{"id":33829,"date":"2026-01-15T17:18:44","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T15:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scroll.media\/2026\/01\/15\/prokofiev-jooble-interview\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T02:24:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T00:24:32","slug":"prokofiev-jooble-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scroll.media\/en\/2026\/01\/15\/prokofiev-jooble-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSimple Things That Work Every Day Matter Most\u201d \u2014 Jooble Co-Founder Roman Prokofiev"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Roman Prokofiev is the co-founder of Jooble, one of the world\u2019s largest job aggregators, and an active angel investor in Ukrainian projects. He shared his experience during the fireside chat \u00abLeadership Practices 2026: How Are We Holding Up?\u00bb at the 2025 closing event of the Diia.City United \u2014 Technology Business Association, where Scroll.media served as an information partner. Below are the key takeaways from Prokofiev\u2019s talk.<\/p>\n

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Roman Prokofiev. Photo: Olha Zakrevska<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Your energy is part of the job<\/h2>\n\n

Prokofiev opens with an unpopular but straightforward idea: a founder\u2019s mental and emotional state is as much a responsibility as P&L or strategy.<\/p>\n\n

Entrepreneurs of his generation, he says, are used to \u00abworking themselves to death\u00bb and, for years, didn\u2019t treat their own resources as requiring systematic attention. The result is predictable \u2014 declining productivity and worse decisions.<\/p>\n\n

Every founder, Prokofiev argues, has to honestly track what drains their energy and what restores it, and structure their day so the balance tips toward the latter.<\/p>\n\n

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\u00abManaging your energy is part of the job. Pay attention to what fuels you and what saps your energy\u2026 If you\u2019re burned out and have no idea how to fix it, productivity will vanish,\u00bb he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Separately, Prokofiev emphasizes that in his personal setup, the main source of energy is the direction of his efforts.<\/p>\n\n

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\u00abFor me, the biggest energy comes from doing things that genuinely interest me. I don\u2019t even try to analyze why I\u2019m doing them. I don\u2019t care whether there will be a result or not. I just do what interests me.\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Interest, in this sense, becomes a very pragmatic asset \u2014 a stable source of fuel without which no founder can sustain a strategy for long.<\/p>\n\n

Education and environment<\/h2>\n\n

Prokofiev is a strong advocate of \u00abbig-picture\u00bb learning \u2014 programs that shift how you think, not just what skills you have.<\/p>\n\n

As an example, he mentions the Wellbeing program on Coursera, a lecture series on the science of happiness and well-being. His cohort included participants from dozens of countries, from Chile to the Philippines. In practice, that meant hearing firsthand from people building companies at radically different scales \u2014 and that kind of environment changes you.<\/p>\n\n

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\u00abWhen you sit next to someone who grew a team from a few dozen people to 13,000 in two years and opens one office every day, your perspective shifts. You come back home and can\u2019t look at your own processes the same way.\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

He calls these formats \u00ablong-term investments.\u00bb They don\u2019t deliver immediate, tactical skills, but they reset what you consider realistic goals and which processes you\u2019re even willing to launch.<\/p>\n\n

From this perspective, choosing your environment \u2014 education programs, communities, boards, partners \u2014 becomes a separate and deliberate management track for a founder.<\/p>\n\n

How to make decisions<\/h2>\n\n

When it comes to making decisions with partners, like on a board of directors, Prokofiev lays out the classic options \u2014 consensus, majority vote, or unilateral decisions \u2014 and admits that full consensus in a venture setup often produces weak decisions: ones that satisfy everyone but have no energy behind them.<\/p>\n\n

Instead, he proposes a pyramid of approaches:<\/p>\n\n