Passion for excellence drives the female founder of Tampa tech firm Acelogy

A veteran of two well-known tech firms in the Tampa-St. Pete area has struck out on her own, launching a software development and cloud services firm.

Acelogy is a small startup now, with three local executives and a tech team overseas, but founder and CEO Mariya Bohun has plans to grow the company into a 200-person international firm headquartered in Tampa.

Acelogy, pronounced a-SELL-oh-gee, means “excel at everything,” Bohun said, and that’s what she intends for both the company and its customers.

“I met with every client in one-on-one consultation to understand their needs. I am personally responsible for delivering the product, because I have experience in testing so I make sure the product is working and does what it is supposed to do,” Bohun said.

Bohun’s enthusiasm should serve her well, said Ed Buckley, chairman and CEO at Peerfit in Tampa, where Bohun worked until recently.

“When we look for people at Peerfit, we look for a strong passion. To me, this level of passion is the same as a successful entrepreneur needs to be successful. She learned a lot during our journey and I think her passion mixed with her experience from Peerfit positions her well to be an outstanding founder,” Buckley said.

Inspiration

Bohun is a native of Ukraine. She was studying international relations in college when she immigrated to the United States for an international exchange program. In the U.S., she met her husband Alexey Nazarov, who was working in the IT field, and discovered her own passion for technology.

She started her tech career at a company selling international calling cards in Boston. The couple moved to Tampa in 2016 and Bohun joined Clearwater cybersecurity training firm KnowBe4 as director of quality assurance.  

“I was employee No. 80 when I joined them,” Bohun said. “They were growing so fast that it inspired me to help startup companies to grow.”

She moved to Peerfit in 2019 as senior quality assurance manager, where she said she learned about the power of innovation. She was working at Peerfit when she registered Acelogy as a company and took “baby steps” to get it off the ground. A couple of months ago, she left her job at Peerfit to work full-time on Acelogy.

The management team is made up of Bohun; Nazarov, who is chief technology officer; and Liubomyr Pohreiuk, vice president of engineering. Bohun has partnered with other companies to draw on a team of 95 developers in Ukraine, where there’s a deep pool of tech talent that offers a more cost-effective approach to development.

Acelogy offers development services for mobile, web and cloud applications, along with other services such as software quality assurance and testing, IT staff augmentation and business consulting. The company’s website lists expertise in several programming languages and databases.

Acelogy was a sponsor at Synapse Converge in November, where Bohun spoke about building mobile apps. It’s one way she is getting the word out about the company, which she has bootstrapped so far.

Role model

While software development has been a male-dominated field, Bohun sees that changing, as more women pursue computer science degrees.

Skills such as communication and networking also serve women in technology well, she said.

Still, there are relatively few female founders of technology companies. Fewer than one in four startups in Florida — or 25 out of 108 young companies — had a woman founder in 2019, according to Embarc Collective’s Glaring Gap report.

Bohun wants to inspire other female entrepreneurs and immigrants, including women in her native Ukraine. She also wants to make a difference in the lives of people much closer to home – her three young children.

“I want to be a great role model for my children,” Bohun said. “I want them to see everything is possible.”