Our History

The story begins before Sponge and even before the founder's first website.

As a teenager, Sponge founder Bogdan Hnatyuk was already looking beyond the technological environment available in Ukraine at the time.

At the age of 13, he travelled to Brighton, United Kingdom, to study English. The experience introduced him to an international educational environment at a time when access to such opportunities from post-Soviet Ukraine was still unusual.

A few years later, while still a teenager, he returned to the subject of business and technology in Brighton, attending a technology- and management-related educational programme connected with the local business-school environment.

These experiences did not constitute the beginning of Sponge as a company. They were something more fundamental:

the beginning of its founder's long-term interest in the intersection of technology, business and communications.

Before launching his own Internet projects, Bogdan worked with traditional electronic media in Odesa.

While still at school, he worked with the local television channel MOST, which broadcast on Odesa's Channel 24.

His work was not limited to being behind the scenes. He participated in television broadcasts and in the production of a programme dedicated to the emerging Internet — “Journey into the Internet.”

This was a period when the Internet was still unfamiliar to much of the general public.

He later worked with Gala Radio, focusing on servers, infrastructure and technology.

These experiences created an early connection between three fields that would remain central throughout the following decades:

media, networks and technology.

The next stage was Layner.

By the early 2000s, what had started as experimentation with the Internet was evolving into an operating digital business.

Layner worked as a web development studio, producing websites and digital materials for external clients.

Over time, the studio built websites for dozens of businesses and organisations.

But client development was only one side of Layner.

The company was simultaneously experimenting with its own Internet services.

By 2003, the Layner ecosystem included:

• web search
• email
• Internet radio
• employment services
• community functionality
• online promotions and other digital services

At a time when broadband penetration remained limited and much of the Ukrainian Internet was only beginning to develop, Layner was already being conceived not merely as a website but as an integrated digital environment.

This distinction would become important later.

Sponge's roots were never limited to agency work.

From the beginning, there was a parallel ambition to create products, platforms and infrastructure of our own.

As the business evolved, the scope of work expanded beyond traditional web production.

Bogdan became involved in several business structures together with partners, including an advertising company and TIX — Technology and Computer Systems.

The work increasingly combined:

• digital development
• technology infrastructure
• advertising
• corporate communications
• design and business systems

During this period, the teams worked with larger corporate customers, including projects connected with LUKOIL.

This stage marked an important transition.

The work was no longer simply about designing websites.

It was becoming about understanding how technology could support an entire organisation.

In 2004, against the background of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, Bogdan became deeply involved in political organisation and communications in Odesa.

What began as grassroots political activity developed into work within a much larger organisational structure.

He became involved with Our Ukraine in Odesa and later served as a consultant to the Odesa regional party organisation.

In the 2006 local elections, he was himself included among the candidates for the Odesa Regional Council.

The political chapter was relatively short compared with the technology career that preceded and followed it.

But it provided experience that would prove useful for years:

• working with large groups of people
• campaign organisation
• public communications
• media relations
• analytics
• regional organisational structures
• and decision-making under pressure

It also created relationships across Odesa's business, political and media communities that would later become important in the development of future companies.

Following his political work, Bogdan moved into banking and analytics, becoming Head of the Analytical Department at SocComBank.

This added another dimension to the experience accumulated during the previous decade:

data, finance, institutional decision-making and analytical systems.

The next step was media.

Bogdan became involved in the creation and management of SocCom Media, later serving as its director.

During the same period, digital work continued.

Websites, identity systems, printed materials and digital communications were developed for businesses and organisations associated with some of Odesa's significant business and media environments.

Projects included work connected with SPS Holding, corporate and media clients, and people operating some of the region's major media businesses.

Relationships with publishers, journalists, television executives and producers would later provide an important communications network for the next stage.

By 2008, years of web development, technology, communications, design and digital experimentation converged under a new identity:

Sponge

This was the beginning of Sponge as a brand.

It was not the beginning of the work behind it.

The new company inherited years of experience in web development, technology, media, communications and client services.

The first Sponge identity was deliberately different from the traditional corporate image of technology companies at the time.

It was playful, recognisable and human.

Sponge began developing websites, digital products, identity systems and online communications for commercial clients.

During the following years Sponge developed into a structured digital agency.

The company expanded its team, sales capacity and client portfolio.

What had once been a small founder-driven digital practice became an organisation capable of simultaneously delivering projects across:

• web development
• UX and interface design
• branding
• digital strategy
• advertising
• content and communications

At the same time, Sponge retained the experimental culture inherited from the earlier years.

By the mid-2010s, Sponge had developed a substantial body of commercial work.

This period included corporate websites, digital platforms, brands, interfaces and communication projects for companies from multiple industries.

The company operated under the Sponge Digital & Design identity and built a large portfolio of digital work.

Many of these projects now belong to another technological era.

That is precisely why they matter.

They document the development of web design and digital business across more than a decade — and demonstrate that Sponge was participating in that evolution while it was happening.

Today, these projects form the Sponge Archive rather than the company's contemporary portfolio.

In 2018, Sponge entered a new phase.

Its identity was simplified and the company's direction began moving beyond the conventional agency model.

The accumulated experience of the previous years increasingly shifted towards building proprietary concepts, products and technology.

The transition did not happen overnight.

It was another step in a pattern that had existed since Layner:

client services on one side, experimentation and product creation on the other.

During the 2020s, the transformation accelerated.

Sponge increasingly moved from being primarily a digital agency towards becoming a technology and product ecosystem.

The focus expanded into areas such as:

• artificial intelligence
• communications platforms
• media technologies
• automation
• identity and authentication
• collaboration systems
• digital infrastructure
• and proprietary software products

The individual products may differ dramatically from the websites and Internet services created twenty years earlier.

The underlying idea is remarkably similar.

Looking back, Sponge's history is not a straight line from one company to another.

It is a continuous process of experimentation.

And technologies that once required physical studios, broadcast infrastructure or specialised servers increasingly became software.

What connects these periods is not a particular company name or technology.

It is a way of thinking.

For more than twenty-five years, the people and projects behind Sponge have worked at the intersection of:

technology, information, media and human communication.

Together, however, they form something much more valuable than a list of successful products:

a documented history of continuously building what comes next.