Oleg Shitsel’s social network started as a set of drawings that, by his own admission, didn’t look professional. It was 2020, his employer had shut its doors for the pandemic, and he was lying in bed with his eyes closed, trying to picture what his own platform would look like. Then he grabbed some paper and sketched the whole thing out. The drawings weren’t pretty. They were enough to get Bambkuss Active off the ground.
The path to that moment was a long one. Shitsel was born in 1987 in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine, and his family moved to Germany in 1994, when he was seven. School was hard at first. Over time he learned German, started learning English too, and became a big sports fan, especially football, table tennis and the gym. At 20, he wanted to earn his own money, so he went to work for a car manufacturer in Bremen.
He had real plans there. For about three years, he studied alongside his job and became a state-certified engineer, hoping to build a career inside the company. By his account, a real opportunity never came. Back then he also had a StudiVZ profile, the social network that was hugely popular in Germany at the time. Building one himself wasn’t even a thought.
The idea arrived secondhand. In 2019, a friend mentioned out of nowhere that he’d commissioned a dating platform. Shitsel figured he was kidding until the friend showed him the half-finished homepage, and from that point he wanted to be involved. A year later, with the pandemic keeping him at home for weeks, Shitsel realized he wanted to be independent from the company and have a project of his own. Then the friend called with bad news. The programmer had become seriously ill and couldn’t continue, and the project had failed.
Shitsel was disappointed, but he didn’t want to give up. He told his friend he felt confident he could come up with his own social media platform, and skip the dating angle since there were already plenty of those. Privately, he wasn’t sure he could actually pull it off. That’s when the sketches happened. Soon after, an old schoolmate he’d lost touch with showed up for a visit. He was unhappy with his job too. Shitsel invited him to his birthday party, where the friend saw the drawings, got excited, and wanted in. He also knew his way around graphic design.
From there, a small team of former schoolmates came together, with Maksim Khazanov as co-founder. They had to teach themselves the design and simulation work, so they learned by doing. The paper sketches became computer graphics, the graphics became a full design, and the design became a working simulation that the programming was based on. Shitsel says the beginning was especially hard, though once things started working, the fun of it kept them going.
What they ended up with is a network built around hobbies, activities and interests. Its motto comes down to three choices: “I do the same,” “I would like to do the same,” or “I would not do the same.” You can post photos, but there’s no video upload at all, and the team says the goal is to replace passive scrolling with people connecting over what they actually do. Khazanov has said the platform was built “to reignite real human engagement around what people love doing.”
Signing up and chatting are free. To send requests or message anyone, you just need at least one photo on your profile. Paid premium features exist but haven’t been released yet, and deleting your account wipes it immediately and permanently. Bambkuss announced its U.S. launch in September 2026, and Shitsel is now focused on marketing the desktop and mobile versions. He’s mentioned that a video platform could be the next project.
Shitsel’s message is that when you put your intellect, strengths and experience toward something you think is impossible, with a small, motivated team around you, it can become real. In his case, that started with a few unprofessional-looking drawings, and you can see where they led at Bambkuss.com.
