Ruslan Yuldashev

I research how AI changes learning and software, and test it on the two companies I co-founded: Mars IT School and Modme.

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I run two education companies in Uzbekistan. One makes software for schools: Modme handles students, groups, payments and attendance for 200+ learning centres. The other is a school: at Mars IT School, 2,000+ children aged 7 to 17 learn to build software in seven branches across Tashkent. Before that I spent ten years as a programmer, at Yandex and at Silicon Valley startups, without a university degree.

Mars, branch by branch

Mars IT School, Tinchlik branch — Tinchlik, 2021

Mars IT School, Chilonzor branch — Chilonzor, 2023

Mars IT School, Buyuk Ipak Yoli branch at night — Buyuk Ipak Yoli, 2024

Mars IT School

Co-founder, 2021
CEO since 2026

Children learn programming and robotics by building projects. They earn coins for effort instead of grades, join hackathons and study with mentors who work in the industry. In 2025 we bought two schools, Juniorcode and Robot Machines, and kept their teachers.

When I became CEO in 2026, I moved Mars to AI-first lessons. Kids build with agents and publish their work on marshub.uz, where 200+ student projects are live. One rule in class: the AI asks questions and does not hand out answers.

Modme

Co-founder and CTO, 2020

Software for private learning centres. My co-founder Jakhongir Pulatov ran sales, and I built the product. We had five clients in the first year and a hundred in the second. Modme won first place at IT Park, the founder of amoCRM became our adviser, and UzVC invested at a $1.25M valuation.

In September 2026 we gave every active centre an AI assistant. A director can ask it which students missed classes this month or who hasn't paid, and get the answer from their own data.

What I'm researching

Software you reshape yourself, by asking an agent.

Most apps arrive finished: you use them as they are or not at all. Agents change that. A school director or a ten-year-old can describe what they need, and the tool changes under their hands. The image I keep coming back to is Emacs, extended by your agents instead of Lisp.

For children this is a design problem, not only a technical one. In the tools we build at Mars, every action can be undone, the agent shows what it is doing, and the child can reshape the tool itself. Children should be operators of agents, not consumers of apps.

2026agxMy open-source fork of agterm: a macOS terminal for running AI agents side by side
2026Terminal StudioConnecting Claude to video generation, under $10 per reel
2026Phone farmsHow the phone-farm market works and what is legal
2026Damin's gamesGames my son and I build with AI

Before Mars

I taught one student to build Telegram bots. Today he is an investor in Mars.

Kamronbek Osimjonov came to me to learn programming. I told him to start small, with Telegram bots, and we worked together for about two years. His bot for saving TikTok videos without a watermark grew to 4.5 million users. In 2021 he sold it to a Russian company for $150,000, and we flew to Ufa together to sign the deal. Later Kamronbek invested in Mars IT School. We still teach the way he learned: start with something small that works, then grow it.

“My mentor Ruslan Yuldashev advised me to start simple, with Telegram bots.”Kamronbek Osimjonov, Spot.uz, 2021

Background

I wrote my first code at eight, in BASIC, on a Subor game console my father bought. Everything after that I learned from other people's websites and code.

As a teenager I opened the source of every site I liked and rebuilt it myself. Then came PHP, Python, freelance work and internships in Tashkent. I left a correspondence university in my third year. Yandex hired me anyway, and my last role there was head of a development team in the education division.

After Yandex I worked remotely for Silicon Valley startups, including Mavrx, an agritech company for farms in California and Wisconsin. The only time the missing diploma mattered was a US work visa. In 2020 I stayed home and started building education companies instead.

A kids' hackathon masterclass at Mars IT School — A kids' hackathon at Mars, 2024.

In the press

“I worked at Yandex and at Silicon Valley companies, and not having a diploma was never a problem.”

Spot.uz, 2020

“Sell from the first day, even when there is no product yet.”

The Tech, 2024

“In Indonesia a client costs more to acquire, and the average subscription is half as much. Unit economics are harder.”

WE Project, 2024

Quotes translated from Russian.

2026The TechTen leaders changing IT education in Uzbekistan
2025Gazeta.uzMars IT School acquires Juniorcode and Robot Machines
2025Kun.uzA deal for the future of children's IT education
2024Один процентPodcast, episode 76: lessons from a $1.25M EdTech startup
2023Spot.uzHow two friends launched Modme and raised $100,000
2022IT ParkSpeaker at Coding Monday
2021Spot.uzHow a student built and sold a Telegram bot for $150,000

What I'm looking for

People for the team

Backend engineers for our AI infrastructure: an LLM gateway with token wallets for students, agents inside Modme, lesson pipelines. And AI trainers to teach children to build with agents. Teaching experience is optional, we train the method.

Talks and public projects

I speak about AI in the classroom, coding for children and building EdTech companies in Uzbekistan. I want to work with ministries and international programmes on children's digital skills, and can bring two working companies to a pilot.

Collaborations

Tech companies, universities and EdTech teams: a course taught at Mars branches, an integration with Modme, a joint programme for children.

hello@ruslanyuldashev.com

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