Maksim Stepanenko’s Path from Kyrgyzstan to Silicon Valley

Maksim Stepanenko’s career has taken him from Aydarken in southern Kyrgyzstan to Silicon Valley. After co-founding Operator, an artificial intelligence startup acquired by OpenAI, he chose to step away rather than join the buyer. Stepanenko told The Times of Central Asia that he is now taking time off and working on new projects. From Aydarken to MIT Stepanenko was born in Aydarken, in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region. Before entering university, he represented the country at the International Physics Olympiad. He received an honorable mention in Singapore in 2006, a silver medal in Iran in 2007, and a bronze in Vietnam in 2008. His route to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was not immediate. After his first application was unsuccessful, he spent almost a year studying in Germany before entering MIT in 2009 to study computer science. While there, he worked as an undergraduate research assistant at the MIT Media Lab. Early Engineering Roles Stepanenko graduated in 2012. His early experience included two summer internships at Google and a role as one of the first software engineers at Locu, a startup founded by MIT graduates. Locu helped local businesses manage their online listings. A business could update its information once and distribute the changes across services including Yelp and Facebook. GoDaddy acquired the company in August 2013 for a reported $70 million. In 2014, Stepanenko joined cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase as employee number 21. Over five years, his work included Coinbase Commerce and the USDC stablecoin, as well as Coinbase Ventures. “I graduated in 2012 and moved to [San Francisco] to work here, at a different startup. Around 2013-2014, I started spending more and more time on crypto – Bitcoin Talk was the popular forum at the time. I was finding it more and more interesting. And then, at some point, I decided I wanted to explore working full-time in this space. At that time, there wasn't really any legitimate company in the space. Coinbase was the only company that was already relatively well known, at least here in Silicon Valley. So, I ended up joining Coinbase,” Stepanenko previously told Compound. Co-Founding Primer In 2019, On Deck’s Erik Torenberg introduced Stepanenko to Ryan Delk. The two co-founded Primer, an education startup offering online learning activities and, later, small in-person schools. [caption id="attachment_59010" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] Ryan Delk (left) and Maksim Stepanenko (right)[/caption] Primer initially focused on homeschooling. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it developed online clubs where children could pursue shared interests and work together on projects. The company later allowed children to create and run their own clubs. It then developed microschools, combining small groups of students with in-person instruction and digital learning tools. The company’s history records expansion to Alabama in 2025 and Texas in 2026. Primer raised a $3.7 million seed round in 2020, led by Founders Fund. In April 2022, it announced a further $15 million round, led by Founders Fund and co-led by Khosla Ventures. Stepanenko left Primer in November 2022. “I decided to step away from the company after...