Slava Zhakov, founder and CTO of Crescendo, leads product creation and delivery with a focus on customer experience, AI integration, and sustainable software practices. His career spans academia, entrepreneurship, and executive leadership in global technology organizations.
Building Crescendo
I am the founder and CTO of Crescendo, where I oversee all aspects of product development and delivery. Our mission is simple but ambitious, to provide the best end-to-end customer experience by combining powerful AI with skilled people who know how to implement and sustain it.
Before Crescendo, I served as CTO at Gensys, a company that built platforms for communication between businesses and customers across voice, email, chat, and social media. With Crescendo, we took that foundation further, embedding AI deeply into the customer experience and creating a holistic offering that integrates technology with human expertise.
From Academia to Entrepreneurship
My professional path began earlier than most. Still a student in my fourth year at university, I co-founded my first software company with a professor. While academia shaped part of my journey, my passion was always in creating real products. I taught software development practices and shared lessons from my own company with students about how to build robust, secure, and scalable software for multiple customers, how to optimize the development process, and how to ensure ongoing reliability.
Those principles remain the same today. While tools have changed dramatically, from early programming practices to the arrival of generative AI, the fundamentals have endured. They include designing sustainable architectures, hiring the best people, and equipping them with the right tools and processes.
AI is the most promising tool humanity has created, but its success depends entirely on the right people using it well 
The Power of AI
Few technologies have excited me as much as AI. I see three areas where it has made the greatest impact.
The first is customer experience. Simple but repetitive tasks like answering shipping status questions or confirming addresses can now be easily automated. This frees people to focus on higher-value work like business analysis or process improvement, enhancing both efficiency and job satisfaction.
The second is software development. Crescendo would not have been able to grow as rapidly as we have with a lean team if not for AI. It accelerates coding, improves reliability, and allows talented engineers to achieve more. Of course, AI is only as good as the people using it. A powerful tool in inexperienced hands can create more problems than it solves. But in skilled hands, it can improve productivity by orders of magnitude.
Finally, there is the personal dimension. I use AI daily, whether for professional tasks like drafting documents or personal ones like gathering information. In many ways, it feels similar to the early days of Google in the 2000s, but now the interaction is more conversational, nuanced, and capable of deeper reasoning.
Lessons in Leadership
Across my career, I’ve learned that technology alone does not drive success, but people do. As CTO, my greatest responsibility is to bring together skilled individuals, give them meaningful work, and provide the tools and structures they need to thrive.
AI has sharpened this perspective. I once believed the mantra that “AI won’t take jobs, but people who use AI will.” Over time, my view has evolved. Competence in technology matters, but character, collaboration, and creativity matter more. Technical skills can be taught, but integrity and vision cannot.
When I look back at my journey from student entrepreneur to technology leader, the common thread is always the same: empower people, and the technology will follow.
Advice to Peers
If I could offer one piece of advice to peers navigating AI, it would be to treat it as both the most promising and the most complex tool we have ever created. Success depends less on the technology itself and more on the people and partnerships behind it.
Too many organizations fail with AI, not because of its limitations but because of poor execution, be it choosing the wrong vendors, adopting the wrong tools, or working with teams that lack experience. Research shows that more than 90 percent of generative AI projects fail. That number should not scare us, but act as a reminder that careful selection of partners and talent is the most critical aspect of any endeavor.
For those willing to do the work and surround themselves with the right people, the opportunities are immense. AI can enhance customer experience, accelerate innovation, and transform industries. But its power must always be guided by human judgment, ethical responsibility, and a clear vision of purpose.