Joanna Kochaniak, known simply as "Jo" in the US, is likely the first Polish woman in history to create a unicorn. Although I corresponded with her and her father for several weeks, she consistently avoided publicity. She did not want any material to be published about her.
She Values Her Privacy
She consciously walked away from the fame that the success of Upside - a cashback platform valued at $1.5 billion in 2022 - would have brought her.
She co-founded it in 2016 (originally under the name GetUpside) and served as the company's CTO for years.
But at the very moment when she could have graced magazine covers and appeared at every possible conference, she decided to step back into the shadows.
You won't find her on the company's website, nor will you read any interviews with her. She continues to support Upside on her own terms, but she holds no official executive roles there. She remains a co-founder of the company.
The Anti-Celebrity
This is consistent with how she has built her career over the years. She hasn't spoken to traditional media; her social media presence is minimal. She preferred sharing technical knowledge - like during the DC Python Meetup in Washington, D.C., in 2019. I also managed to establish that a few years ago, she traveled to Poland - the country where she was born - for a similar meeting.
This stands in fascinating contrast to today's culture of celebrity founders. Joanna seems most at home where technology meets a real-world user problem. The media splendor associated with a billion-dollar valuation seems to actually repel her.
Upside's Numbers
What exactly is Upside? It is a cashback platform that connects millions of users with hundreds of thousands of retail locations. In simple terms: it offers discounts and savings to the former, and to the latter, customer reach and data on consumer behavior.
It is unknown how much Joanna's startup is worth today, as it remains privately held. It is known, however, that since 2022 (the time of the $1.5 billion valuation), business metrics have significantly improved.
Look at these:
- $1 billion — the amount the company has already paid out to consumers in rewards.
- $2.5 billion — the profit generated for its retail partners.
- $6 billion — the annual value of transactions processed through the platform.
Joanna Kochaniak co-created the technological success of this mechanism.
A Historic Achievement
Why did I decide to write this article despite Joanna's reluctance? Because her achievement is historic - to my knowledge, no Polish woman has ever before created a tech startup valued at over a billion dollars. This is confirmed by, among others, Borys Musielak, an investor, co-founder of the SMOK VC fund, and an expert who has been tracking market events for years.
Jo's feat is all the more significant because startups with women in top positions have a harder time in the market. Two years after Upside announced its billion-dollar valuation, Female Founders Fund presented figures showing that startups with all-female teams received barely 2% of VC money, while those with a female co-founder received 20%. Still, only 20 percent.
Kochaniak's story is proof that startups with female founders can achieve magnificent valuations and business success. And women can play a fundamental role in the development of their technology. It is worth it for more girls to bravely follow this path.
Roots
Joanna Kochaniak was raised in the US but was born in Poland in 1985. She left for overseas four years later with her parents and her sister, who is three years older. Both sisters have achieved spectacular success: Jo in business and technology, her sister in science and biology (with a PhD from Harvard).
Joanna's direct professional inspiration was her father - also a programmer. Passionate about sharing knowledge, he began recording short lessons on using certain tools on YouTube 13 years ago. They can still be viewed today. In them, he speaks about technology with the same calmness as his daughter.
According to some American databases, Jo debuted as a software engineer at her father's company. She did not list this on LinkedIn herself.
In her experience section - before founding Upside - she listed a three-year stint as a Programmer Analyst at the Institute for Physical Sciences and as a Lead Software Engineer at OPOWER. OPOWER is a platform that, much like Upside, helped people optimize spending and save, though in its case, it focused on energy, among other things. It went public in 2014, and in 2016, Oracle acquired it for over $500 million.
The Biggest Impact on the World
At OPOWER, Joanna met Alex Kinnier, the future co-founder and CEO of Upside, as well as the company's other future co-founders.
As she recalled in her only archived interview, when Alex Kinnier told her about the vision for the new startup and product, she thought: "Okay, this could be huge. This is great. I love this group of people and I've worked with them in the past."
At the same time, she admitted that moving to a startup was not such an easy decision.
"I was looking for a more stable, longer-term thing. But with this group, working with these people, I was very excited for the opportunity," she said.
Ultimately, she decided to do it.
Why? To fulfill the mission "to make local communities stronger by connecting people to local places they may not have gone to if they hadn't found them on the app."
Her approach to work is best described by her own words on LinkedIn:
"The problem sets that motivate me most are the ones with solutions that have the biggest impact on the world. Through the years those problem sets have looked very different, but my approach to solving them has been the same: build in a way that's not additive, but transformative."
And she will likely continue to do just that. Maintaining her privacy, her identity, and staying far from the flashbulbs.
Sources
- Valuation & Founding Data: Analysis based on the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) report: Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Billion-Dollar Companies.
- Company Performance: Official business metrics and historical data provided by the Upside (formerly GetUpside) Newsroom.
- VC Funding Benchmarks: Statistical analysis of female-founded unicorns provided by Female Founders Fund (2025 Funding Review) and Bolt PR.
- Biographical & Technical Context: Exclusive technical interview with Hatchpad (Tech at GetUpside).
- Ownership Structure: Analysis of corporate history and founding team data from CompaniesHistory.
