Meet the Tilpy team

Our proud Tilpy team

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  Roland Villars

  CEO & Co-Founder

  Roland is a bit of a warrior. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t wait for opportunities to arise, but instead goes out to find them or even create them. Obviously this drives Maki and Johnny a bit crazy, because it means there’s always new ideas to discuss and think about.

  He’s a photographer who really understands what photography professionals struggle with in running their business, which is why he convinced the other two that building the Tilpy platform would be a fantastic opportunity.

  At Tilpy he’s the CEO, though he modestly prefers calling himself a Co-Founder. Johnny and Maki prefer calling him CEO however, because that means they can leave him with the responsibility of taking care of boring stuff, such as accounting and taxes. He’s also the guy who goes out to talk to companies, and who sets up partnerships with talented photographers.

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  Anvarzhon Zhurajev

  CTO & Co-Founder

  Johnny is the odd one out (yes, he’s even more odd than Maki and Roland). He was born and raised in Estonia, and has lived in Andalusia, where he hopes to return one day. Since very early on, he’s been fascinated with how interesting and diverse the world is, and when he finally grew up (which Maki and Roland say still hasn’t happened, but they remain hopeful) he realised that his mission in life is to bring even more diversity into the world with his work.

  One way he does that is by working at Tilpy, because “life is too short to look at bad pictures, and we are changing the way photographers find clients and buyers. It’s a joy to finally have a way to do my bit and try to make the world a better place”.

  At Tilpy he’s the CTO (Chief Technology Officer), which sounds fancy but really just means he wears a geeky hat and spends entire days in a basement, writing code, playing with sprockets, and setting up databases, and trying to create a website that works smoothly. It also means that he gets called at 4AM when something on the website breaks, and of course he’s the guy who has to rewrite code each time Roland comes up with a new feature or Maki wants to implement new design elements.

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  Maki Mikkelson

  CDO & Co-Founder

  Maki's passionate about web design, and has a real perfectionist attitude (which sometimes drives Johnny and Roland a bit crazy). In his free time he does charity work in a workshop for disabled people, where he teaches front-end web design.

  Maki is a bit of a sad story. He's actually a real artist, but for some reason he thinks he failed at being one. Roland and Johnny know that’s just an illusion, and they are hoping Maki will one day wake up to his artist-self - but they know they’ll need a lot of patience.

  Meanwhile, he’s the CDO (Chief Design Officer) at Tilpy, which means he tries to make the whole website look absolutely perfect - and just like other artists, that means he’s perfectionistic and his work is never really done.

Together they are Tilpy, and for the last year they have been on a mission to make your life easier and your photography business more profitable