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Ukraine's Top 15 Startups Launching the Wall of Fame
Anastasia Gibaeva
Head of Marketing at Lift99 Kyiv Hub
For the first time in history, there’s a Wall of Fame for Ukrainian startups, marking the beginning of a new chapter for the local startup ecosystem. Among the 15 locomotives are a widely-known unicorn Grammarly, which raised $90M in 2019; Readdle with their 100M product downloads; and People.ai, which raised $60M with a valuation at about $500M. Who else is on the Wall and is the landscape promissingfor new unicorns? Let’s find out.
Who’s There and Why?
In spring 2019, we announced 12 Ukrainian startups as potential candidates for the wall. As we reviewed the list over the past 5-6 months - with the help of as many founders, investors, executives, and ecosystem builders as we could find - we finally landed on 15 Ukrainian superstars who are noticeably present on the local scene and have proved their “Hockey Stick” effect.
“With the help of as many founders, investors, executives, and ecosystem builders as we could find - we finally landed on 15 Ukrainian superstars.”
Among other things, we looked at the investments raised, revenue, team, founders, willingness to give back to the ecosystem, and significant presence in Ukraine. But above all, there were 4 crucial indicators:
Growth 80% - 100% YoY;
$1M+ annual revenue and/or $5M+ total funding;
10+ employees in Ukraine;
At least 1 Ukrainian founder.
The criteria and the feedback from the community left us with 15 startups. They’ve got the numbers, they’ve got the team, they’ve got the mindset and the Ukrainian DNA. Only one of them, to date, is a unicorn, but we’re putting our bets on the next unicorn also hiding among these 15!
Ukrainian Startups Wall of Fame, in 2019:
Ajax Systems
Allset
Attendify
Competera
Depositphotos
Grammarly
Invisible.io
MacPaw
People.ai
Petcube
Preply
Readdle
Restream
YayPay
YouScan
Ukrainian Startups Wall of Fame, as launched in 2019, in Lift99 Kyiv Hub
The Impact of the Wall of Fame
The list is not just about meeting the criteria and covering one of the walls in LIFT99 Kyiv Hub with a pretty startup-themed tapestry. It’s about developing a value-driven ecosystem, of and for Ukrainian startups — with an impact on the local economy, on the country's general image, on public well-being and standard of living, and of course, on the next generation of staruppers themselves.
Strong role models and their willingness to be present in the local startup scene can not be underestimated. It’s about the passion of these very same startups, and about their goal to have a positive impact in the world and within their community. We are here to make the voice of Ukrainian startups even louder, and to bring it to the world scale, whether they are already on the wall or not.
George Zaremba, Pavel Karagjaur, Igor Zhadanov, and Ivan Pogrebnyak during the panel discussion within Grand Launch of Ukrainian Startups Wall of Fame
From here on, we all have a chance to take action. To stand for what we believe in and to take steps towards it. We’re building a world where startups are proud to say they’re Ukrainian, and founders have every chance of succeeding here, even more than they would in the Valley.
It will take time. But step by step we’ll get there. Together.
So what’s it like being a founder with an Ukrainian background, building an Ukrainian startup, today? And what can we do already today to build a fruitful ecosystem in 5 years? Topics like this were already discussed on the stage at the Grand Launch of Ukrainian Startup Wall of Fame on October 24, 2019 at Lift99 Kyiv Hub - the day the Ukrainian Startups Wall of Fame was born. The next step is to keep the discussion going, include everyone who shares the vision, and to take action with more conviction than ever.
“It’s about developing a value-driven ecosystem, of and for Ukrainian startups.”
Opportunities for Startups and Investors
According to the Deal Book, Ukrainian startups raised $265M in 2017, which is 231% more compared to the previous year. In 2018, $290M were invested in the development of Ukrainian startups.
Moreover, The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine officially launched Ukrainian National Startup Fund – a public initiative to support innovation projects, informed fund’s representatives at a dedicated press conference. It comprises ₴390M of national startup fund, and applicants can get up to $75k. Yeah, it’s HUGE! And it’s happening now.
We’re now witnessing tremendous changes within Ukrainian startup ecosystem. These 15 startups are leading the way for the next generation, for the future unicorns who haven’t been born yet. And the discussions we can have today around the big 15, around their wins and challenges will determine what the startup scene (and possibly even general economy) will look like in Ukraine in the years and decades to come.
About the Big 15
AJAX SYSTEMS
Ukrainian manufacturer of professional security systems and one of the most promising Ukrainian startups, shows crazy growth of number of employees (almost doubled in 2017 and 2018), revenue (grew five-fold in 2017; two-fold in 2018), and production volume (increased 3,7-fold in 2017, 2,4-fold in 2018).
“Ajax Systems is growing at a very fast pace, with more than 70% of revenue coming from export sales in more than 75 countries, mainly the EU. We are happy that the core of our team is Ukrainian engineers and world-class developers, we are proud of the results of their work,” commented Aleksandr Konotopskyi, founder and director of Ajax Systems.
ALLSET
Having partnered with Google and raised $10M from Greycroft and Andreessen Horowitz, the restaurant reservation and food pre-ordering service Allset helps to serve customers much more efficient.
As of 2019, there are 2000+ restaurants who became partners with the startup and 12 American cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, where the app is available. Way to go, Allset!
Anna Polishchuk, Co-founder & CDO at Allset
ATTENDIFY
Google, Cisco, Facebook, UEFA, TEDx, Uber, PayPal, Coursera are some famous names among thousands of other customers Attendify team has managed to attract.
An intelligent event technology, Attendify (previously KitApps) is a striking example of Ukrainian startup which outgrew in a global business. Today, their mobile app is used in 86 countries, they have served 14,000 events and more than 3500 clients.
COMPETERA
“We began with tens of thousands of prices per day, now we’re working with tens of millions,” commented CEO & co-founder Alexander Galkin.
With 120+ customers around 26 countries in 18 different industries, the Competera’s story impresses even more when it comes to investments. The company has never had deals with outside investments, but still managed to grow a million-dollar business.
DEPOSITPHOTOS
More than just a photobank, the startup is currently operating in 192 countries, employing more than 400 people, and is ranked among the top five biggest stock images companies competing with such giants as Shutterstock and Getty Images.
As of plans for the future, Depositphotos’ founder DmitrySergeev commented: “I am a serial entrepreneur and I don’t see myself as only photobank builder. If tomorrow there is a need to fly to Mars that will bring money, I’ll do it, provided that I have enough energy and time.”
GRAMMARLY
With a simple, yet powerful mission of improving lives by improving communication, Grammarly offers a digital writing assistant that is used by more than 20 million people every day.
Grammarly was founded in 2009 in Kyiv by Ukrainians Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko, and Dmytro Lider. Since receiving its first round of funding in May 2017, Grammarly has more than tripled its user base and launched a host of product improvements and new features to support users in issues going way beyond grammar. In 2019, Grammarly raised $90M in the second round of funding, thus reaching the legendary unicorn status [only about 400 startups around the world today are unicorns, evaluated over $1B].
Grammarly currently has about 240 team members across all offices, of which about 140 are based in Kyiv. And they look forward to continuing to grow their teams in the years ahead. As Brad Hoover, Grammarly’s CEO, has stated: “Where we’re at, as exciting as it is, is just a starting point. We’re a percent of the way to the world’s 2 billion English speakers. We have a very, very long way to go.”
““Where we’re at, as exciting as it is, is just a starting point. We’re a percent of the way to the world’s 2 billion English speakers.””
INVISIBLE.IO
Living between Kyiv and Bay Area, the co-founder of Invisible.io Vlad Voskresensky thinks that you belong to where you belong. “I love America, but I love Ukraine even more, and I'm not going to leave it forever”, — he commented.
Together with two more founders they created enterprise software in 2005 and since then have become a world leader partnering with companies such as Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP.
MACPAW
The story of MacPaw and its founder Oleksandr Kosovan is one of the most inspirational stories we’ve ever heard of. The code for the company's most popular software he wrote on his own while still living in the dorms and working three jobs to pay for his education.
Today, approximately one in five Macs around the world run the company’s software. Among the most recognizable ones are CleanMyMac, SetApp, and Gemini 2. Quite impressive for the company, which revenue exceeded $23M in 2018, and was built from scratch with no external funding.
Oleksandr Kosovan, CEO & founder of MacPaw, and Ragnar Sass, founder of LIFT99
PEOPLE.AI
The story of People.ai has experienced one of their finest hours now. Most recently, the company has raised outrageous $60M at an “unofficial valuation” of $500M.
The deal has been closed within 2 weeks, “everything was so fast because so many people wanted to invest. And two weeks is because we stalled for time. Otherwise, it was possible to close it on the very first day,” commented Oleg Rogynskyy, founder of People.ai.
PETCUBE
The idea for Petcube came when Rocky, the dog of co-founder Neskin, suffered from separation anxiety and boredom. Rocky destroyed furniture and barked excessively when Neskin was away from home, which made his neighbors worry and call the police. He developed the first prototype Petcube Camera to entertain Rocky and make him less anxious.
Today, the company has sold more than 100,000 cameras, and Emma Watson, Manny the Frenchie are among their clients. “I hope we will be able to become a "unicorn" within 4 years”, shared one of the co-founders Yaroslav Azhnyuk during Concepter’s series of LIVE webinars in 2018.
PREPLY
A global private language tutoring platform, Preply was chosen as one of the most promising Ukrainian startups in 2012. And for good reason! With more than 25,000 tutors teaching 40 languages to over 100,000 users from 160 countries, in 2018 Preply raised $4M and continue to grow.
“There is still a big room for improvement in our acquisition efforts, and we believe that we are moving in the right direction,'' commented one of the co-founders Kirill Bigai during his interview with VentureBeat.
Kristjan Maruste, co-founder of COMODULE, during special edition of LIFTOFF
READDLE
Having failed for 32 times, never raised external capital, and ultimately built world-class products, which organically attracted 100M users, — Readdle is one of a kind startup who has a kick-ass story of how to follow dreams and passion.
“You can be anywhere around the globe, and if you have made a good product, you can post it on the App Store, and in a blink of an eye it will be popular worldwide,'' said Denys Zhadanov, Readdle’s VP of marketing.
Who knows, Readdle, maybe you next milestone will be marked among unicorns!
RESTREAM
”Restream is the best way to stream a live video to all social networks, simultaneously. Every month, Restream delivers around 3M broadcasts, which attracts 300M people,” says Alexander Khouda, the CEO of Restream.
Their customers include professional and amateur gamers, Fortune 500 companies, politicians and celebrities. In 2018 Restream reached 1M streamers and raised $4,5M. When we asked Alex about their last big win, he said that Restream recently partnered with Linkedin to create a live broadcasts format called LinkedIn Live.
Listening to Alex talk about the early days of Restream, it’s obvious they’ve come a long way: “When we started out we couldn’t speak English. We didn’t know what the word “traction” meant. Looking back, we now realize that growing a company is a very efficient way to explore and learn new things.”
““When we started out we couldn’t speak English. We didn’t know what the word “traction” meant. Looking back, we now realize that growing a company is a very efficient way to explore and learn new things.””
Alexander Khuda, co-founder and CEO of Restream
YAYPAY
Positioning themselves as “a rapidly growing, venture-backed company at the forefront of back office automation and machine learning”, a fintech startup with Ukrainian co-founder has managed to increase the number of their customers in 5 times in just one year according to TechCrunch.
Regarding their presence in Ukraine, all dev team is based in Kyiv as well as the new R&D centre the management of the company planned to launch after raising $5.3M of investments in 2017.
YOUSCAN
Founded in 2009, YouScan is a SaaS platform which provides a real-time monitoring & analytics for social media. The system uses AI and NLP technologies for analyzing more than 40M public posts every day. Among the biggest clients are McDonalds, Michelin, PepsiCo, Vodafone, Viber.
It was recently announced, that YouScan named a winner in Visual Analysis Category in Martech-Challenges. As Saas Advisor emphasized: “The tool provides a user-friendly and powerful visual analytics module. The relevance of the contextualization is impressive as is the number of provided filters.”
Alexey Orap, CEO & founder of YouScan
Who’s next?
It’s a great question. We’ll be keeping an eye on the local startups. And we need your help.
To get to the wall, first consider including your startup to the Watchlist of Ukrainian Startups. Just add a comment with all the necessary details in the list of 400+ Ukrainian startups. We’re also thankful for the comments and updates on outdated information. All the contributions will be curated and updated by us on a regular basis.
There is a bunch of other Ukrainain startups one (or even half) step away from getting on the wall. And we’re here to encourage and help them grow (follow our writings, join our events, join our community, join the Salto Network, just come for a visit!). Not only for the sake of getting there on the Wall and to be among the leading Ukrainian startups. But also for the sake of local startup community, global startup scene, and future generations of founders to come!
Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who has fought for the same mission, believed in what we do, and shown their support in one way or another. It means a lot.
Thank you for doing a great job! You make us happy!
Sincerely yours,
LIFT99 Team