain central throughout his life:

technology, information and human communication.

Broadcasting demonstrated how technology could distribute information to thousands of people.

The Internet suggested something fundamentally different:

the audience could become part of the system.

media-most-tv 3 : 2
media-gala-radio 3 : 2

I became interested in the Internet before I became interested in websites. What fascinated me was the possibility of building environments in which people could communicate, create and organise themselves.

Bohdan Hnatiuk

2000

HaTa

In 2000, Bohdan launched one of his first independent Internet projects — HaTa, historically known as “Hacker Tandem.”

It appeared at a time when Internet access in Ukraine was still limited and online communities were far from mainstream.

HaTa was conceived as more than a personal homepage.

It was an attempt to create a digital community with its own identity, information and online services.

The technology now belongs to another era.

The underlying model does not.

People gathering inside a digital environment rather than simply visiting a webpage would become one of the defining ideas of the modern Internet.

hata-2000 3 : 2
03

Layner

2002–2003

From community to company

The next stage was Layner.

Internet experimentation had begun evolving into a commercial digital business.

Layner operated as a web development studio, creating websites and digital materials for external clients.

Over time, the studio produced digital work for dozens of companies and organisations.

But client services were only one part of the idea.

Layner simultaneously developed its own Internet services.

By 2003, the ecosystem included:

  • Search
  • Email
  • Internet Radio
  • Employment Services
  • Community Features
  • Online Promotions

At a time when much of the regional Internet market was still emerging, Layner was already being conceived not merely as a website but as a digital environment.

From community to company, 2002–2003
From community to company, 2002–2003

Early 2000s

Beyond web development

As the business developed, Bohdan's work expanded beyond websites.

Together with partners, he became involved in advertising and technology businesses, including work associated with TIX — Technology and Computer Systems.

The scope increasingly combined:

  • software and web development,
  • technology infrastructure,
  • advertising,
  • design,
  • corporate communications,
  • and business systems.

The teams worked with larger corporate customers, including projects connected with LUKOIL.

The Internet was no longer simply a destination.

It was becoming part of the operational infrastructure of business.

Beyond web development, Early 2000s
04

Public Systems

2004–2006

From digital networks to human networks

In 2004, during Ukraine's Orange Revolution, Bohdan became actively involved in political organisation in Odesa.

Grassroots activity developed into work within the regional political structure of Our Ukraine.

By 2006, he was serving as a consultant to the Odesa regional party organisation and was included among the candidates for the Odesa Regional Council.

This period provided experience in another form of complex system:

large human organisations.

Campaigns, regional structures, media, public communication, competing interests and decision-making under pressure all required many of the same skills found in technology:

information architecture, coordination, feedback and the ability to understand networks.

The experience added something technology alone could not teach:

systems ultimately succeed or fail because of people.

From digital networks to human networks, 2004–2006
From digital networks to human networks, 2004–2006

Mid-2000s

Institutions from the inside

After his political work, Bohdan moved into banking and analytics, becoming Head of the Analytical Department at SocComBank.

He later became involved in the development of SocCom Media and served as its director.

This period brought together several strands of his earlier experience:

technology, information, finance, communications and institutional decision-making.

At the same time, digital work continued.

Websites, identity systems, communications and media projects remained a constant part of his professional activity.

By then, technology was no longer one separate area of work.

It had become a layer running through everything else.

Institutions from the inside, Mid-2000s
05

Sponge

2008

A new name for an existing digital practice

In 2008, years of work in web development, technology, media and communications converged under a new identity:

Sponge

Sponge began as a digital and design company.

But the work behind it was already much older.

It inherited experience accumulated through early online communities, commercial web development, technology businesses, media and communications.

A new name for an existing digital practice, 2008
A new name for an existing digital practice, 2008

2009–2011

From founder-led practice to organisation

During the following years, Sponge developed into a structured digital agency.

The company expanded its team, commercial capabilities and portfolio.

Its work increasingly covered:

  • web development,
  • digital products,
  • user experience,
  • branding,
  • design,
  • content,
  • and communications.

Yet Sponge retained a characteristic inherited from the Layner period:

client work existed alongside experimentation.

Commercial projects generated experience.

Experience generated new ideas.

And new ideas repeatedly became prototypes, products and new ventures.

From founder-led practice to organisation, 2009–2011
06

Deacon Bohdan

2011

Deacon Bohdan

By 2011, another path in Bohdan's life had become visible.

He was serving as an Orthodox deacon while continuing his work in technology and entrepreneurship.

Years spent studying systems, information, complexity and human organisation increasingly produced questions that engineering alone could not answer.

  • What is intelligence?
  • Where does order come from?
  • What makes human consciousness different from computation?
  • What is responsibility?
  • What is a person?

Technology continued to explain more and more about how the world could be changed.

Faith increasingly became part of the search for why it should be changed — and in whose interests.

Deacon Bohdan, 2011

My path to God did not lead away from science and technology. In many ways, it led through them.

Bohdan Hnatiuk
07

Technology & Faith

2011–2024

Technology and service

For more than a decade, Bohdan lived two demanding vocations in parallel.

He continued building companies, digital products and technology while serving the Church as a deacon.

There was no moment when one identity replaced the other.

The technologist did not disappear when the deacon appeared.

Instead, the two experiences increasingly influenced each other.

Technology taught him how systems are built.

Business taught him how systems grow.

Media and politics taught him how systems influence people.

The Church confronted him with another question:

What are those systems ultimately for?

Technology and service, 2011–2024

2011–2017

A mature digital company

During the 2010s, Sponge developed a substantial body of commercial digital work.

The company created corporate websites, digital platforms, brands, interfaces and communication systems across multiple industries.

It evolved into Sponge Digital & Design and accumulated a broad portfolio spanning several generations of web and interface design.

Many of those projects now visibly belong to another technological era.

That is precisely why they matter.

They document the evolution of the digital industry itself.

Today, these projects form part of the Sponge Archive — evidence of a technological practice that existed long before today's products and platforms.

A mature digital company, 2011–2017

Not every project succeeded

Bohdan has never built only one thing at a time.

Throughout his career, commercial work has existed alongside experimental products, platforms, media concepts and new ventures.

Some became businesses.

Some became technology used elsewhere.

Some failed completely.

Others survived only long enough to teach the lesson required for the next project.

Not every project succeeded

2018

Returning to the core

In 2018, Sponge entered another phase.

The company's identity was simplified and its direction increasingly moved beyond the traditional agency model.

Experience accumulated through client services was redirected toward proprietary technology, products and platforms.

sponge-2018 1 : 1

2020s

From agency to technology ecosystem

During the 2020s, Bohdan's work increasingly focused on proprietary technologies rather than conventional agency services.

The scope expanded into:

  • artificial intelligence,
  • automation,
  • communications systems,
  • digital identity,
  • collaboration platforms,
  • media technology,
  • software infrastructure,
  • and new digital ecosystems.

In one sense, these are completely different technologies from those of the early Web.

In another sense, they return directly to the ideas behind HaTa and Layner.

Build the environment, not only the feature.

From agency to technology ecosystem, 2020s

08  /  Father Bohdan

2024

Bohdan Hnatiuk

Father Bohdan Hnatiuk

2024

Father Bohdan

In 2024, while living in Germany, Deacon Bohdan Hnatiuk was ordained to the Orthodox priesthood.

From this point in the story, Bohdan becomes:

Father Bohdan

He subsequently began serving as the rector of an Orthodox parish in Germany.

The ordination was a profound change in responsibility.

It was not a retirement from technology.

Father Bohdan continued building companies, platforms and technological systems.

Instead, the two paths that had developed in parallel for years became visibly inseparable.

Founder and priest.Technology and faith.Innovation and responsibility.

Father Bohdan, 2024

Science did not end where faith began

For Father Bohdan, science and faith are not competing explanations of reality.

They answer different kinds of questions.

Science provides methods for understanding the world.

Technology gives humanity the ability to transform it.

Faith introduces another question:

What should we do with that ability?

That question becomes increasingly important as technologies become more powerful.

Artificial intelligence, large communication platforms and digital infrastructure do not create engineering questions alone.

They raise questions about:

  • human dignity,
  • freedom,
  • trust,
  • responsibility,
  • power,
  • identity,
  • and the meaning of human agency.

These questions cannot be answered by engineering alone.

Science did not end where faith began

Technology asks what we can build. Faith forces me to keep asking who we are building it for.

Father Bohdan Hnatiuk
09

Founder Thesis

What connects the work

  • Technology

    Build products, platforms and infrastructure that expand what people can do.

  • Community

    Understand that every technological system eventually becomes a human system.

  • Responsibility

    Build with a horizon longer than the next product release, funding round or market cycle.

10

Today

Today

Father Bohdan is still building

Today, Father Bohdan Hnatiuk combines two roles rarely found in the same founder biography:

technology entrepreneur and Orthodox priest.

He continues to build technological products, platforms and infrastructure while serving as the rector of an Orthodox parish.

A successful technology does not end when it finds product-market fit.

Success is when its real consequences begin.

  • Who controls it?
  • Who depends on it?
  • What behaviour does it encourage?
  • What happens when millions of people use it?
  • What responsibility remains with the people who created it?

Building technology means accepting responsibility for what happens if it works.

Father Bohdan is still building, Today

More than twenty-five years. One direction.

Looking backward, the individual projects appear radically different.

  • Television.
  • Radio.
  • Internet communities.
  • Search.
  • Email.
  • Web development.
  • Advertising.
  • Banking analytics.
  • Media.
  • Digital agencies.
  • Platforms.
  • Artificial intelligence.

Yet beneath them is a remarkably consistent pattern:

  1. understand a changing information environment,
  2. build something inside it,
  3. connect people through it,
  4. and move to the next layer as technology evolves.

A message from Father Bohdan

I have spent most of my life starting things.

Some became companies.

Some became products.

Some disappeared.

Some taught me more by failing than others did by succeeding.

For a long time, I thought of them as separate projects.

Only much later did I realise how continuous the path had actually been.

From television and radio to the early Internet, from online communities to platforms, from media and analytics to artificial intelligence, I have repeatedly returned to essentially the same problem:

how to connect people, information and technology in useful ways.

My path in the Church developed alongside that work.

It did not pull me away from science or technology.

Instead, it made another question increasingly difficult to ignore:

what are we building all of this for?

Technology gives us extraordinary power to create systems that influence human behaviour, institutions and societies.

The more powerful those systems become, the greater the responsibility of the people who build them.

That is the perspective I bring to my work today.

I remain fascinated by new technology.

I remain willing to experiment.

I remain willing to build things that may fail.

But after more than twenty-five years, I understand much more clearly that the ultimate measure of a system is not only whether it works.

It is what it does to the people who live inside it.

There is still a great deal left to build.

Father Bohdan Hnatiuk — A message from Father Bohdan

Father Bohdan Hnatiuk

SHORT BIO

for cards / investor materials

Father Bohdan Hnatiuk is a technology entrepreneur and Orthodox priest whose work spans more than 25 years of digital products, media, communications and technology businesses. He began building online communities in 2000, developed early web services and a commercial digital studio through Layner, and in 2008 established the Sponge identity that evolved into today's technology ecosystem. In parallel with his entrepreneurial career, he served as an Orthodox deacon from at least 2011 and was ordained to the priesthood in Germany in 2024. He now combines technology entrepreneurship with service as the rector of an Orthodox parish.

ULTRA-SHORT BIO

header / speaker profile

Father Bohdan Hnatiuk is a technology founder and Orthodox priest with more than 25 years of experience building digital products, companies and communities — from the early Web to artificial intelligence.