The paper trail automation with the help of AI

Rather than conceding to the fine, Oleksandr saw an opportunity to put his technical skills to the test. He wrote a script that took advantage of Google’s image-to-text API, converting the image of his speeding ticket into a textual format. Subsequently, the script leveraged the ChatGPT API’s capabilities to understand the purpose behind each field of the TR-205 form, a California legal form for contesting citations, and to fill it in automatically with the relevant data.

Oleksandr elaborated on the process:

“I developed a script that used Google’s image-to-text API to transform the photo of my speeding ticket into editable text. Then, I employed the ChatGPT API to discern the intent of the TR-205 form fields and to autonomously populate the form with accurate information.”

This innovative application of AI tools significantly streamlined the process, allowing Oleksandr to not only submit the form accurately but also to craft a detailed and persuasive argument for reducing his fine.

Was it worth it?

Indeed, it was. The fine was ultimately reduced by 75%.

“Today brought the court’s response. Although I was still found guilty, the fine was reduced to $110,” said Oleksandr.

This reduction was the result of his clear and compelling written declaration and meticulous attention to detail in filling out the TR-205 form. In the past, such tasks would require the costly services of specialized lawyers. Now, AI can handle them in a fraction of the time.

A pioneering approach with AI

As the founder of BOTMAKERS, one of the pioneering companies to receive access to the ChatGPT API, Oleksandr had a strong foundation for this endeavor. His company has already created over 25 ChatGPT plugins, displaying Oleksandr’s extensive experience with the ChatGPT API and its integration.

Harnessing this expertise, Oleksandr developed a straightforward application named InstaFill. This new app, available for free, simplifies the process of filling PDF forms by utilizing uploaded information. Building on this innovation, Oleksandr aims to expand its capabilities by developing a ChatGPT plugin that offers the same functionality.

Why it matters?

Oleksandr’s story sheds light on the potential of AI as a tool for legal assistance. It demonstrates that one doesn’t need to be a legal expert or a proficient English speaker to manage the intricacies of the legal system. AI technology, particularly the ChatGPT API, is equipping individuals with the ability to tackle legal challenges head-on, filling out complex forms, and ensuring their arguments are heard.

In our fast-paced and ever-changing world, technology is the key to turning unfamiliarity into empowerment. Oleksandr’s success clearly indicates that with the aid of modern tools, anyone can navigate through legal obstacles and secure a fair outcome. His experience serves as an inspiration to embrace AI and its burgeoning role in everyday challenges. The future of AI is not just on the horizon—it is here, offering solutions and support for those ready to explore its vast capabilities.

In June 2023, AIN.Capital informed that two ChatGPT plugins, developed by a Ukrainian team led by Oleksandr Gamaniuk, were included in OpenAI‘s official plugin catalog.

I want to share our journey at Claid, how we taped uncharted territory, and leveraged generative AI. Claid’s mission is to fully automate end-to-end image creation and editing and boost e-commerce through our suite of AI products.

Our latest achievement on this front is AI Photoshoot, a tool that harnesses a blend of AI technologies to effortlessly generate lifestyle scenes from simple product shots. But how exactly does it work out for us? And what motivated us to create it?

Our Origins: Let’s Enhance and Claid.AI

The company began in 2018 with Let’s Enhance, an AI tool that took low-resolution images and made them look way better. It is based on GAN networks that were able to restore details and enhance images. We were working with generative AI before it became hyped.

While customers loved Let’s Enhance, and the product grew to over 5 million organically, after doing our due diligence on e-commerce, we found a real need for better product photography, an even bigger opportunity in helping businesses. That’s when we decided to create Claid.ai, a platform for automating image editing in large marketplaces.

Embracing Uncertainty: Leap into Generative AI

By 2022, Claid.AI had gained traction: we started signing contracts with some of the fastest-growing online marketplaces. At the same time, we paid close attention to market trends and emerging technologies, searching for opportunities to get exponential growth faster.

The breakthrough in generative AI with technologies like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion have finally created fresh opportunities for companies to tackle problems they couldn’t solve before.

Those systems, capable of creating photorealistic images from text prompts, resonated with our core competence in image enhancement but posed a new challenge: How do we integrate them into our products?

We went into full brainstorming mode. The ideas ranged from generating slides to creating personalized photobooks.

We ranked our ideas based on market potential, feasibility, and strategy compatibility. After a lot of back and forth, we picked the generation of product photo scenes as a target direction to explore.

Estimating the Opportunity: Diving in

Discovering the chance to create AI-based lifestyle product photos, we paused to size up both the market and our abilities before diving in. Here’s what guided our decision to proceed:

Understanding the Market:

• Size: The market was even bigger by expanding our value proposition, yet untapped by competitors.
• Growth: The market is fast growing, signaling more opportunities for success.
• Competitive Density: The field was open, with plenty of room for us to make our mark.

These factors painted a clear picture: the overall market attractiveness was high. It wasn’t just about the numbers; it was about the vibrant potential we saw in this space.

Analyzing Our Strengths:

• Integration with Existing Products: With our roots in e-commerce and existing clients, this new venture felt like a natural extension of Claid.AI.
• Competition: No one else was using generative AI for e-commerce photography at that time. It was a gap we were eager to fill.
• Shared Capabilities: Our existing expertise in technology and industry knowledge meant we weren’t starting from scratch. We had a foundation to build on, and our established brand added extra weight to our position.

Combining the insights from the macro-level market analysis with our micro-level understanding of our own capabilities, we saw more than just a new product idea. We saw a pathway that aligned perfectly with where we were and where we wanted to go.

It all added up: The Total Addressable Market is over $10 billion (Marketing budget in e-commerce that is allocated to visual content creation). The new market’s size, its growth potential, and the competitive landscape all pointed in the right direction. Our skills and brand could bridge the gap between ideas and reality.

Gathering First Insights

Our focus settled on a shortlist of ideas, from generating product photo scenes to food photography and virtual car showrooms. This decision was based on our strategic goals within the realm of generative AI.

Here’s how we went about it:

• Selecting Multiple Ideas: After brainstorming and evaluating strategy, we decided to explore 3 applications: product photo scenes, food photography, and virtual car showrooms.
• Launching Landing Page and Collecting Data: We simultaneously launched a landing page featuring these ideas and integrated a Typeform survey.

The primary goal was to validate interest and identify who our main customer segments might be.

• Driving Traffic: We directed traffic to our new landing page, leveraging our existing brands’ popularity. Then, we collected user requests with Typeform, using questions like “Can you give some examples of how image generation could be helpful for your business?”.
• Customer Interviews: We sifted through Typeform responses to select individuals for more detailed interviews to understand their needs. For example, one of the build interview questions was: “What does your workflow look like when you create visual content?”  “What challenges do you face in visual content creation?”
• Identifying Common Challenges: After about 30 interviews, we saw a pattern: the difficulty of consistently creating engaging content for social media.
• Refining Focus: Using these insights, we adjusted our landing page to focus more on helping brands to create lifestyle product photos.

After completing the research, we adjusted our positioning, which was reflected in the new landing page messaging.

Technological Challenges 

While we were doing business research, the tech team needed to create a proof of concept and validate the feasibility. In the beginning, we had to take some big chances. We knew that people wanted good product photos and that the technology had amazing potential, but we didn’t know if they would work well together. The core issues we faced were:

• Preserving the Product: Off-the-shelf AI models distorted products by altering labels, textures, shapes, and so on.
• Overgrowth: Edges of objects would sometimes get bigger or change in uncontrolled ways.
• Misplaced objects: Items didn’t always look naturally placed, or were “floating in the air.”
• Adjusting the Lighting: Beyond placement, the lighting had to be calibrated so products didn’t look artificially pasted in.
• Noisy Background: Not always did AI generate good results, we also got from time to time some weird generated patterns by the network.

“The problem at hand has unique challenges that make it research intensive. This can be seen as a desirable entry barrier for competitors that don’t have the traction in the fundamental technologies involved.”

Carlos Sánchez Mendoza, Head of AI.

We needed to address these issues to maintain the product’s true appearance and high resolution details, which was crucial for e-commerce. We knew that overcoming them would be key to delivering a product to the market.

We tried different things, and when a new version of the tech came out, it helped a lot. We kept tweaking and fine-tuning, and finally, we got product photos that we thought were good enough. 

It was a risky journey, but we believed in the tech and the need for better photos, even when things got tough. By January, we had an imperfect, but functional alpha version of AI Photoshoot.

The Race to Be First

The advent of generative AI sparked a competitive race among companies. Everyone was trying to stake their claim, even before they had a fully ready solution.

Sofi Shvets – our CEO – and I visited an AI hackathon by HF0, and it was a moment of major insight for us. Surrounded by hackers and innovators, we found a room with a team working on a project like ours and a PM from a huge company focused on solving a similar problem.

The experience was a wake-up call. Being a distributed team, we focused our attention on building the product and weren’t exposed to such intense competition. But in San Francisco, we found that we weren’t alone; several teams were working on similar ideas. The hackathon taught us that a great product alone wasn’t enough: building and early marketing must go hand in hand for swift and efficient market competition.

These experiences underlined the need for us not just to identify our product-market fit and build high-quality products, but to quickly differentiate ourselves, and beat the market.

Iterating with Early Community

Just two months in, we launched AI Photoshoot as a closed beta. With a new landing page we continued to gather a more focused audience. The product was raw, but it had core functionality (transforming simple product shots into lifestyle scenes using a blend of AI technologies) and allowed us to gather the community of beta testers and iterate our product development based on customer feedback.

It was essential to build a product based on short feedback loops with customers. Which allows us to check if there are any gaps or challenges in user experience. We learned the importance of that from Let’s Enhance when the AI technology was new and users didn’t know how to use it. 

We conducted a second interview round combined with a product demo, where we asked more specific questions related to the problem we solved, helping businesses with their marketing, for example: “How do you engage and acquire customers?”

To speed things up, we moved to weekly sprints, making incremental progress each iteration and using each round of feedback as an opportunity to improve.

What we changed based on user feedback

One of the biggest insights/changes: We intended to display the B&W of the image to help our customers understand that the AI would be guided by the composition of the image, but every time they will get the newly generated results. But, during user testing, customers expressed that they didn’t require black-and-white backgrounds. Our Product Designer proposed a radical solution at that time. She explained that people don’t think in steps; they expect to see the final possible result. We implemented the solution and saw much bigger engagement with the product.

“I came to the realization that UX design in AI tools should not adhere to implementation logic, as it can be too complex for users who are not familiar with the development process. Instead, design should align with the mental model of the customers and how they expect to interact with the product.”

Anna Prodvoiska, Principal Product Designer

We also made what can be perceived as small changes,  and they were  essential to provide flawless product adoption. 

Prompt Box Improvement:  Users often confuse our prompt box with those from ChatGPT. For instance, they would type commands like “place product on a table” instead of describing the scene. To enhance clarity, we improved the message and provided an example.

Changed Sidebar: Initially, we had a black sidebar as a part of the UI, and on user testing, we found that people completely ignored template space. 

Based on user feedback, we fine-tuned our product, making it ready for public release.

Public Release

We aimed to launch at Shoptalk, a major e-commerce event, on March 30th, 2023, and to debut the first public version of AI Photoshoot on Product Hunt at the same time. 

Our booth attracted constant interest throughout Shoptalk. Hundreds of excited attendees kept us busy, eager to learn how AI could upgrade their product shots. The public release marked months of effort in transforming our initial AI concept into a polished tool for photorealistic imagery.

This new product has shifted our company’s focus. We’ve updated our landing page to better share what we’re now offering. It’s showing a 90% growth rate month over month, making it our fastest-growing initiative. Yet, it’s not just about numbers; we’ve evolved our initial MVP into something much more — photorealistic product imagery — in just six months.

What We’ve Learned So Far

We took a calculated risk by diving into generative AI, and it works well for us. It wasn’t easy, but we navigated through the tech challenges and market uncertainties to build something meaningful.

One thing is clear: there will always be competition. Today or tomorrow, someone else will try to do what we’re doing. That’s why we keep our eyes on what really matters — our customers. This project has taught us to get moving quickly, start selling as soon as possible, and not to hold back on letting people know what we’re up to, even in the early days.

⠀

Written by Serhii Zinchenko,
former Founding Head of Product at AI startups Claid.ai and LetsEnhance.io.

The launch of the project

In the second and third quarters of 2022, Andriy Khvetkevych and his partners launched NFT Patent, a Web3 solution for registering intellectual property rights. In the spring of 2022, they created an MVP and started looking for investments, communicated with investors, and attended conferences (for example, WebSummit) to attract customers. Initially, they tried to raise $1 million, then reduced the amount to $750,000.

“The founders included me, our CTO from Ukraine, and Pavel Vinnitskiy, a Russian who had been living outside Russia for ten years. At that time, we still believed in “good Russians” and did not see any risks. During the negotiations, some investors told us, ‘You have a co-founder with a Russian passport—that’s a risk.’ We should have recognized this red flag back then,” Khvetkevych recalls.

According to Khvetkevych, initially, Vinnitskiy initially worked on marketing and showed good results. But, when the team started looking for investors, they encountered difficulties.

For example, Pavel fired the project’s designer without consulting the rest of the founders. He started pressurising the team, saying they weren’t doing enough work or trying hard enough. And finally, he demanded that the author of the NFT Patent idea, Andriy Khvetkevych, give him the role of CEO. Vinnitskiy was told the conditions for becoming CEO: for example, to generate investment in the project or bring in five large b2b clients. But he refused to follow these conditions and left the team a couple of weeks later.

He also copied the project code from the repository on GitLab and deleted all project documents from the corporate Google Workspace account—all presentations and other materials (later copies were recovered). Up to then, according to Khvetkevych, everything had been fine in the relationship with Pavel, and there were no grounds for any conflict.

“We had a document on the rights and obligations of co-founders prepared and proofread, but at that time, we hadn’t had time to sign it yet. But in any case, if the work is performed as part of a project and paid for (even with the company’s shares), from the point of view of international law, it is work for hire, and the rights to the results of this work belong to the company,” Khvetkevych says.

Later, the NFT Patent team found out that Pavel was pitching his new project to investors. It was called Synexis and was fully copied from NFT Patent. After leaving the company, Vinnitskiy also sent his former partners a list of investors with whom he “forbade them to communicate,” saying they were people from his network and he would work with them.

After consulting with lawyers, the NFT Patent team prepared and sent a letter to investors warning them about Pavel’s actions and behavior. “We decided to write to the investors we communicate with to inform them that the person actually stole our project. And that he is now trying to create a company that is completely copied from ours,” the CEO says.

What’s going on with the startup now

After that, the NFT Patent team decided that none of the investors would support a project with such a history and did something different. Now, NIC.UA is engaged in a project aimed at exporting its services to the United States and is launching a new domain registrar, NicNames Inc. This company acquired NFT Patent (at that time, already NFT Copyright) from the co-founders for $250,000. It integrates these solutions into its service. Thus, all NicNames customers will have access to copyright registration technologies.

As for the response to Pavel’s actions, Khvetkevych notes that if he launches a project identical to NFT Patent, the team is ready to go to court.

What’s happened?

The Ukrainian “Старлінк” IT company was founded about fifteen years ago, as its owner Serhii Dulytskyi told AIN.Capital. Its main areas of activity are IT integration and cloud services, but the company has also provided Internet communications services.

In 2020, lawyers who introduced themselves as the American SpaceX company’s representatives contacted the company’s management and said they wanted to discuss the trademark, Dulytskyi recalled. Then the Ukrainian company asked for proof that the lawyers were indeed working with SpaceX, and communication stopped for several months.

After a while, the lawyers returned with a power of attorney from the American company, and the parties scheduled a meeting. According to Dulytskyi, SpaceX was represented by the Kyiv office of the Russian law firm Gorodissky & Partners. However, later they changed the law firm (although the lawyer remained the same).

The parties discussed a valid certificate for TM Starlink No. 135574 dated February 25, 2011 (Musk launched the American Starlink in 2014 and applied for TM registration in the United States in 2017):

“Their message was that we must refuse the types of activities they are interested in so that they can register their own TM. For this, they offered us $4000. But we have been operating in the market for 15 years and worked in that field (everything related to Internet access and data transmission),” said the founder of the Ukrainian company.

Due to shelling and power shortages, “Старлінк” has reported a growth in demand for optical communication channels.

According to Dulytskyi, SpaceX’s demands meant that ТОВ “Старлінк” would cease operations, and their efforts to explain this were unsuccessful. The parties did not agree, and in October 2022, SpaceX went to court.

In the spring of 2022, there was news that SpaceX was planning to open an office in Ukraine. So, the trademark dispute may be related to this.

What the court decided

In court, SpaceX asked to “partially terminate the validity of the Ukrainian trademark certificate No. 135574 dated 25.02.2011.” The lawyers justified the claim by the fact that SpaceX wants to register Starlink in Ukraine as a trademark for goods and services related to those for which the Ukrainian company’s brand is registered.

“They based their claims on the fact that Starlink is a world-famous brand and that this is the only reason we should give up the TM. They filed a trademark application with the Ukrainian National Office of Intellectual Property and Innovations, and this 20-page document half consisted of references to media about how well-known Starlink is,” said Dulytskyi.

The trial court found that “the Plaintiff has not proved the fact of actual violation, non-recognition or contestation by Defendant 1 of the Plaintiff’s rights and/or legally protected interests as of the date of filing the statement of claim, which makes it impossible to satisfy the claims.”

Based on the examination, the court also found that ТОВ “Старлінк” is engaged in the disputed activities, particularly the provision of Internet access, fiber optic Internet connection, satellite communication, access to databases, etc.

Therefore, on March 2, 2023, the Kyiv Commercial Court completely rejected SpaceX’s claims.

And on June 8, 2023, the same court ruled to recover from SpaceX UAH 480,000 in legal fees and UAH 60,000 in expert examination costs.

“But this does not mean we have received the money or will be paid soon. SpaceX’s lawyers have filed an appeal, and the court will consider it in August this year,” Dulytskyi said.

What comes next

Following an appeal from SpaceX, the Northern Commercial Court of Appeal resumed proceedings in the Starlink trademark case. The case will continue to be heard on August 15, 2023.

“They have filed a lawsuit against us to cancel our TM; they are actually attacking my business; we have to defend ourselves; we have no other choice. We will defend our interests in court,” said the owner of the Ukrainian company and trademark.

About Boosteroid

Boosteroid has been operating since 2017, with its R&D center and development activities concentrated mainly in Kyiv and Kharkiv. It provides a cloud gaming service that moves a load of game processing from the user’s device to remote servers. Streaming works through a browser and applications for Windows, Linux, Android, Android TV, and macOS. Also, starting in 2023, it is available for Chromebooks, Android set-top boxes, and LG TVs.

Its servers are available in Italy, France, Britain, Slovakia, Sweden, Spain, and other countries. The company had planned to launch in the US in late 2021 or early 2022. But with the start of the full-scale invasion, it decided to launch servers in the US remotely.

The launch on the US market

The company had plans to enter the United States even before the outbreak of the full-scale war: in the United States at the end of 2021 and in Latin America in the first quarter of 2022. However, due to logistical issues, the equipment could be delivered to the US only in early 2022.

“Before the outbreak of the full-scale war, Boosteroid network engineers used to fly to the country where they needed to deploy and configure equipment. But the war changed everything. We realized that we would not be able to launch servers in Latin America in the first quarter of 2022, so we decided to use all available resources to launch in the United States,” says Artem Skoryi, Senior Business Development Manager at Boosteroid.

When the war started, the company also switched to more urgent priorities: evacuating its staff. The employees relocated to the western regions of Ukraine. A small part of the staff also went to Poland and Romania. Not everyone was able to leave — part of the team remained in the Kharkiv region. Some of them joined the Armed Forces and defended Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other cities at the time, and now serve in the frontline regions.

In the spring of 2022, the developers began deploy Boosteroid servers in the United States remotely. The representatives of the company recall that starting March the engineers performed the work mostly from bomb shelters, basements, or subways in their cities.

“Under such conditions, it was even more challenging to launch in a new market and work in general. On the first day of the full-scale invasion, a team of designers was making a draft of a message about possible service interruptions in the car on the way from Kyiv,” Skoryi recalls.

Entering the US market provided the company with new opportunities: in January 2023, Boosteroid also signed a contract with Google Chromebooks, making the service available on all ChromeOS devices, and with LG, launching the application on LG TVs. In March 2023, Boosteroid also concluded an agreement with Microsoft to make Xbox Game Studios PC games available on its service. All of these deals were made possible by the launch in the US.

With the start of the full-scale invasion, the company also closed access to the service to Russians. There were no Boosteroid servers in Russia until February 2022, but users could still access the site and connect to servers in Ukraine or Europe.

Plans

At the beginning of 2023, Boosteroid’s service reached more than four million users. The company estimates that it is among the top 3 cloud gaming providers available in the world. This year, the company wants to upgrade the specification of its hardware to stream 120+ FPS and 4K for users.

After that, the company is going to launch in several more regions, including Latin America, as it had previously planned. For example, Brazil is one of the fastest growing markets for such services, but Brazilian users are currently playing through American servers with over 20ms ping. If the company launches servers in Brazil, the gaming experience of users there will improve.

What does the service do?

It’s a Chrome extension that lets you use ChatGPT in any textbox on any website with the help of a command /ai. The idea is to give users access to the chatbot whenever needed without opening a new ChatGPT tab and copy-pasting its responses.

It can be a request like “/ai write a list of the most popular series in 2022” within the WordPress editor or “/ai write js code for loop” in any code editor. The plugin will connect ChatGPT via API and put the answer in the same window.

The plugin passed Google’s verification process on March 23, 2022, and the entrepreneur started selling it. But even before the website was launched, he was accepting preorders for early access, and, according to him, users had ordered the plugin for $1,000.

How did a human and ChatGPT write it?

Ihor says he had the idea for the plugin, but he couldn’t have written it himself — he was only a junior programmer and had never programmed a Chrome extension before. Ihor had read that ChatGPT was good with JavaScript, so he decided to try it out.

First, Ihor asked the chatbot to write a code for a Chrome extension that would monitor pressing the Enter button on the keyboard when a mouse cursor is in a text field and replace the text with emojis. The chatbot answered with three files: manifest (needed for supporting the plugin by Google Chrome) and two files with a code. It also wrote a manual on how to launch it in the browser.

“I tested it, and the code worked. I was impressed. So, I spent the next ten hours chatting with the AI on my computer. When I got ideas about the plugin development, I asked it to change the code. At the eve, I got the first version of the product that could send commands to the AI via API and put its responses in the text field,” he explained.

The entrepreneur noted that the chatbot was not just a developer but also the CTO of his project: He chatted with the bot and asked it to edit the code according to his vision of the product’s functions and optimize some parts.

Pros and cons of working with ChatGPT

Ihor thinks that the speed of ChatGPT is its great advantage: The chatbot can “split out” a working code right after the request message is sent. Its universality is a plus, too: For example, the bot can write a code, a privacy policy for a website, questions for the Google survey to be published in Web Store, and propose various product descriptions for Product Hunt, etc. All a human must do is check and edit.

Working with ChatGPT, he also saw its minuses. For example, the chatbot knows badly a new version of the manifest for Chrome extensions that was published recently and differed from the previous versions. So Ihor always had to remind ChatGPT that the code must be written for this new version. It occurred also the chatbot was a bit stupid:

“Several times, I got caught in a vicious circle. I send the AI a message with an issue, and it rewrites the code. Then I launch the code and get another bug. I copy the mistake info and send it to the bot. It rewrites the code and makes the previous issue. So is the loop. Until I manage somehow to rewrite my request to make the AI work out of the cycle,” Ihor said.

Overall, the entrepreneur is satisfied with the result:

“With my understanding of how the code works, I rate the result as a 3+. But in the process, I learn, see how it generates features, ask it to explain things I don’t understand, and invent ways to convey the context of the task with less text.”

Skeiron’s new project is a 3D tour of the Mariupol Drama Theater, which was hit by an air strike on March 16, 2022, and was subsequently completely destroyed by the Russians.

“#SaveMariupolHeritage is the beginning of a big project about Mariupol. Now it presents a 3D cloud of points of the central part of the city and a 3D tour of the Mariupol Drama Theater. This is how we want to draw the world’s attention to Mariupol and continue to revive other important architectural and historical monuments of the city,”

Andrii Hryvnak, co-founder of Skeiron studio, says.

The process of digitizing the Drama Theater lasted more than three months. “This is a rather long and painstaking work, and the long terms are also due to the lack of the necessary detailed data of the building because it was not easy to find them in open sources,” tells Skeiron. In order to recreate the building of the Mariupol Drama Theater and the surrounding area in 3D in detail, the studio launched a crowdfunding campaign in the fall of 2022 to collect photos and videos.

In January 2023, Skeiron established a partnership with the Center for Spatial Technologies SpatialTech.info, which specializes in research and analysis of civilian damage caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Using the Center’s expertise, as well as laser scanning and photogrammetry technology, the Lviv studio team managed to create a comprehensive 3D model, as well as a 3D tour inside the Mariupol Drama Theater.

“Creating a 3D model of a destroyed landmark is a difficult and complex process, but it is also an extremely important task for preserving the cultural heritage of Ukraine. We strive to preserve the history and cultural spirit of our country so that future generations can learn about what the Mariupol Drama Theater was like and the role it played in the life of the city,”

the Skeiron claims.

The team has no intention to stop at the Drama Theater and already has plans to create 3D tours of other sights of Mariupol destroyed by the Russians.

About Skeiron

The Lviv studio Skeiron was created in 2016 by three classmates Yuriy Prepodobny, Andrii Hryvniak, and Volodymyr Zayts. In March 2022, the team launched the #SaveUkrainianHeritage project, within the framework of which it digitized 39 historical monuments, including the Dominican and Sophia Cathedrals in Ukraine.

The fake founder, named Chad Smith, lives in New York, according to his LinkedIn. He is a young white man (Roshan generated the photo with the help of AI) who dropped out of Stanford University to work at Stripe. After that, he left Stripe to focus on his startup, on which he has been working for a month. Chad is also a resident of YCombinator. As stated in Chad’s LinkedIn bio, he is also a coder and a polymath.

Within 24 hours, according to Roshan, Chad received a message from a VC analyst, who offered to connect. In the message, he noted that Chad was recommended to him by several acquaintances from Stripe, so the investor decided to take a closer look at his new startup and tell more about his fund.

The account is currently unavailable on LinkedIn, perhaps Roshan deleted it to prevent other investors from reaching the fake founder.

Why is this interesting?

Despite the global recession, which has affected the venture industry and pushed some of the VCs to reconsider their investment strategies, funds never stop looking for new opportunities. This case vividly illustrates the point, as well as the fact that mentions of respectable companies and educational institutions in the portfolio of founders remain the main priorities that investors pay attention to when selecting potential candidates.

As they say in Silicon Valley, “fake it till you make it.”

Backstory

In 1989, ABBYY was founded by the Russian entrepreneur David Yang (he is on the Forbes 2021 TOP 200 wealthiest business people of Russia list). Its first product was the online dictionary Lingvo and the second one was the optical character recognition application FineReader. In the 1990s, the company released software for corporate clients. In the 2000s, it got used by Ukrainian state authorities. Its products are FineReader PDF, FineReader Server, PDF Transformer, Recognition Server, Smart Classifier, Comparator, Mobile OCR Engine, FlexiCapture, etc.

Since the 1990s, the company has registered legal entities in Ukraine. As of 2022, over 150 people worked in the Ukrainian office. And this fact is remarkable because:

• in 2017, the company got on the sanction list made by the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine due to the Russian military aggression since 2014;
• those sanctions forbade any transactions, blocked assets, and banned the software from use in state agencies.

Nowadays, the company (as many other Russian businesses) claims it is international and headquartered in the US. However, after the full-scale Russian invasion, the company supposedly transferred its assets to another Russian firm (that is connected with ABBYY and its team and owners).

As a result, only one entity of ABBYY left in Ukraine and made millions of hryvnias, for example, in 2020.

How did the company get on the sanction list

In 2017, President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine signed a decree that confirmed the prior decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) regarding sanctions for Russian companies and their subsidiaries in Ukraine. That list contained 468 names, and about 20% of them were IT companies. This decree blocked social media VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, Mail.RU products, and other Russian services that were most visited among Ukrainian internet users.

The sanctions forbade purchases and transactions with state entities. The assets of the sanctioned companies must be blocked along with other restrictions that should make their further activity impossible. After that, the offices of big Russian IT companies in Ukraine were closed: Yandex Ukraine, VK Ukraine, etc.

The Russian ABBYY and its Ukrainian subsidiary also were included in the list. They also were present on the NSDC sanction list in 2020 (for a year). However, the legal entity of the Russian company has been changed.

But now, both Russian and Ukrainian entities (the latter changed its name from Abbyy Ukraine LTD («Абі Україна ЛТД») to Cesiko LLC (ТОВ «Цесіко») are on the NSDC sanction list again, from May 21, 2021, until May 21, 2024.

At the same time, this Russian company has another subsidiary registered in 1999 — Abbyy Ukraine LLC (ТОВ «Абі Україна»). And it still operates.

Russian and Ukrainian offices

ABBYY is a Russian enterprise with Russian founders and employees that pays taxes in the Russian Federation.

During its long history, ABBYY has had many legal entities in Russia: ABBYY LLC (ООО «Аби»), ABBYY Production LLC (ООО «Аби Продакшн»), ABBYY Language Solutions LLC (ООО «Аби Лэнгвидж Солюшнз»), ABBYY Infopoisk LLC (ООО «Аби Инфопоиск»), some of which have been closed, some of which are still running. One of the existing Russian legal entities, ABBYY Production LLC (ООО «Аби Продакшн»), pays 77 million rubles in taxes per year. Another, ABBYY LLC (ООО «Аби»), reports 37 million rubles in taxes and fees a year, according to Rusprofile.

As per HeadHunter, in February 2022, the company was among the top ten employers in Russia, with up to 1,000 Russian employees. According to ABBYY’s LinkedIn page, it employs 850 people in Russia and over 150 workers in the Ukrainian office.

But recently, it started to promote itself as an international business.

Its homepage switched to English; there is no Russian in the settings, and there are no Russian offices on its website. Effective at the beginning of 2022, under locations on the website was a large office in the Otradny Business Center in Moscow (7,631 sq. m). And this address was present in the sanction lists above. In January 2022, the company transferred the product rights to its American entities due to “international expansion plans.” It also removed most of its software products from the Russian register of national software provided by the Russian Ministry of Digitalization. It granted all its intellectual property to the American office.

In April 2022, ABBYY gave its Russian business to Content AI LLC (ООО «Контент ИИ») while calling it “a technology partner ready to help clients and partners in Russia.” Content AI was established in April 2022. Surprisingly, almost all its founders are managers of ABBYY. According to TAdviser, the initial owner of 51% of equity of Content AI was Vadym Tereshchenko, the Chief VP at ABBYY and Managing Director at ABBYY Production LLC (ООО «Аби Продакшн»), who has worked for the company since the 1990s. Soon, his share was transferred to a person with the same family name — Elena Tereshchenko.

Oleg Sazhin, CEO at ABBYY LLC (ООО «Аби»), was indicated among the founder until July 2022 with a 12.2% share. Elena Bocharova, VP of Global Legal at ABBYY, was also on the founder list. As well as Svetlana Dergacheva, CEO at Content AI, in her LinkedIn profile, you can learn that she is SMB Director at ABBYY.

According to Russian registers, the current founder of the company is Content AI Solutions Bilisim Ve Teknoloji Hizmetleri Anonim Sirketi (100% share), registered in Turkey. The President of its Board is Elena Bocharova, who has worked for ABBYY since 2005. And Svetlana Dergacheva confirmed TAdviser that Content AI is the same team — the same developers and engineers — familiar to ABBYY’s customers.

Based on job openings, Content AI is actively hiring people in Russia. Its CTO, Ivan Volkov, also says this. He also states that the team “was built of people from a company with a 30-year history” and that they work on the same products that ABBYY developed.

A few more facts about Content AI’s connection with ABBYY:

• the domain ars.contentai.ru redirects to sso.abbyy.com;
• from April to July 2022, 62% of referral traffic to contentai.com originated from abbyy.com;
• there are job openings in Russia posted from ABBYY: for example, they are looking for employees for a branch in Novosibirsk.

A statement of the company

The AIN.Capital editors asked ABBYY’s Ukrainian and international offices for commentary regarding the Russian and Ukrainian offices and the sanctions.

• The answer was that ABBYY Ukraine is neither a subsidiary nor the ownership of the Russian company.

“ABBYY is an American group of companies owned by outside investors, founders, and management of the company. The largest shareholder of ABBYY is the American investment company Marlin Equity Partners. ABBYY headquarters is located in North Carolina, US, and the company has offices in fourteen countries. ABBYY software products are owned and managed by our US holding company,” the company said.

• They also stated that the Ukrainian firm is against the war, ceased sales in Russia, and is about to cease operations in the Russian Federation and Belarus. ABBYY published a statement from its CEO on LinkedIn at the beginning of the invasion. It says Ukrainian employees are suffering and getting support from the company. But there is no word about the cause of this suffering and who started the war.
• Technically, it’s true. As mentioned above, all IP and sales were transferred to the American HQ. Then, ABBYY handed over its operations, clients, and team to Content AI after the invasion started. However, the founders of Content AI were the managers of ABBYY, and its team, clients, and products are the same people who worked in the Moscow office. So, ABBYY virtually distanced itself from the Russian market while still working there. We have found no proof that Content AI is independent of ABBYY, but the opposite. Nonetheless, ABBYY reps say it’s an independent business.

“ABBYY has stopped selling products and services in Russia and Belarus and is winding down its activities in Russia. ABBYY’s Moscow office had far fewer than 1,000 employees, and now the main development centers and related facilities are located in the United States, Hungary, Serbia, and Cyprus.

Content AI is a small independent company. ABBYY does not own or control it. This company was created by several former ABBYY employees and employs a small group of our former employees.”

• It’s worth mentioning that having an HQ in the US doesn’t mean the company couldn’t have another HQ in Moscow. For instance, Yandex has an office in the Netherlands, but it’s still a Russian enterprise. The same here.
• Speaking of sanctions, it is more complicated. According to a press release, no one of ABBYY entities is under sanctions in Ukraine. It is not true. Its Ukrainian firm was on the sanction list for years (see ‘How did the company get on the sanction list’). However, they admit that Ukraine imposed sanctions in 2017 against the Russian ABBYY LLC (ООО «Аби»), which belongs to the ABBYY Group and distributed software products in Russia and the CIS countries (Ukraine finally left the CIS in 2018).
• The company also declares that those sanctions are personal. It means they cover a specific natural or legal person but not the group of companies, its workers, or business in general.
• That’s technically true. But the reality looks different. Looking at other banned Russian firms or services (Yandex or VK), we can see that the authors of the list tried to include as many services, domains, and legal entities belonging to those companies as possible. Why one ABBYY firm was included in the sanction list and the other not it’s unknown. According to its press release, since 2017, the ABBYY managers have been in touch with the Ukrainian government to ensure that ABBYY fulfills the current legislation of Ukraine.
• Regarding the Ukrainian office, the company reps say ABBYY Ukraine continues operating within the Ukrainian legal field and has about 150 employees. Its team provides Customer Support, Professional Services, Customer Success Management, and Training. Andrii Levkovych is CEO. Vitali Tyshchenko, Chief Customer Officer at ABBYY, also lives in Ukraine.

Conclusions:

ABBYY used to be and remains a Russian business whose HQ moved abroad. It handed over its operations in Russia to a new, freshly registered company. It has been founded and is led by people from ABBYY. It employed its engineers and continues to cooperate with the latter’s clients. ABBYY published vacancies in Russia.

We pay attention to that because this large and well-known Russian business has an acting office in Kyiv. Despite all the sanctions. And the ABBYY products were used in many Ukrainian state-owned entities, for example, the National Bank of Ukraine, Pension Fund of Ukraine, Ukrenergo National Energy Company, and others. Its office was also one of the biggest 1C distributors in Ukraine.

Interestingly, on Prozorro, you can find ABBYY software purchase tenders for state entities from 2019, 2020, and 2021. But the sellers, in most cases, are not ABBYY subsidiaries but other companies that do sell and implement its software: Specvuzautomatyka, InfoSphere, Soft Online, IBit, QBit, etc.

Before the sanctions, the Ukrainian office was responsible for the whole of Eastern and Central Europe, Israel, and Turkey. Most of the marketing materials were made in Kyiv.

Today, you can check the sanction list and find Cesiko LLC (ТОВ «Цесіко») (former ABBY Ukraine Ltd («Абі Україна Лтд»), see above). Another subsidiary — ABBYY Ukraine LLC (ТОВ «Абі Україна»), is registered at the same legal address as Cesiko LLC — 31 Dehtiarivska Street. It’s not being terminated and earned according to Opendatabot ₴28 mln in revenue and got ₴18 mln profit in 2020. Among ABBYY’s international positions on LinkedIn, there are several jobs for the Kyiv office.

On Glassdoor, you can see feedback from anonymous employees of the company’s Ukrainian office saying that it masks itself behind a Cyprus legal entity and says it is a European business, but it is not. Other anonymous reviews include comments that the company’s management supports the Russian management (there was a story in 2014 about how the head of ABBYY’s Russian office was fired because of criticism of the Russian authorities).

In other words, after over five months of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, a subsidiary of the prominent Russian company continues its routine work here while it should be under sanctions at least from 2017. It remains unknown what kind of Ukrainian state entities’ data are accessible for the Russian ABBYY and how is any cooperation between them possible.

ABBYY does not officially operate in Russia, but there is a company associated with ABBYY, and it does. This company carries out sales and development, hires people, pays taxes in Russia, and thus directly supports and finances Russia’s war in Ukraine.

How did Aerorozvidka arise?

The actual term “air intelligence” became common when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014. Then, it was apparent that the Ukrainian military used drones to locate enemy positions and movements more effectively.

The history of the Aerorozvidka non-governmental organization also began in 2014: it used to be a group of volunteers without official status who applied serial drones for intelligence and fire support.

Later, most artillery observers joined a military unit created especially for such operations. It consisted of the Drone Team and a team that worked on the Delta Situational Awareness System. The second team continues working on a platform — a real-time updated multi-level map with data of locations, numbers, and movements of enemy units. They gather data from air intelligence, satellites, and informers sending info via chatbots. In particular, this system helped Ukrainian warriors make decisions during the Kyiv defense.

However, in 2020, the unit was disbanded and then reformed into the Centre of Innovation and Development of Defense Technologies. So, Aerorozvidka arose as an NGO and has been transformed into a military unit. The goal remains the same: supply the drones and IT equipment to the Ukrainian army.

How Aerorozvidka works now

The military always lacks drones since they are vital and consumable things at the same time. A drone doesn’t enjoy a long life at war: it can be shut down, damaged, broken, fall, or lost on the enemy-controlled territory.

So, the main task of Aerorozvidka is to supply drones to the army and sometimes develop their own ones (for example, before February 2022, the NGO delivered about 50 drones).

Another advantage of using drones is that, with relatively cheap equipment, it causes heavy losses to the enemy.

“We calculated that $1 invested in the production of an R18 drone causes $1,000 worth of damage to the enemy. If a drone hits a piece of equipment like a tank, it pays for itself in one flight. After all, destroyed equipment costs millions, but the equipment we work with costs tens or hundreds of thousands,” Aerorozvidka explained.

The Ukrainian defenders mostly use civilian UAVs now (such as Autel or DJI), but recently military drones from Western countries have also started arriving.

“Drones are very helpful and make a big difference on the front lines. They are changing the rules of engagement and the course of this war,” the NGO said.

For example, the UAVs and Starlink terminals helped Ukrainian Armed Forces stop a many-kilometer-long convoy approaching Kyiv from Belarus. Thanks to the communication built with the help of drones and starlinks, Ukrainians hit ammunition warehouses near the Belarussian border and cut the supply of the first-line occupiers, Aerorozvidka members reported.

The organization constantly publishes examples of effective drone use on YouTube. Here are a few cases:

Is it possible to join Aerorozvidka

From the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Aerorozvidka organized everyone who had drones and coordinated their work so that Kyiv’s First Situation Center would receive data from them.

Many of these volunteer operators later became fighters in various structures of the Ukrainian security and defense forces, mobilized or signed a contract and now work not as volunteers but as soldiers.

“If a person has experience operating a drone, they can join various units of Ukraine’s Armed Forces or other Ukrainian defense forces that have appropriate air intelligence units,” the organization says.

• How did the company discover suspicious activity on its LinkedIn account and other job platforms? First, there was a job opening on LinkedIn with a different description than on its official website. LinkedIn marked it as “imported from an external resource.” It looked suspicious, but the team couldn’t find out the origin of this vacancy. So it was deleted.
• Sometime later, the recruiter Olena Starushko discovered many fake accounts created in the company’s name on a Ukrainian job website. But she couldn’t remove them:

“On that day, as usual, I had opened the company profile to check if there were new job openings and requests. But then I was shocked to see a ton of unknown vacancies — all on a high level and specified for Polish candidates. Moreover, all of them were created from an account with my name. The worst was that I couldn’t edit them. There was my name, but the account wasn’t mine,” she explained.

Examples of the fake job ads:

• Olena reached the S-PRO Chief of Recruiting, and the fake jobs were deleted then. Scammers seemed to find security vulnerabilities in mentioned job platforms. They used Olena’s personal data from LinkedIn and her corporate email and registered an account with a close domain: @s-pro.us (instead of the real @s-pro.io).
• At that time, the fraudsters not only published vacancies (with attractive terms for foreign candidates) but had already started negotiating with “potential employees” to scam them for money or personal data:

“Their goal was to make an excellent job offer and then ask to buy specific expensive equipment by specific sellers, namely their accomplices (for example, purchase a computer that the candidate would never receive) or pay for visa processing since all jobs were designed for foreigners. They also can require your banking details in order to pay you a salary,” the company reps resumed.

• Even after the company deleted all the fake jobs, Olena Starushko continued to receive messages from developers interested in these positions. Moreover, the candidates were surprised that they could not write to the recruiter in the previous chat.
• The company’s team discovered that they weren’t the only ones who encountered such a scam: for example, fraudsters have scammed candidates out of thousands of dollars by hiding behind the Sigma Software name. The company Avenga has posted a guide about such fraudulent schemes and the signs that should alert a candidate when applying for a job.

Olha, who has been working with Airbnb since last year, told AIN.Capital that complaints to the support service are useless. Airbnb blames the bank, then Payoneer, but you can clearly see in a personal account that there was no payment at all. Most likely, this problem is related to the sanctions against Russia and its occupied territories, but for some reason users from all over Ukraine stopped receiving payments.

Ukrainian host cannot receive their payouts

Since the end of May, Airbnb has stopped making payouts to Ukrainian hosts, while still deducting the total cost of booking and renting from guests. Although the problem does not affect all users, there are dozens of people at least who have lost their source of income due to the strange Airbnb policy.

When you contact the company’s support service, it blames the banks or Payoneer, but there is actually no problem with them.

“At first, Airbnb refuses to give any explanations. Then it says the issue may be related to my bank. Then, when it turns out the bank is working fine, it says that something is wrong with Payoneer. However, the stats section of the user profile clearly displays that no payouts were made. And many users, including those whom I personally know, note that changing the method of receiving the payment did not help,” Olha shares.

Some hosts even receive penalties from Airbnb when they try to deal with the situation

Airbnb’s Community Center already has dozens of similar complaints from hosts who do not receive payments for their services. Many openly state about being forced to stop cooperating with the platform because they have to spend their efforts and money on organizing their business, but they simply cannot profit from it. Some hosts even receive penalties from Airbnb while trying to deal with the situation.

“The support service is a team of absolute inattentive and indifferent non-professionals. From June 3, they stopped contacting me. New disputes are easily closed and sent to the one who stopped answering me on June 3rd. Now in that correspondence, if you can call it that, there is only my diary, in which I sometimes write, but do not receive an answer.

They lie to my guests that I receive all payments and my information is not true. The next day, when I asked for help in a new dispute about what to do with a new guest if I did not receive payments for old bookings, I was waiting for advice and asked for at least some guarantees for payments — I received a tough answer that on my behalf the guest’s booking gets cancelled, and a bunch of information that I’m violating the code of conduct, I get a fine for this, a corresponding note in my account, and a warning that if this happens again, then Airbnb will take appropriate action against me,” a user with the nickname Наталья157 writes.

This issue affects the whole country, regardless of the location of accommodation

Some foreign users suggested that the issue could be related to the sanctions imposed on the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine and advised to check the UK sanctions lists.

Judging by the fact that some hosts manage to solve this issue, it could indeed be the reason. Airbnb does not want to accidentally send funds to the occupied territories and get accused of supporting Russian aggression. However, the problem affects all regions of Ukraine — there are complaints from Lviv, Kyiv, Dnipro, and other cities.

In her comments, Olha also mentions that Lviv is not under Russian control and has never been occupied. She also says that other hosts from her city have a similar situation.

At the time of publication, the editors of AIN.Capital sent a request to Airbnb, but have received no response.

About the start of the full-scale war

We prepared our team and designers in advance. We asked them to pack their belongings and documents in February so that they could leave quickly. In mid-February, we paid salaries in advance and evacuated designers from Mariupol and Donbas. There were about 5% of the designers there.

I also prepared instructions on how the company should act if a full-scale war broke out. We partially withdrew cash and gave it to managers. We also created a map that showed the location of our team and designers.

On the morning of February 24, we started following the instructions. We rented apartments in cities in western Ukraine and hired a team of psychologists for our designers. Unfortunately, some of our people lost their homes or even loved ones. So psychological support was very important.

Additionally, we provided financial aid. We also rented two villas in Egypt, where women with children who could go abroad had a safe place. Interestingly, we got these accommodations with almost no expense spared. We asked partners for discounts, which were enough to cover the rent.

About customers

We have two types of customers: the designers themselves and those who order their services. We have never built a business with Russia — we had neither designers nor customers in the country. So after the start of the full-scale war, nothing has changed in terms of cooperation.

A few clients placed orders for several thousand dollars in advance; we still feel good financially.

We have also added a new option to donate to a specific Ukrainian designer. We got this idea from Airbnb, where Americans booked accommodations from Ukrainians and helped them financially. In March, we raised $23,000 that way.

Before the war, customers would complain, for example, about deadlines. Today, most people understand the situation and are sympathetic to delays. We have not lost a single client by them saying, “There is a war in your country. I’m leaving.” Most of them are from Europe and the US, the countries that stand with Ukraine.

About the team

During the first two days of the war, our designers could perform 50% of the tasks. On the fifth day, the volume of orders fulfilled was 85%, and a week later, it was — 100%. On the 50th day after the invasion, we evacuated the last person from occupied Kherson. A driver who called himself “Kamikaze Driver” helped us. The service cost 5,000 hryvnias. Today all of the 145 people working with us are safe.

Nothing has changed in our work organization since the beginning of the invasion. We have always worked remotely — the designers only needed a laptop and Internet access. The only change is the security check. Our employees in Ukraine can press the “I am safe” or “I need help” button.

When we get a notification that someone needs help, the team responds to the request. Everyone is relatively safe now, except for the rocket bombing in the cities. But previously, several people were working from the occupied territories, so such a check was necessary.

About volunteering

Before the war we donated one million hryvnias to Come Back Alive. We pay salaries to several people from the foundation so that they can continue their volunteer work and not search for a job. We are also trying to support the market. Currently, there is one job opening for three designers, although before February 24, the situation was the opposite.

So we offer orders to Ukrainian designers who have lost their jobs. If anyone has free time, we offer projects, such as creating NFT collections. In total, we had 130 people working for us in March. For the month, they spent 30% of their working time on design-related volunteer projects.

About partners’ support

After the accelerator program at Y Combinator, we got a small brand in the startup community. Many investors and startups wrote to me and offered their help. I replied: “If you want to help, then donate to charities or buy a design from us.

I sense a new trend in the West: everyone wants to work with Ukrainians, buy Ukrainian products, and help the country.

Tools that help to collect the information

The chatbot e-Enemy partly looks like a mobile game. You have to tag the location of the enemies and get rewards in the form of emoji. e-Enemy has become an assistant on the battlefield. The Ukrainian army receives messages from the chatbot, and they help perform successful attacks on the positions of Russian soldiers. It was developed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, and it is just one of several tools created by the government to crowdsource and verify war crimes.

Since the invasion began, Ukrainian officials, lawyers, and human rights groups have tried to develop new ways to verify videos, photos, and eyewitness testimonies. Ukraine has adapted government applications to allow citizens to document damage to their homes or recognize people’s faces.

According to the experts, this experience by Ukrainians is unlike any in the history of modern warfare. Crowdsourcing of evidence of war crimes has been done in other conflicts, but “the use of open-source information as evidence in the case of Ukraine may be at altogether a different level,” says Nadia Volkova, director of the Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group.

Apps, chatbots, and websites developed by Ukrainian officials classify different types of war crimes and human rights violations. They are then entered into a single centralized database created by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General. These crimes include killing or injuring civilians, physical violence or imprisonment, denial of medical care, looting, and property theft by the occupiers.

The website of the Prosecutor General’s Office has already received more than 10,000 pieces of evidence from citizens. What all this will yield is still unclear. International war crimes cases are difficult to investigate. However, Ukrainian officials say that the evidence of Russian atrocities goes far beyond the trial in The Hague.

Ukraine also see this evidence as a defense against Russian disinformation. For example, against Kremlin claims that the murders in Bucha or Mariupol are “fake” or staged.

How it works

A few weeks after the start of the full-scale invasion, a Russian military convoy passed near Kherson. As they crossed an intersection, employees of the Ministry of Digital Transformation in Kyiv watched as e-Enemy received dozens of photos and videos from residents’ windows. The government monitors the chatbot around the clock.

“Almost every apartment sent us a report. So we could geolocate them to almost every apartment on those two streets,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation, says.

More than 253,000 people have sent footage of movements and reports of the actions of Russian troops through the chatbot, according to the Ministry of Digital Transformation. Over 66,000 people have submitted evidence of damage to their homes and towns.

Many Ukrainian prosecutors now working on war crimes investigations had previously been trained in the using of open-source data. “So we have experience with this kind of evidence, and we’ve focused all the forces of our prosecutors on the war crimes claims. We need to operate really quickly to store all the evidence from the beginning if we want to use it in different courts,” said Serhiy Kropyva, a digital adviser to the Prosecutor General.

According to Kropyva, the government has promoted the site through television interviews, billboards, and Internet ads, encouraging Ukrainians to report any violations. The government’s war crimes dashboard lists about 6,500 photos, videos, and other documentation. The “crimes against children” section alone lists at least 191 children killed and 349 wounded. The site offers 18 detailed categories, including sexual violence, torture, death, and hostage-taking.

There is also a section called “Enemy’s personal data.” It allows users to provide any information about the Russian forces: documents, passports, call signs and pseudonyms, identification marks. As of April 14, 570 “suspects” were identified, including Russian military and political officials, ministers, and heads of law-enforcement agencies.

The need to record war crimes has led Fedorov and other officials to ask social media companies to review some of their rules, like removing content that might document eyewitness accounts of war crimes for breaking the rules.

“The community guidelines were made in peaceful countries to account for normal, everyday communication going on in peacetime. Some content which might not be permissible in peacetime could be instrumental to proving war crimes,” says Mykhailo Fedorov.

Ukrainian officials are trying to create a comprehensive body of digital evidence collected in a modern war. When asked if the minister believes in these efforts, Fedorov has no doubt. “We have satellite imagery, we have the verified content from our apps, we have other sources that I’m not at liberty to disclose…I am very sure it will help us prove our case in international jurisdictions.”

The Verge has published an article about Ukrainian Tiktokers, who were called “war correspondents” for users from other countries, about how they influence the image of Ukrainians, collect charitable donations, and how many fakes they spread. AIN.Capital shares the highlights of the article.

Until February 24, Kristina Korban from Kyiv had an English-language blog about sports motivation and personal finances. Today her videos are about the events in the capital of Ukraine. Kristina goes live daily, regularly posts videos about air-raid sirens, her family’s food inventory, and grocery store lines in Kyiv.

She has over 600,000 followers, and one of her posts has been viewed by 9.6 million people. The blogger’s audience is people from different countries who knew practically nothing about Ukraine until the recent events.

Sometimes TikTok removes Kristina’s posts. For example, a video of her crying in the dark to the sound of explosions has been removed for “graphic content.” And the clip where Korban jokingly says that everything Ukrainian women do want for International Women’s Day are tanks, bullets, and fighter jets, has also been removed without an explanation.

Once her page was even banned for several days for inappropriate content, but she continued to post videos on her backup account. “I believe there is a lot of chaos when people receive wrong information, so I do my best to be as honest and factual as I can with the knowledge that I possess and learn as we go through this day by day. I aim to provide at least a little bit of clarity for those that trust in me. I feel it is my duty,” Kristina says.

The blogger also raises funds for charity. She has sold over 2,500 T-shirts, the earnings from which will go to Ukrainians affected by the war. Kristina has also launched a fundraising campaign called Help Ukrainians in Need Impacted by War with a $1 million goal. So far, she’s already managed to raise $29,000. In the comments under the video announcing the donation, there are a lot of skeptics who do not trust Kristina.

Pages like Kristina Korban’s have become another source of information for foreigners about the war in Ukraine. Sometimes people follow events only on TikTok, ignoring media reports. However, along with personal blogs of Ukrainians, misinformation began to spread on social media.

According to a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Russian state-controlled accounts have successfully used the platform to spread Kremlin propaganda. As per the ISD, organized disinformation presenting Ukraine as an aggressor and its soldiers and politicians as Nazis garnered millions of views on TikTok before March 4, when the report was published.

Individual bloggers have also posted TikTok videos justifying the Russian invasion. A viral compilation shows that Influencers spread content made using the same script, saying that “Russia wants to bring peace.” An investigation by Vice News revealed that some Russian TikTok influencers were offered money in exchange for posting pro-Russian propaganda, though it is unclear who funded and organized it.

TikTok has responded that it would begin adding labels to videos from Russian-controlled media. On March 6, the company announced that it would suspend live streams and new uploads in Russia.

Unfortunately, Ukrainian users also spread misinformation. An example is the “Ghost of Kyiv” character, whose existence is questioned. Currently, the #Ghostofkyiv has over 435 million views on TikTok. Ukrainians have also been sharing videos unrelated to the war in Ukraine, claiming them as such. For example, videos from games or fighting in other parts of the world.

On February 28, the Russian media showed a photo of a “kindergarten occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” On March 1, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared the same building as “a maternity hospital occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.” However, the shape of the building shown in the Russian news does not match the shape of the Mariupol maternity hospital No. 3 hit by a Russian missile.

Key facts of the case:

• Russia used fake news in advance to have reasons for shelling.
• The destroyed hospital differs from the building shown by the Russian media.
• The distance from the bombed hospital to the building shown by Russians is 10 km.
• There was no military personnel in the hospital, as was said by the Russian government. There was also no military machinery, weapons, or equipment.
• Despite the Russian reports, staff and civilians, including pregnant women, have been injured in the hospital. Russians have also damaged civilian vehicles belonging to the staff and patients in the hospital’s courtyard.

Chronology of events:

02/28/2022 – The pro-Russia VK page Военный осведомитель (Military Whistleblower) published a photo of the Ukrainian soldiers at a civilian facility in Mariupol.

03/01/2022 – The Russian TV channel Россия 24 (Russia 24) used a photo of the “occupied” building in Mariupol in its video (YouTube, accessed via VPN or Tor).

03/07/2022 – The Russian representative, Vasily Nebenzya, during the meeting of the UN Security Council, said that local nationalist battalions drove people out of a maternity hospital, opened fire there, and destroyed a nursery school in the city.

03/09/2022, 1:05 pm (Moscow time) – During a briefing, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, reported that: “in Mariupol, the Ukrainian national battalion, chased the staff and patients out of the maternity hospital, set up firing positions inside the building.”

03/09/2022, 4:00 pm (Kyiv time) – The Russian Armed Forces bombed the central part of Mariupol, including the Woman & Child Health Center with Pediatric Consultative Diagnostic Clinic and the maternity ward of City Hospital No. 3.

03/09/2022, 7:38 pm (Moscow time) – the newspaper Комсомольска правда (Komsomol Truth) published an article saying that, in late February, Ukrainian soldiers took up combat positions in Maternity Hospital No. 1, while civilians were sent to other facilities or their homes. The article included a photo of the militaries next to an unknown building, taken from the VK group Военный осведомитель (Military Whistleblower), which had been broadcast by the TV channel Россия 24 (Russia 24) eight days earlier.

Russia’s propaganda mistakes

1. Russia used fake news in advance to have reasons for shelling

Russian sources started reporting on the occupation of the hospital by the AFU as early as a week before the bombing, most likely using a photo of a nursery school instead of a hospital. Here is a satellite image of the territory of hospital No. 3, which was actually bombed:

The photo that was shown by the Russian TV channel Россия 24 (Russia 24) on March 01, 2022:

Комсомольска правда (Komsomol Truth), March 09, 2022:

2. The destroyed hospital differs from the building shown by the Russian media.

Note that Военный осведомитель (Military Whistleblower) on the 28th of February reported that it was a kindergarten in the photo, not a maternity hospital:

The typical form of the building also suggests that there is indeed a children’s educational institution in the photo. Here are examples of such buildings on the territory of Mariupol:

Here is a photo of the hospital before and after the bombing by the Russians.

As we can see, the same yellow-green medical buildings were bombed:

We also draw attention to the fact that Google Maps shows that on the territory of the Pediatric Consultative Diagnostic Clinic there is no object of such a shape as in the photo of Комсомольская правда (Komsomol Truth):

A similar building is next to Maternity Hospital No. 1, which was shown by Комсомольская правда (Komsomol Truth). But its shape and surroundings are completely different from the photos shown by the pro-Russian media.

The building from the photo with the military personnel has only one ledge in the middle. But as we can see on the map, the buildings are completely symmetrical. Also, there are three fir trees near the building, but they are absent in the satellite image.

3. The distance from the bombed hospital to the building shown by Russians is 10 km.

In fact, the attack was made on the Pediatric Consultative Diagnostic Clinic, which is located 10 km from Maternity Hospital No. 1, mentioned in the article of Комсомольская правда (Komsomol Truth).

4. There were no military units in the maternity hospital

Комсомольская правда (Komsomol Truth) reported: “Since the start of the military operation, this Mariupol maternity hospital has been occupied by two companies of the 36th Marine Brigade, and all patients and employees have been moved to other facilities, and some went home.

But the video of the destroyed hospital inside does not show any signs of weapons, military equipment, etc. But you can see specialized medical equipment, the personal belongings of the patients, and the blood of the victims:

Also, despite the Russian media’s information about the military personnel in the maternity hospital, there were no military vehicles on the hospital grounds. But we can see burned civilian vehicles of the staff and patients on this video, another video, and one more video.

5. The victims

Quote from the article of Комсомольская правда (Komsomol Truth):

“Can you imagine the number of corpses and casualties that would have been there if an aerial bomb had hit the courtyard of a functioning hospital? There is no doubt that the Ukrainian side would have shown them all. At least as they bandaged them or carried them to the ambulance. But where are they?”

Okay, let’s watch one video, another video, and one more video. If it is not enough, let’s see the photos of the evacuation of the victims:

Here is a photo of this woman from her husband’s Instagram account dated January 24, 2022:

It should be noted that as of March 10, 2022, 7:55 am, according to the State Emergency Service and the words of the adviser to the chairman of the Mariupol City Council, Petro Andriushchenko, the number of victims is 17 injured women, three dead people, including one child.

The article was prepared by the Molfar team

Liki24.com has had international ambitions since its very foundation. According to the founder and CEO, Anton Avrinskyi, the team has initially set a goal to build a global business operating in many markets and allowing millions of people to purchase medicines cheaper.

The first country was Poland in July 2020

The team also thought about the United Kingdom, but finally, they decided on the Polish market based on the following:

• far less cost of launch;
• it’s a neighbor of Ukraine;
• Poland is the fastest-growing nation in Europe.

In the Forbes interview in July 2021, Avrinskyi said that the Polish market is different from the Ukrainian; it’s less consolidated, more regulated, and conservative. However, there are also positive changes. In 2020, Poland implemented a united electronic prescription system simplifying drug delivery and logistics.

At the moment, Liki24 has its delivery service in Warsaw. Postal delivery is also available countrywide. Recently, the Polish logistics company InPost has installed 70 parcel lockers with fridges in Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, and Lodz. As a result, users can quickly and safely get their medicines that require a particular temperature during transport and storage.

The next goal was Romania

New markets to expand were selected in three steps; the market analysis has been performed together with one of Liki24.com investors — Genesis Investments. After all, they chose a country with a relatively small drug market characterized by low competition, so in July 2021, the company arose in Bucharest.

Nowadays, Liki24.com has its own courier services in Bucharest and Constanța, providing delivery to all cities. The company is working on extending the local geography of the service availability to launch the 30-minutes express delivery, which is very popular in Ukraine.

Liki24.com is promoted in Romania via contextual ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and through influencers. However, word-of-mouth marketing is still the best.

The service is user-friendly and helps people solve a row of problems: granting access to high-quality goods, saving time and money, becoming popular from user to user, and the last is the best promotion. Several local media paid attention to Liki24.com in their releases.

According to the company representatives, after six months of its operation in the market, its turnover increased more than ten times in Romania.

In the past year, Liki24 also launched the courier service in Budapest, the capital of Hungary

The company reps said that currently, the team works on legal issues without disclosing any figures.

Drug delivery is one of the most regulated and legislation-sensible industries in Europe. For example, a law effective January 1, 2021, significantly changed the meds delivery format in Hungary. That’s why our legal team now works there hard to find an optimal solution within the current legislation.

In 2021, Liki24.com had over 300,000 users in Poland, Hungary, and Romania

The numbers speak for the demand. Another good news for us is that the repeat purchase rate hit 70%: users test our service, like it, and purchase meds and healthy goods again at our platform, the company reps said.

The main trend Liki24 can confirm for all three countries is increasing online purchases of drugs and wellness goods, home delivery, and online booking.

Currently, the company is focused on scaling and developing the platform in operating markets. Further foreign expansion is not ended, but still, there are many things to be researched in different countries, not only within Europe.

In this article, Pavlo Maherovsky shares how the startup has managed to stay in the market, received its first investment, and closed a deal worth $20 million with a $1.6 billion company.

The idea for Honest Health first emerged when the two of us met during our MBA at London Business School. We started having conversations about the healthcare market, and these soon grew into conversations about starting a business together.

I came to the opportunity from the patient’s perspective. I was previously a customer of a hair loss clinic in London, and I had witnessed first hand the inefficiency and expense of in-person private treatment. This clinic would use pressure tactics to make me buy more expensive treatments, and once every few months, I’d have to go back into a pharmacy to pick up prescriptions.

Sam came from the provider’s perspective. Before Honest Health, he’d already built two healthcare businesses with his mother: a primary care clinic and a pharmacy. Sam was surprised by how old-fashioned people’s attitudes were when it came to healthcare. Pre-pandemic, fewer than 1% of medical appointments took place online.

We were looking for solutions, and that’s when we recognized the emergence of the direct-to-consumer (D2C) healthcare category in the US, with companies like Hims & Hers, Curology, Nurx, and others, and it clicked. They were offering a variety of telemedicine solutions for medical issues, including erectile dysfunction, birth control, and dermatology.

Such an approach could solve the problems of inefficiency and the high cost of medical services. So in 2019, we launched our product Freshman, a D2C platform that offers subscription-based remote treatment for hair loss.

Fundraising was consistently the biggest challenge we faced early on in the business.

Having been turned down by 186 investors, we bootstrapped the business with our limited savings. We built and launched the original product, Freshman, on a tight budget of around £35,000, which came entirely out of our own pockets. Pile this on top of the fact that we’d both just taken two years out to study MBAs—and taking on the significant student debt associated with that.

During our fundraising journey, we spoke to many investors – and the vast majority of them didn’t invest. It was difficult to deal with at the time. It makes you question what you’re doing and puts doubt in your mind because we were very fixated on trying to secure a big fund to invest in our business. But actually, the investors who added the most value were some of those angel investors with smaller cheques, but they provided much more value over and above the financial investment.

In 2020, everything changed: suddenly telehealth became a necessity, then a norm.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a rapid acceleration of the trends that we predicted back when we started in 2018. Out of necessity, healthcare provision became remote where possible, and consumers began to see the possibilities that technology could provide. Compared to the 1% who had used telehealth before the pandemic, in May 2020, around 37% of medical appointments took place online.

We witnessed over a decade-worth of growth and adoption in the space of six months. The company grew by 800% over the course of 2020 alone. By early 2021, we had thousands of men around the country using our treatments each day.

Ultimately, the hard work all paid off. We closed our seed round in November 2020, which included investment from VGC Partners and Fagron, the leading global pharmaceutical compounding company. This seed round helped us hire our first employee, Head of Growth, build further momentum in the market, and ultimately led to our acquisition by Hims & Hers Health, Inc.

Our company is now 100% owned by Hims & Hers Health, Inc.

We were put in touch with Hims & Hers by one of our investors, who was an angel investor himself and a recently exited founder in London. He was just very, very plugged into the tech community in the UK and had known Hims & Hers for a while, and he just made that connection for us. As soon as we started talking to the Hims & Hers team in early 2021, it became clear that we shared a vision for the future of healthcare, and even more importantly, we knew right away that there was a great cultural fit too.

Our company is now 100% owned by Hims & Hers Health, Inc. Sam and I are now responsible for managing the Hims & Hers growth and expansion strategy in the UK.

Now, without the stress of having to think about our next funding round, we can focus on what we do best: building our business, broadening our range of products, and finding new ways to delight our customers.

Getting rejected many times is part of the game

What’s crucial to remember through the fundraising process is not to give up. Getting rejected many times is part of the game when it comes to raising investment: look at any successful company, and no doubt they’ve been rejected by investors at some point. Here are some of the best lessons we learned about fundraising:

• You have to optimize your story. One thing we hadn’t really polished at the beginning was what exactly our company’s story was, and where we saw it going. This needs to be clearly thought through, and framed correctly, in order to resonate with investors.
• Understand where you fit in the ecosystem. One of the best quotes we heard about fundraising is that ‘VC is fractal.’ There are big investors and there are small investors. There are Series A investors and there are seed investors. There are VC funds and there are angels. Each one has a different mandate, a different risk appetite, and different expected returns. There’s no point only aiming for the top investors that everyone goes for: that’s the mistake we made. Knowing where you fit in the fundraising landscape and therefore knowing which kinds of investors to approach is key to getting funded.
• Investors prefer lines to dots. The honest truth is that almost no entrepreneurs secure investment after just one meeting. Don’t get disheartened after an investor tells you, “We need to see more traction.” Stay on their radar and demonstrate that you’re heading in the right direction. Add this investor to an email distribution list, and start sending out regular, monthly updates, for example. You’ll be surprised how many investors will start following your progress and reaching out with meeting requests.
• Momentum is everything. Getting the first investment is hard. But once you get that, everyone else falls into place. By the end of our seed round, we were turning away investors. So think about who is going to be the investor to give you your first cheque, and focus on them.