Katherine Kostereva on No-Code, AI Agents, and Time-to-Value
If you’d like to join me – and peers – for deeper conversations on innovation and leadership, get on this list for Fortt Knox Executive Communities, launching soon: mba.fortt.com.
This is an AI-assisted summary of my Fortt Knox 1:1 with Creatio CEO Katherine Kostereva. View the full interview here:
In this Fortt Knox 1:1, Jon Fortt speaks with Katherine Kostereva, founder and CEO of Creatio, about the evolution of no-code enterprise software into the age of autonomous AI agents. Kostereva positions Creatio as a workflow-first platform built for enterprises that need speed without sacrificing governance, compliance, or control. Founded more than a decade ago and largely bootstrapped until recent growth capital, Creatio now employs roughly 900 people across 26 countries and is growing around 40% year over year.
The conversation explores why workflow automation historically has taken quarters or years, why no-code was initially dismissed by CIOs, and how Creatio’s BPM-centric architecture made it unusually well positioned for generative AI. Kostereva also shares her personal journey from Ukraine to global enterprise leadership, her belief in intuition and brutal self-honesty, and her long-term commitment to building one enduring company rather than serial startups. The through-line is time-to-value: helping enterprises adapt workflows in days, not months, as markets, regulations, and AI capabilities rapidly change.
Today’s Toughest Problem
Kostereva defines today’s hardest problem as enabling enterprises to change workflows as fast as their businesses change, without breaking compliance, governance, or security. Legacy platforms still require long implementation cycles, which is incompatible with modern volatility and AI-driven automation. As agents move from copilots to autonomous actors, workflows become the guardrails that determine what AI is allowed to do. Creatio’s challenge is ensuring agents can act independently while remaining constrained by enterprise-grade permissions, roles, and auditiung. The problem is not whether AI can act, but whether it can act safely, transparently, and in alignment with business rules.
Origin Story
Kostereva grew up in Kyiv in a highly academic household. Both of her parents were professors of electrical engineering at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, spending their entire careers in the same faculty. That environment instilled discipline and technical thinking, but it also clarified how different her own instincts were. Kostereva was less drawn to the measured pace of academic life and more energized by speed, creativity, and execution. As a teenager, she gravitated toward advertising and marketing, launching small projects with classmates at 13 or 14. They created messages, designs, and promotional materials. By her late teens, she was financially independent, supporting herself through school. Although she went on to study computer science, those early advertising experiences revealed her natural pull toward go-to-market work: communicating value, shaping narratives, and building momentum. That blend of technical grounding and commercial instinct became the foundation for her later leadership style as a founder and CEO.
Death Valley
Kostereva does not describe a single dramatic “near-death” moment, but instead frames the hardest stretch as repeated market entry challenges. Every new geography requires rebuilding trust, brand awareness, and local proof points, essentially replaying the product-market-fit grind at a regional level. Countries like Australia, where buying decisions depend heavily on community validation and references, have tested Creatio’s patience and discipline. The lesson is that even at scale, growth remains a grind, requiring persistence, cultural sensitivity, and proof delivered one customer at a time.
Core Belief
Her core belief is that leadership demands brutal honesty with reality combined with intuition. Data and logic matter, but so does listening to gut instinct – especially during inflection points. Kostereva believes people are “wired” for specific paths, and fulfillment comes from discovering and committing to that wiring. For her, that path is enterprise software and go-to-market execution, not serial entrepreneurship. This belief also shapes Creatio’s culture: high intensity, fast growth, genuine care for people, and clarity that the company’s pace is not for everyone.
Strategic Imperative
Creatio’s strategic imperative for 2026 is autonomous agents. Kostereva sees agents not as bolt-ons, but as workflows brought to life: AI acting within structured, governed processes. Because Creatio already centers on BPM and dynamic case management, agents become a natural extension rather than a risky experiment. The goal is to compress time-to-value even further, allowing enterprises to deploy intelligent automation quickly while preserving trust, security, and compliance. In her view, this is the rare moment when platform architecture, market timing, and AI capability finally align.
If you’d like to join me – and peers – for deeper conversations on innovation and leadership, get on this list for Fortt Knox Executive Communities, launching soon: mba.fortt.com.