DV Faces: Bohdan Kostko, Lead Engineer, Sydney
“To succeed as an Engineer at Digital Ventures you need to be able to prioritize three things: curiosity over skills, people over work, and doing over talking.”
Meet the world-class talent building the game-changing businesses of the future.
At BCG Digital Ventures, we’re shaping tomorrow one game-changing venture at a time. From ideation to testing and launch, building game-changing businesses from the ground up takes a spectrum of different skills, a variety of expertise, and, of course, a lot of collaboration.
That’s where our talent comes in. BCGDV is home to a diverse community of high-caliber talent hailing from some of the most exciting companies around the world. Each of our multidisciplinary experts brings a wealth of knowledge and career experience, along with a unique perspective to each of our builds. Together, they’re creating innovative solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges.
Our talent makes BCG Digital Ventures what it is today. In this series, we speak to our unique talents about their exciting career journeys, their unique BCGDV experiences, and why they’re passionate about creating the businesses that are changing the world.
BCGDV: Tell us about your unique background and journey that led you to BCGDV.
A: I have a general curiosity and entrepreneur mindset (I left university to start my own business. That mindset is still there, but owning my own business is not a part of my journey anymore!) After working in engineering for the majority of my career, I felt myself gravitating closer to the business side of things. In attempting to gather more knowledge outside of engineering regarding digital products and business building, I came across Digital Ventures, whose value proposition was fitting. Without much hesitation (or even considering other career-changing opportunities outside of DV), I traveled 16,632km from Amsterdam exclusively to join DV Sydney.
BCGDV: Why did you choose a career at Digital Ventures?
A: Before my time at Digital Ventures, I was happily working with startups in Amsterdam. Back then, I’d never heard of DV, but when I learned more about its value proposition, it sounded like a dream come true. I was definitely hooked. Where else can you build ventures for a broad range of corporations across many industries with the safety of working for a strong brand like BCG? Joining Digital Ventures is still the best decision I’ve made in my life. If I had to pinpoint the specific reasons why that’s so, it would come down to the impact and scale of the projects we work on, learning from the new and cutting-edge technologies we apply to real-life situations, the founder experience, the access to BCG’s network and knowledge, and the amazing travel opportunities.
BCGDV: Describe your role and cohort at BCGDV.
A: The Engineering cohort is responsible for transforming and shaping ideas into reality. As a Lead Engineer, I often play the venture CTO role, which involves managing the engineering teams, picking up and recommending relevant stacks of technology and software solutions, transitioning ownership from the DV team to the newly-hired venture team, delivering working software, and managing stakeholders. Basically everything that your typical startup CTO would do.
BCGDV: What advice would you give to someone who is interested in joining your cohort?
A: To succeed as an Engineer at Digital Ventures you need to be able to prioritize three things: curiosity over skills, people over work, and doing over talking. Firstly, it’s easy to find people who know how to do things, but it’s hard to find people with the right mindset. With a great mindset, any skill can be acquired; mindset trumps skill every time. Secondly, it’s important to remember that people may not remember the exact work you’ve done throughout your career, but they will remember what you did for them and how you made them feel. Work may come and go, but it’s the people that you get the chance to work with who are important. Lastly, your work should speak for itself.
BCGDV: Tell us about a unique work opportunity you’ve had at BCGDV that you might not have anywhere else.
A: Every single venture is always a great opportunity for three reasons. One, each venture team is full of the smartest and most diverse people you can find. Two, each venture provides you with access to the resources and exposure to the executives of Fortune 500 companies. And, three, each venture provides you with an opportunity to solve many interesting problems in various areas. For example, during a venture build, we were using various AI tools to help farmers across Indonesia improve their work and soften the existential threat that the climate crisis has had on the food supply chain within the region.
BCGDV: Throughout your career at BCGDV, how have you grown and developed both personally and professionally?
A: I’ve definitely become kinder, more disciplined, and more open-minded. The most important skill I’ve gained while at DV is learning not to think in a solution-oriented way, but rather to operate within abstract and ambiguous concepts to discover the right questions and answers.
To learn more about Engineering roles at BCG Digital Ventures, visit our Cohort page.
Interested in joining BCGDV? We’re hiring for roles similar to Bohdan’s across our global centers. Click here to begin your own BCGDV journey today.
Learn more about our innovation centers, including DV Sydney, here.
Want to find out more? Start the conversation with BCGDV.
