Voices of Pinterest Warsaw: Anna Buglakova, Head of Vochi Product

Introducing our newest Life at Pinterest series, Voices of Pinterest Warsaw! Similar to our Voices of Pinterest Tokyo series, get to know the amazing Pinployees doing groundbreaking work at our Warsaw, Poland office. First up – Anna Buglakova, Head of Vochi Product, is sharing her journey to Pinterest, what she loves most about the Pinterest Warsaw team and her upcoming passion projects!

Hi Anna! I’m looking forward to chatting with you today. Can you start by sharing your current role?

I’m Head of Vochi Product at Pinterest. I manage our Product, Marketing, Design and Product Analytics / Data Science teams. Vochi, recently acquired by Pinterest in December 2021, is a product that provides users with opportunities for eye catching content creation and is focused on creating an easy video creation experience. Vochi is a powerful app that works in real time and helps users have a one-of-a-kind experience that can’t be replicated.

Share a bit about your career background.

Prior to co-founding Vochi, I worked as a Brand Manager at Pernod Ricard where I partnered with brands such as Beefeater, Jameson and Absolut. Afterwards, I ran a school that helped people express their creative thinking and started a course on communications strategy. I have a strategic marketing and communications strategy background, which was my main focus before Vochi.

Then, I co-founded Vochi where one of my primary responsibilities was to assist our engineers in making our product and features user-friendly. My goal was to find the value in the technologies that our engineers could develop and our consumers would be able to take advantage of.

Tell us the Vochi story.

Vochi was founded in 2019 in Belarus. It started with a new, unique technology: the ability to select objects in a video. We worked with pre-made videos, not cameras, which was a more difficult technology. We built the first version of the Vochi app in about six months, and we had our first 100K users in a little over a month. Vochi continued to gain momentum by word-of-mouth really quickly. On the backend, our team grew the functionality to make it even more user-friendly by improving design and working on our most unique feature, effects. Our group of professional designers are really good at understanding trends, and they built effects that went viral on other social platforms. From there, we continued to grow, and that led us to Pinterest. We were thrilled when Pinterest took an interest in our expertise and product. Vochi works with creators, and we were really excited that Pinterest was focusing on creators and their experience on the platform.

What excited you about joining Pinterest?

From the business side, Vochi and Pinterest had the same ambitions. We both want to serve creators with best in class tools and give them enormous opportunities. Vochi’s goal was to improve accessibility to content creation and encourage more people to create. This really aligned with Pinterest’s strategy. We made our decision to join Pinterest because we believe that together we can build something bigger and better as a team.

Personally, I was excited to join Pinterest because I’m an avid Pinner. I’ve been using Pinterest since 2014. My mom and all of my friends use Pinterest too. It’s a positive place on the internet, and I really enjoy that. I wanted to join a company that provides users with a feel-good experience, and I always want to be on the side of inspiration and creation! Of course, I also wanted to join a team with innovative technology that makes a difference on the internet.

Tell us about the team in Warsaw. What do you love most about the team and the office?

I really love our team! We built a perfect environment for ideation and creation. The team is compassionate and flexible, and we’ve made many friendships. Everyone has a positive competitiveness, and it drives amazing results and solutions for the work that we’re doing. I love going into the office because outside of my daily work, I have really great coffee chats with the team. The best way to describe the team is that we create an unexplainable atmosphere. Our team is unique, and we always have fun – in and out of the office.

What product challenges are you excited about?

When we joined Pinterest, we shifted our audience to specifically building for Pinterest Creators. As we’re learning a new audience, we’re working to better understand their needs and create solutions to serve them best. Our team is excited to see how our product will adjust and hear the feedback we’ll get from Pinterest Creators. For us, the audience change is exciting. We’re working on new technologies to make our effects better, and some of them are mind-blowing! We look forward to wrapping them up into beautiful effects and launching them. 

Do you have any advice for someone who wants a career in Product or who wants to join the Pinterest Warsaw team? 

In the past couple of years, things have been challenging in all spheres of life. As things become different, I would recommend being ready and comfortable with change, maintaining your curiosity and finding what you’re passionate about. Use the environment’s ambiguity to benefit you. Lastly, continue to be flexible and welcome the changes that come! 

What are you currently pinning?

I have two passion projects I’m currently working on.

• My upcoming wedding! I’m Pinning all of the wedding details – wedding bouquet, dress, hairstyle, makeup, how my bridesmaids will look and so on. My wedding is a big project that I’m inspired by right now.
• I’m also opening a bar with my future husband. I have boards of inspiration that I use to communicate with my designer. Pinterest allows me to share design attempts I wouldn’t have thought of before. I’ve been Pinning cocktails, plates, and other serving ideas.

Thanks for sitting down with us today, Anna! We’ve loved hearing more about your journey to Pinterest.

Note: Since the publication of this blog article, Vochi effects have been integrated into the Pinterest app.