Open Class Actions

Steve Levine and Tetiana Vorobiova, Co-Founders

Brooklyn, New York

2023

How Open Class Actions demystifies a complicated legal process

Explore how the Open Class Actions founders turned a project to learn computer science into a thriving business.

Building a website in the midst of war

The morning after Vladimir Putin announced a military attack on Ukraine, Steve and Tania packed their bags in their Kyiv apartment and made their way to the border. After 12 hours of waiting with thousands of others, they made it to Poland, then Germany, Bulgaria, and eventually the U.S.

Almost a year later from their home in Brooklyn, they continue to run Open Class Actions, a website they started in October 2021 dedicated to finding class action settlements and lawsuits that they started back in Ukraine before the war disrupted millions of lives. “We worked on the site even while we were fleeing Ukraine and jumping from place to place in Europe and figuring out our next steps,” Steve recalls. “It may have kept us sane, now that I look back on it.”

Steve, who was born in Ukraine but grew up in the U.S. moved to Kyiv several years ago, where he met Tania.

After a couple of years of discussions, the two finally launched Open Class Actions while both working full-time jobs - Steve in data and Tania in marketing - the couple spent every free hour building the site. “My mom works in the legal industry and I’ve always been aware of what class actions are,” Steve says. “I just found that looking online for these class actions, I couldn't find a really simple source, it was always over complicated. I just figured okay, there's a gap here.”

For Tania, the idea of creating the website served a bigger purpose. “It’s really important for me, as a person from a former Soviet Union country, to know what my rights are,” she explains. “Even if you’re the little guy, you have the ability to win against big companies in the world."

Adding international members to the Open Class Actions team

Six months after their launch, they were able to implement Google AdSense. Open Class Actions had more than 10X revenue growth in just 2022, bringing their monthly earnings into the tens of thousands of dollars. But even as the revenue began to trickle in, Steve and Tania never lost sight of quality. Ad revenue allowed them to invest back into the site and hire more people to keep delivering a quality service to their audience.

“With our ad revenue we have been able to hire a team of Ukrainian content writers and pay them a very competitive wage while they produce wonderful content for our website,” Steve says. “We feel gratified giving people in Ukraine work right now because of how difficult it has been for so many to find work, especially with a lack of electricity and water, they need all the help they can get.”

“The revenue from ads is really important because we're able to invest back, hire more people, provide more jobs - and feel good about it.”

Growing Open Class Actions

In addition to AdSense, Steve and Tania use Google Analytics, a tool that has enabled them to understand their audience better and continue growing their website. “Being able to track what kind of actions visitors are taking allows us to improve the website,” Steve says. “There’s a ton of feedback from Google Analytics, it’s a pretty magical piece of technology.”

While Tania handles content management, Steve handles day to day operations, including coding and marketing. They both have plans to keep growing the site, providing visitors with valuable information they can use and democratizing a complex process for consumers. “I want to be able to be proud of the content we publish,” Steve explains. “I want to focus on making the content simple, understandable and accessible - and become the most reliable source of information.”

About the Publisher

Steve is a Senior Field Engineer at Domino Data Lab who resides in New York State. Before Domino Data Lab, Steve worked as an engineering consultant for IBM. He’s most passionate about studying the intersection of technology and society, such as the ethics of using machine learning and artificial intelligence to deliver content at scale on the web. Tetiana is a Marketing Associate in Kart Group LLC who is passionate about culture, history and marketing.