In the Startup of the Day column, David Brozik, Prokop Cech, Lukas Benes and Jan Hicl, the founding team of Delta Green, share the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originate from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire,

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Delta Green is a Czech energy company that empowers households to utilize electricity efficiently and responsibly. Beyond energy provision, it offers intelligent, automated solutions for managing electricity consumption and production.

Delta Green stands at the forefront of innovation in the energy sector as an energy flexibility aggregator. Its solution allows the integration of renewable resources into the grid on a massive scale without compromising grid stability,

The company is working on including households, grouped into a giant virtual battery, in grid balancing. For households equipped with photovoltaics, batteries, heat pumps, or electric vehicles, Delta Green can save or earn them hundreds of euros annually. This involves not only managing electricity consumption and production but also the planned integration of households into grid balancing.

We also announced a successful pilot test involving household participation in grid balancing, illustrating the transformative potential of our solution which is expected to be fully available by year’s end.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

We’ve long thought about how we could help fight climate change, and when the opportunity arose to make these changes at Delta Green, we didn’t hesitate for a second. What Delta Green does combines everything we love: innovation, new business opportunities, and the fight against climate change.

Our motivation is to provide our customers with the means to manage electricity efficiently and responsibly, which can save or earn households thousands of euro crowns annually. In addition to energy supply, we also offer electricity consumption and production management.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

It took us about a year to reach our prototype or MVP stage. As with any tech startup, we encountered numerous technical challenges along the way. However, we managed to navigate through them successfully and keep pushing forward.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

Delta Green, originally known as Nano Green, was founded in 2008 under Nano Energies. However, this year we underwent rebranding to better reflect our mission and focus on innovative solutions in the energy sector.

We have already launched our platform that manages home consumption and tested the grid balancing integration. However, due to additional administrative requirements, we are planning to officially launch that aspect soon.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Our business model focuses on providing and purchasing electricity at spot market prices with smart management. We offer our customers a comprehensive service that includes electricity supply and purchase, along with a platform for smart management of consumption and production.

By supplying electricity at spot market prices, we offer competitive rates, and by purchasing excess electricity generated by households, we ensure optimal compensation. Our goal is to reduce costs, increase the buyback price of excess energy, and incorporate more renewable resources into the energy mix,

We generate revenue through several key avenues, including our smart management platform, which allows customers to manage their electricity consumption and production efficiently. This service is valuable for households with renewable energy sources like photovoltaics, batteries, heat pumps, and electric vehicles.

Additionally, we enable households to participate in energy flexibility markets by aggregating their flexibility through a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) and offering it to the grid, thus maintaining stability and integrating more renewable energy sources.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Our target markets and consumers are households and companies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), mainly Czech Republic and Western Europe.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

We have over 6,000 customers, and our annual recurring revenue (ARR) for the year 2023 reached CZK 219 million.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

We have a team of 25 employees. Our team is a mix of professionals from the energy sector, bringing in-depth knowledge of energy systems, and individuals from the startup world, including developers, data scientists, and managers, who excel at building digital products and startups.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Yes, we have raised a seed investment of €2.2 million. We intend to use this investment for two main purposes. Firstly, for our expansion into Western Europe, with the specific country still under analysis.

Secondly, we aim to utilize the funds to further develop our software solution for households, enabling regular households to participate in energy flexibility. We need to build a robust and stable solution, which will allow us to be the first to offer flexibility services to Czech households, where we plan to aggregate tens of megawatts.

In a guest column to AIN, Damian Wielechowski, Head of Communication & Partnerships at SpeedUp Venture Capital Group, talks about how a startup can increase its chances of a successful overseas expansion, also sharing the thoughts of the representatives of startups: Localazy, Swobbee and SP Tech.

Startups, by definition, are supposed to be rapidly scaling companies. While it is possible to achieve a significant foothold in some market niches in your home market, building a truly large company usually requires overseas expansion. Easy to say, harder to do.

Expanding into new markets comes with many challenges. According to the Startup Hub report, companies identify a number of challenges associated with this. The most frequently raised obstacles are regulatory issues, financial constraints, approaches to advertising and lack of knowledge of local culture and consumer preferences. Some may say that a key element of success is flexibility and the ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions. This is all true. However, when undertaking an expansion with an often limited budget and uncertain cash flow, one simple mistake can have very…bad consequences.

In the first phase of overseas expansion, the key issue is to properly match the product to the specifics of the new market. Research conducted by CSA Research on nearly 9,000 consumers from 29 countries found that as many as 76% prefer to make purchases in their native language. This means not only translating product and marketing materials, but also taking into account cultural differences and consumer preferences.

It is important to understand that what appeals to an audience in one market will not necessarily work in another. That’s why it’s essential to thoroughly research the expectations and needs of the local community and tailor your offering to meet those requirements. This will avoid potential misunderstandings and better appeal to new customers. With a solution to this problem comes the startup Localazy, which has created a platform that combines machine translation, experienced translators, and experts from local markets.

When establishing Localazy, our goal was to make the complex process of expanding into international markets easier for entrepreneurs. At the same time, our motivation from the very beginning was to strive to reduce language barriers around the world. Our Localazy platform can be compared to an advanced autopilot that ensures smooth and efficient translation of content. When you add text in the native language, our platform automatically translates it into other languages of your choice, using professional translators from the relevant market, who are supported by AI-powered workflows. Our approach pays special attention to User Experience. That’s why Localazy supports more than 50 different content formats, providing support for a wide range of business needs. Our goal is to provide a flexible and comprehensive tool that allows businesses to effectively manage multilingual content, saving them time and money,

Václav Hodek, CEO of Localazy, says.

Having a solid knowledge of the laws in the country to which a startup is targeting is a key element for success in the expansion process. It is not enough just to know the commercial, civil, or tax laws. This is only the tip of the iceberg. The legal reality is multi-layered and requires constant deepening of knowledge and keeping abreast of changes. Neglecting this aspect can lead to serious legal consequences and even threaten the stability of the company.

Legal challenges related to expansion can be acute, and it’s what the aforementioned Startup Hub report listed as the #1 concern for 60% of respondents. Additionally, when a startup operates in a heavily regulated industry, such as medicine, aviation, or railroads, things can get even more complicated. It is from the railroad industry that SP Tech Solutions, a Polish startup that recently made its first deployments in the German market, comes from. SP Tech Solutions offers the Raily toolkit, which is a comprehensive IT system designed for companies whose business involves rail transportation in both its operation and execution.

Entering new markets really requires a comprehensive plan and thorough analysis. I’m not just speaking of business analysis, but also, and perhaps most importantly, a thorough familiarity with regulations, regulatory requirements, cultural attitudes and the ways in which the market itself operates – especially its so-called unwritten rules. SP Tech operates in the rail market, which to many may seem quite hermetic, but in reality you just have to know how to navigate it. In the case of our growth and overseas expansion, our main focus is on the German market, as a result of the need we have identified there. We saw a wide field for our tools, especially the Raily Marketplace, which provides a platform for finding and ordering, among other things, traction services, such as hiring a driver to run a train on a specific route. Our tool not only allows you to take advantage of fixed prices and proven partners, but also to act faster, without the need for telephone appointments, while eliminating the chance of duplicate orders. It’s worth noting that in Germany, about 50% of the railroad workforce operates on an outsourced basis, which is a huge market for Raily Marketplace and a real need we can address,

Piotr Sikorski, CEO of SP Tech Solutions, comments.

Scaling a software solution to other markets already seems like a challenging task, but expanding overseas to a country or continent for a hardware startup is a huge challenge. In addition to the need to understand legal aspects and adapt to language and cultural differences, such as in the case of SaaS products, hardware development companies must pay special attention to delivery logistics and building relationships with new subcontractors.

In addition, legal issues are becoming even more complex, especially in the context of selling and distributing equipment, which must comply with different technical standards and energy efficiency requirements in different countries.

Such a path has been traveled, among others, by Swobbee, a German startup developing battery charging stations for LEVs (light electric vehicles), which have a swappable battery. The company provides a solution (hardware + software) that takes the responsibility for the physical process of charging batteries off the shoulders of LEVs fleet operators. Swobbee is already available in several European countries, and more recently in New York City.

Expanding a hardware start-up overseas poses significant logistical challenges. Establishing a new value chain in a distant market requires a reliable supply chain and overcoming complex regulatory barriers. Critical questions arise, such as where to manufacture equipment. Should we set up new manufacturing facilities, outsource production, or deal with long and costly shipments? In addition, after-sales service and ongoing operations present further challenges. Building awareness in a blue ocean market is essential, as is establishing a new corporation in the target region. There are inherent uncertainties in establishing and maintaining partnerships, which adds another layer of complexity to the expansion process. I would strongly recommend that hardware companies seek out local partners to aid in this process. For example, during Swobbee’s expansion into New York, direct support from the NYC Department of Transport was invaluable in navigating local constraints and complexities,

Ludwig Speidel, CFO of Swobbee, comments.

Overseas expansion is definitely a watershed moment for any startup. It’s a step that requires courage, strategic planning and flexibility. During the process, startups face a variety of challenges – from adapting to local regulations to building relationships with business partners and adapting the product to the new market. However, for those that go through the process successfully, the door opens to potentially huge opportunities to grow and scale their business.

Author: Damian Wielechowski,
Head of Communication & Partnerships at SpeedUP Venture Capital Group

Lifestyle Camper currently employs 16 people: 9 assemblers, operators, designers, logistics specialists. Pavel Volkov supervises the technical part, Andrey Pilyavskiy – the logistics: this is a very huge bulk of work; more than 400 items of component parts, which have to be ordered from abroad, are used in campers production.

Lifestyle Camper has also a new CEO Anatoliy Burbeza. Anatoliy learned about the company by chance – he was fond of camping for a long time, and once a friend, Dima Yurinov, asked him to give an assessment of Ukrainian mirror campers. “I looked and realized that guys are doing the right product, they work very hard, but they do not have enough resources. I decided to help,” recalls Anatoliy. Today he leads Lifestyle Camper, deals with the administrative part and marketing.

Production works 6 days a week, the schedule is not standardized. However, employees, according to Volkov, have no objections.

“We do not force people to stay at work late – they just like to work here. We built a system of result-driven motivation, but money is far from being at first place in their value system. These guys are just eager to do the job to achieve great results”.

According to Volkov, no one has left Lifestyle Camper since the foundation of the company.

Lifestyle Camper founder Pavel Volkov

They tried to create all the conditions for the employees: they made showers, locker rooms, Lifestyle Camper branded boilersuits and hoodies. The guys visit exhibitions, where they present the results of their work – for them this is another motivation. “Some have changed the professions of sellers, managers and came to us, because they wanted to create something by their own hands. They were like me and Andrey used to be.” Pavel says.

Production

Earlier trailers were assembled in the Volkov’s garage. Now Lifestyle Camper has its own production on the territory of the former plant at Beresteyskaya.

The room in 400 square meters was repaired: we poured new floors, made ceilings, reconstructed overhead-track hoists, installed economical heating with smart on-off system and temperature support. “We spend UAH 6,000 per month on heating. We invested about UAH 200,000 in the system, but it’s worth it”, says the entrepreneur.

Music is constantly playing in the shop, mostly rock’n’roll. “We are cheerful guys, we like to make parties. In the evenings, the room turns into a disco in 5 minutes – we have 2.4 kW of music, there are light chaser and amplifiers. We like both working and relaxation.”

First of all we get into the design room. Here, the details of future campers are cut out from plywood. All drawings are made electronically. The operator starts the program and the CNC machine starts sawing.

Today, the French plywood delivered from Paris is used. This special lightweight plywood is a third lighter than Russian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian counterparts are. But in truth, it is 3-4 times more expensive than the one we used previously. “In return, the camper has become much easier and more environmentally friendly. There is practically no waste,” says Volkov.

Constructor constantly improves something in terms of the assembly speed. As of today, the team manages to assemble 6 trailers per month, but in half a year plans to reach 10.

Constructive change, which accelerates the assembly by 15 minutes, gives 4 working days for a year.

The Company does not have a separate salon where campers are exhibited. “There were proposals to exhibit in TSUM, but we did not have a free trailer for installation at that time,” told Volkov.

Today, campers are sometimes exhibited in car dealerships. It is free: “We have such a product that draws attention to the very car dealership. Therefore, the accommodation is free of charge.”

Model range, equipment and characteristics

In addition to the “drop” or SteelDrop that the Company started with, today they also produce a model for X-Line off-road vehicles. It has a higher clearance, a slightly more powerful frame and wheels, roof rails, additional lockers (luggage compartments) for hunting, fishing, sports and camping equipment. There are marquises stretching into the canopy in three minutes: you get a ready camp with a full kitchen (gas stove, washbasin with a water reserve of 50 liters, refrigerator).

Unlike its mirror “sister”, it has a more wear-resistant polyurea coating: it is a two-component polymer applied by a hot method. “This is an anti-vandal coating. It cannot be scratched, it cannot be broken. The trailer is poured into it without seams and joints – there is no access to moisture, dirt, there is no corrosion. It is produced to be almost everlasting”.

Coating is carried out using outsourcing. We have just ordered the delivery of the finished case, which was personally meticulously inspected for the coating quality by Volkov.

In campers there is a heater working on diesel or gasoline. Consumption – 100 g per hour. “2 kW of power is enough to allow you to stay in a camper overnight at -30 °С. The 100 Ah battery can work for 2-3 days, when using electrical appliances economically – 4-5 days,” says Pavel.

There is also a possibility of devices recharging from solar panels: the trailer has a controller of solar power from the panels, which can be set out in sunny weather. In long journeys to the wild places, a portable generator is useful, and in journeys to Europe you won’t have to worry – camping sites are usually equipped with 220V charging stations.

Batteries are German-made. They are light-weight (battery short weight is 2.4 kg) and at the same time powerful enough (100 W, 6A voltage). “We have a Kvazar plant, but such a compact solution from Ukrainian developers does not exist yet,” says Volkov.

A sleeper is with lamellas and foam mattress. The size is 140 * 200 cm. Inside there are: music, light, TV, audio system, sunroof with fan with temperature sensors, 5 USB outlets, 3 sockets for 220 volts, so you can use any electric appliances (hair dryer, electric shaver, etc.).

Inside the camper, there is a 296 meters wire. It is installed using automotive method: firstly, the correct length to a centimeter is measured on a special scheme, only then it is cut off and tighten into a protective corrugation. Each device has its own color of wire.

As explained by Pavel, component parts in Ukrainian campers have been changed by 80% within a year – previously, many of the details, including door handles, sunroofs, drawbars, were produced by themselves. Now they are bought in Europe (Italy, Germany, and France). Accordingly, the camper price went up. “And still, our products are two times cheaper than European counterparts,” the founder says. Also, whereas previously they cut out the stainless steel body of a mirror camper by themselves, now it is done using outsourcing with a laser. Due to this, the fitting of parts is highly precise and correspondingly the quality is higher.

Before applying the outer coating, the plywood case is covered with a varnish in a separate room. This gives it water-proof properties and protects from the negative effects of the environment.

Trailers have a rubber braided torsion-bar suspension of AL-KO production, a critical suspension travel is up to
80 mm. There is an alternative reinforced suspension manufactured by Knott company and designed for movement on the off-road – an independent, spring-loaded one on the A-shaped levers.

Technical and maneuvering qualities have been improved since our first material: we optimized the weight distribution, added the possibility of shock absorbers installing – according to Pavel, trailers are always ready to overcome any impassability.

Sales & Certification

The main market of Lifestyle Camper is Europe. Firstly, because the purchasing power in the West is several times higher. Secondly, in Ukraine the culture of camping is almost not developed, as well as the infrastructure for it.

In Europe, people have spent decades traveling with children. Children grow up and go with their children. In Ukraine, campers are interesting for hunters, fishermen, and people driving to festivals in Europe.

Lifestyle Camper has sent about 30 exhibition trailers to different countries in Europe: Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Slovakia, and the Netherlands. Two Ukrainian campers left for New Zealand.

Ukrainian campers are appreciated abroad not only because they are cheaper than Western analogues, but also for the high quality.

We are proud of our product. Dealers from Western countries, who sell trailers from other manufacturers, come to us and say that our trailers are better in quality than the western ones. Some expressed an opinion that “this trailer could not be done better.”

The delivery costs about 500 euros, the buyer pays. Sometimes, of course, it takes a lot of time. For example, the trailers were sailing to New Zealand for two months.

“Nowadays we send campers to Kazakhstan, and considering our relations with Russia, they will be delivered there across the Black Sea to Turkey, then over the Caspian Sea – in general, they will make a good detour,” Pavel .

In 2017, “drops” were more popular, at the moment X-Line is the leader. “Now we are assembling four trailers simultaneously – they have already been ordered. Perhaps because in Ukraine, in principle, the purchasing power of people is higher on larger cars and maybe because of our roads,” Volkov comments.

The Europeans, in their turn, order SteelDrop – people there change their vehicles to mini-cars, and the Ukrainian “drops” are very competitive for these vehicles, because it fits by the weight and size even into the strict rules of operation of the Volkswagen Polo (up to 35 kg).

We’ve brought our trailer to such a level that it could be carried by the smallest cars.

Ukrainian campers abroad are sold via European dealers with a good markup at a price of 12,000-14,000 Euros. “Of course, VAT is included here, and we do not return it, and there are lots of nuances, but we are pleased that this price is set by a European seller who sees the product and values it more than some European counterparts,” Volkov says.

Basically, the orders are brought by the Internet: advertising on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. The company continues to participate in all kinds of exhibitions: hunting, fishing, tourism, cars and motorcycles, bike shows, etc. throughout Ukraine. This does not bring much orders – more likely recognition of the brand and understanding of the product.

When I drive with a trailer, people see me and still ask what it is?

Warranty and maintenance

In Ukraine, maintenance is carried out on schedule in the workshop of the company. In Europe, Lifestyle Camper, together with dealers, is building a spare parts warehouse and is developing a remote service system – so that clients do not have to go to Kyiv for this purpose.

Warranty lasts one year. “Most manufacturers give warranty only for their product, and the component parts are warranted by their manufacturer. We take care absolutely of everything: our warrantee extends both to the plates and to the TVs. Considering that the product is technologically complex, there are a lot of component parts, and we bear the cost – as long as such a guarantee exists. Perhaps in the future we will expand it,” says Pavel.

Investments and plans for the future

Pavel and Andrey produced the first “drops” for their own money, further they were developing partly on the means of pre-sales: the client paid for the trailer, thereby financing the assembly. This led to the creation of the first X-Line – there was a buyer who came to the guys and wanted to get a model for an off-road car and agreed to finance it.

Soon the lineup of Lifestyle Camper will be replenished with another model – this time by a winter-warmed camper, which can be used in the harshest conditions. It is slightly larger and wider, with an expanded set of functions. Once again, it is newly custom made.

In the spring, the company managed to attract an investor who helped Lifestyle Camper to move from the garage and reach a new level.

“With this money, we were able to settle down fully, consolidate the technological base, focus on the warehouse, hire people and go deeper into the development, because we no longer needed to struggle to transfer the manufactured campers to customers as soon as possible,” Volkov shares his thoughts.

The only constraint is the international certification of Ukrainian Lifestyle Camper trailers, this certification will fully open the doors to the rich Western market for the company. Now the team is already at the final stage of its obtaining – according to Volkov, the process was slightly delayed because of the constructive changes in the campers, which had to be re-written in the already prepared documents. “I think it will be a 30 cm stack of paper,” Anatoliy says.

The only authority – the Ukrainian State Enterprise “State Road Transport Research Institute” – carries out a certification. The process is rather complicated: the company works out technical documentation in accordance with the UN regulations, then trailers are tested at the Institute, following with the direct certification of production.

We are the first company in Ukraine, which passes the official certification of the vehicle under the 6th amendment for obtaining the EU certificate.

Despite the fact that it is customary in Ukraine to complaint about such organizations, the impression of Lifestyle Camper team from the cooperation with the Institute is the most positive. “I did not feel any obstacles, extortion or corruption. On the contrary, they cooperate with us, help, even suggest something we did not know,” Pavel says. The cost of passing the entire process in Ukraine is also within the bound of reason. The founders estimate the official payments for the entire certification to be up to UAH 30,000.

Here’s the list of Seeds of Bravery projects to receive grants:

• Bank of Memories – it is a Saas platform for important memories and documents working on blockchain.
• BeesAgainstMines – development of AI-powered technologies and robotic systems for contactless cleaning of contaminated land from dangerous objects.
• Better Time Stories – an innovative platform blending storytelling with technology to enhance learning and cultural connection for children in Europe.
• Briller.House creates a network of production hubs for fast delivery of beautiful, modern, comfortable and carbon-negative buildings.
• Development of Caretech’s business plan to foster company’s growth – it is a Ukrainian healthtech start-up developing a solution for in-home remote patient monitoring (RPM) with the goal of fundamentally changing the way people manage their health.
• Enhancement of Haiqu’s business plan to facilitate the company’s development – provide cooperation with the business consultants to improve the company’s business processes and develop a comprehensive business plan which will become a roadmap for the next 2 years.
• GIOS Math Platform – is an interactive AI-powered Math platform and tutoring marketplace for К12 students and teachers.
• LEZO is an AI-powered career platform that connects candidates and employers through skills-first approach.
• Mantis Analytics – an AI-driven platform that conducts info-space listening in real-time and provides organizations with reliable and actionable data for both physical and informational risk management.
• Metaenga — XR Training Platform is designed for industrial enterprises and educational institutions to empower global workforce development and workplace safety in energy sectors.
• OptySun is a sustainable, technologically advanced, portable water purification system, utilizing solar powered, high efficiency filtration to provide clean drinking water.
• Paxhelper is a support system for civil aviation authorities, customer centers optimizing operations and enabling informed decisions in dynamic aviation environments.
• Progalit – Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) – automation of  treatment and  prevention of  kidney stone  disease.
• V-Art is B2B SaaS tech to automate IP licensing for brands, creators and AI tools.

The Seeds of Bravery Innovation Services support program provides innovative tech SMEs, startups, and scale-ups with an opportunity to cover costs of the service  necessary to:

• Develop a comprehensive business model that serves as a roadmap.
• Create a dynamic business plan.
• Design a growth strategy that sets clear goals and milestones.

Read more about Seeds of Bravery launch by following the link below:

In the Startup of the Day column, Borys Nadykto, co-founder of Byne, shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originate from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Our product helps companies develop enterprise-grade LLM applications by providing simple output verification and on-premise AI deployment. We believe that very soon every business will leverage Large Language Models since they enable a massive cost reduction across many verticals and use cases.

On the other hand, we see fast adoption of this technology with smaller businesses and a lot slower with enterprise companies. Large organizations are wary of using LLMs due to two main reasons – data ownership and reliability. We help to fix both: Byne enables the delivery of monitored LLM apps hosted on private servers.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

We formed the team quite some time ago, when the full-scale war began and many IT specialists were looking for options to contribute their skills to the defense sector.

Byne initially was a volunteering (non-profit) team developing “pro bono” data analysis software for stakeholders in the security community. Later, we realized that the challenges to the adoption of AI faced by our partners are very similar to what large private companies experience when trying to embark on the digital transformation journey,

That was the moment when the team realized that we could form a startup to commercialize our insights.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

The path to MVP wasn’t very quick since it took us quite some time to figure out the best way to transition to the “for-profit” basis and start developing a more commercial view of the problem.

Our process was mostly shaped by:

• Customer objections. They are really helpful in understanding what people want and who are your competitors.
• Investor feedback. Founders tend to be dismissive of investor insights but we have the opposite experience – good investors with experience in your target vertical can sometimes see very far ahead and their advice is hugely valuable.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We have been in beta since January this year, and now, are planning to launch our first pilot cases in the next few months. The official public launch will probably happen in early summer. We intend to launch on “Product Hunt” (shoutout to “Upvote for Ukraine” who help Ukrainian companies to make a strong launch) and start our marketing outreach.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

We charge a license fee of about $3,000-7,000 per month for each deployment made with our platform. This is quite low for an enterprise PaaS solution so we will probably be increasing it as the product matures.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Right now, our main market is the UK. We target large companies in finance and other verticals where privacy and reliability are important.

On the other hand, as many startups do, we plan to enter the US market as soon as we launch and we already have marketing efforts to target the US.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

We are a team of 6 people and are hiring a DevOps engineer now. Later this summer, we plan to scale the team by 4-5 more people as soon as we sign our first pilots. The startup is registered in Great Britain, however, the majority of our team is in Ukraine.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Recently, we closed an institutional pre-seed round from a VC in the UK. Unfortunately, the fund name hasn’t yet been disclosed, but the amount is $325,000 to co-fund pilot cases and later, we hope to raise a larger seed this autumn if the pilots convert to recurring revenue..

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

Now, we aim to ensure our pilots in the key verticals (government, finance, and automotive) are successful and the customers are happy. We hope they will convert into committed users enabling us to raise a fast seed 6-9 months after the pre-seed. Then we will be scaling our marketing to explore GTM in more verticals and find more opportunities such as retail and telecom.

• This year, TIME, together with Statista, an international provider of market and consumer data and rankings, for the first time released a ranking of the world’s best EdTech companies.
• The list included 250 companies from different countries, one third of them are from the USA. The rating is based on a formula that assesses financial stability and impact on the industry.
• The world’s best EdTech Rising Stars were selected separately, this ranking included 15 companies. This way, the list singles out the organizations that had the highest rates of revenue growth over the past three years among those who submitted an application.

The co-founder and head of the BUKI platform, Vadym Synzheretskyi, reacted to the news on his Facebook page. “Now the team and I can safely casually say that we were on TIME, nothing special,” he joked.

About BUKI

BUKI is an EdTech startup offering a marketplace for teachers and tutors. The team has more than 130 employees, more than 110,000 private tutors use the platform. It is one of the largest EdTech startups in Europe.

In the Startup of the Day column, the founder of Talsec Sergiy Yakymchuk, shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and the future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originate from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Talsec is B2B startup that offers Components for App Developers (SDK) that act as a security agent within mobile apps, protecting them from threats like Reverse Engineering, Malwares, Rooted devices and many more. We address the needs of FinTechs and other mobile first businesses helping them to pass penetration testing, comply with best practices and security requirements regulators.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

I always wanted to be a player on the global stage. This is my battle field against “bad guys”. The experience from my previous work still serves as a basis for me to more easily uncover the pain points of the financial industry, the key concerns of a typical CTO of a digital bank or the owner behind investment apps.

We decided to enter the market with a product that offers protection for mobile-first businesses, with an initial focus on fintechs. We want Talsec, with its freemium toolkit, to become standard for developers needing to ensure the security of their applications and their users. This year, we are on track to multiply our audience and revenue and significantly expand awareness of our products within the developer community,

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

Talsec is a spin-off from the middle size Czech security vendor company based in Zlin Monet+. This technology has over 5 years of evolution and efforts of best security engineers, that gave this product necessary level of maturity to address needs of financial sector.

Our business model is innovative and it is based on deep understanding of the needs of fast paced mobile first companies. We managed to distyle the focus customer segment and package the value proposition so that it is affordable and contains what really matters for teams to get a quick win solution for security compliance.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

The first Freemium packed SDK called freeRASP was released in October 2021.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?*

We have B2B product led growth model i.e. we allow Freemium usage. Companies prefer to experiment with freeRASP. We have pretty generous Fair Usage Policy conditions. Free version has architecture security limitations and some restrictions. When the App becomes valuable and require SLA, businesses consider buying the version.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Among our clients are: FinTechs, Neo-banks, Payment apps, Investment apps, Gaming, Retail Loyalty, eCommerce and Streaming apps. Everywhere where security matters.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

We approached the break even point. Our revenue tripled during the year and community of freemium users shows the steady growth. We have closed the round and we are now actively preparing for the accelerating and scaling.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

We are currently have a team of about 12 people and we expect to grow up to 20-25 during next 12 months.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Recently, we have received an investment of €1.1 million in the first round from London-based Dig Ventures and Czech DEPO Ventures. This funding is intended to accelerate our penetration into the global market and support further development.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

We are working to become a first choice building block for the App issuers where security matters. Our goal is to be known by FinTech CTOs or Heads of Mobile Devs as quick win solution how to reach the compliance and set the necessary security baseline.

In the guest column for AIN, Elvira Zhukovska, PR-Lead at Sigma Software Labs, gathered tips from tech event organizers and regular attendees to help you make the most of your time and energy and avoid getting lost in the shuffle. The material will be released in two parts. This is the first part of the column, which starts with the basics: do you need to attend conferences and what to expect? Find all the pros and cons below.

Why you should attend conferences

• Meet investors. Conferences are the perfect place to meet potential investors who might invest in your startup.
• Network. You can meet people from different industries and expand your contacts, which can help open up new opportunities for your business.
• Research new trends. Conferences allow you to learn about the latest technologies and market trends, which will help your startup stay at the forefront of innovation.
• Build brand awareness. Speaking at a conference is an opportunity to raise awareness of your product or service and gain credibility in your industry.
• Learn. Conference presentations, panel discussions, and workshops can teach you new strategies and approaches that will help your startup grow.

Which risks are there?

• High cost. Attending conferences can be expensive, especially for small startups with limited budgets.
• High competition. Conferences often bring together thousands of companies, making it difficult to stand out and attract the attention of investors or partners.
• Waste of time. If you don’t do your homework  and skip preparation for efficient conference navigation, it can be a waste of resources.
• Potential disorientation. Too much information and events at conferences can lead to a loss of focus.
• Unsuccessful contacts. Not all the contacts you make at a conference are useful or lead to results.

But there is good news. These risks can be avoided if you follow a simple rule: preparation. 

How to prepare for the conference

We asked Kateryna Stefanovych, Event Management Lead at Sigma Software, how to get the maximum out of the event without breaking the already limited budgets of startups.

Teams often finish preparing for a conference by booking tickets, giving priority to polishing their pitch deck and developing a product. The result is a lack of focus, scattering on everything at once, unjustified budgets, and at best, returning home with a bunch of contacts, most of which are irrelevant. Inside conferences, however, many opportunities and nuances will help you achieve your goal, which everyone knows about but forgets when preparing. Let’s go through the main ones:

• Goal: What are you going there for? Is your goal finding new clients, networking, investment search, competitor research, hiring, or maybe you just want to be inspired by trends? Answer the question clearly and focus on two main areas of your activities.
• Go beyond the standard agenda: find out what tracks are available, whether participation with a stand is possible, and whether startup competitions, broadcasting, mentoring sessions, business matchmaking, and hackathons are planned.
• Make plans for side events and your schedule: there is a chance to find an investor or client at presentations, but you are more likely to do so at smaller events that are not part of the main event. As practice shows, some organizers are ready to share these events directly on their website (such as ETHCC Paris), but if not, you can safely search for them in lu.ma, evenbrite, meetup.com, or Telegram groups, which often publish compiled tables with side events that are niche and worthy of attention.
• Apply as a speaker: usually in 4–6 months, a CFP (Call for Papers) opens, where you can submit your candidacy and topics. There is a chance to get in, but we recommend paying special attention to the naming and originality of the topic, which ideally should be in line with the conference theme. 
• Elevator pitch exercise: start practising a short, clear, and catchy description of your startup for networking and presentations. The rules are simple: 2 weeks before the conference, set aside 15 minutes a day to “sell” your idea. It’s important to find people who don’t know what you do and get honest feedback on what catches their eye, where you feel insecure, or where your explanations are too complicated. 
• Delegate roles: Often teams go to conferences and have a common plan for the meeting. Can you split up and cover more ground? Think along these lines and send those who really need it and are able/will be willing to communicate a lot.
• You can’t have a meeting if you don’t plan it: you can often find conference participants in conference mobile apps. If this is not possible, use social media and hashtag searches. 
• You are remembered when you stand out: it can be an item of clothing, a hairstyle, an accessory, something small, but something that will capture a person’s attention and make them remember you among hundreds of others. The same applies to cold emails when you’re scheduling meetings before an event. Don’t write standardized messages, take the time to make sure your message catches the eye of a person out of 100 other invitations.
• Act quickly and follow up on meetings and new connections right away: it always works to send a selfie of you and your friend right into the chat.
• Have a QR code with quick access to your contacts and product: Linktree and Beacons are great options for this.
• Create printed materials: business cards, informational brochures, and other materials about your startup that you can hand out to potential partners or investors. Yes, yes, it still works.
• Don’t neglect partnership offers for booths: sometimes there are very good opportunities, for example, at the Web Summit conference there is a Startup Alley. If you are selected, you will have the opportunity to get a stand and 3 tickets for the price of one.
• Minimize stress, you still have a startup to launch: conferences are not easy, because in addition to expertise, you pay with emotional resources. Get enough sleep, remember to drink, eat, and have everything you need for a comfortable stay, including a power bank, notebook, and comfortable shoes.

AI tools for conference planning and attendance

It’s easier and faster to navigate a conference if you have helpers. AI-powered apps can help you schedule a meeting, translate a speaker’s presentation, or follow important news that happen during the event. We have collected several tools that will help you be more productive at the conference: 

• Crystal: Helps you analyze the communication style of conference participants and prepare for effective communication.
• Covve: Helps you keep in touch with contacts made at the conference and track new opportunities.
• Feedly: Helps you keep track of news and articles from your industry before the conference.
• Voicea: Records key points and ideas during conference presentations.
• Whova: Helps you organize your event schedule and connect with other attendees.

In this article, we shared a couple of reasons to attend conferences, what AI technologies to use, and detailed the steps that can be taken to prepare for the conference. The second part of the article will reveal the secrets of lead generation during the event and communication with the international community. Stay tuned…

Author: Elvira Zhukovska, PR-Lead at Sigma Software Labs

What percentage of startups become unicorns? The report by CB suggests a range between 0.01% and 0.1%. I know it’s small. Besides the sad news, I have another one — on average, 90% of startups fail within the first three years, according to The Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2022 by Startup Genome. But why does it happen?

Chat GPT gives the following reasons: lack of market need, ineffective management, competition, financial difficulties, technical problems, lack of business model, and legal and regulatory problems.

All is true, but ChatGPT needs to explain the foundation of all these reasons. AI can’t yet isolate the main one based on data and experience, but an entrepreneur can (proving that humans are still good at something).

What Сan You Miss By Not Taking Into Account Data?

Yeah, I’m talking about working with data again. A proper primary project audit can solve all the above challenges based on my experience as CEO and co-founder of international companies and projects:

1. Often, a startup is just an excellent idea based on the enthusiasm of the funders. With the right analytics, it becomes clear that the concept, although impressive, requires N resources in entirely different planes, which were not considered at the start.

2. The analysis of competitive goods should have considered imported goods, which can completely change the project’s business model.

3. Potential product users’ statistics are also lame due to outdated systems. Technical problems account for 12% of startup failures, according to the opinion in Failory Newsletter for startup runners.

4. Sometimes, after detailed analysis, a startup from one economic sector moves to another — remember the McDonald’s movie where the lawyer tells Crook, “You’re not selling burgers, you’re selling land.” Forbes suggested that nearly 70% of startups fail due to no market need.

5. Statistics can tell you how many narrowly focused startups succeed and how many don’t. This data can be compared and safeguarded against mistakes.

6. Risks are not a hypothetical fear of something but a mathematical value that can be calculated no worse than in poker.

7. Finance — any figure has reasoning and options for use. A study by the Kauffman Foundation reveals that 42% of startups fail within the first 3 years, often due to cash flow problems.

8. Legal issues — dealing with the legal framework is standard data work, and I’ve seen more than one case where the options for one party to a contract were not fully explored, which became a problem.

Illustrations Of How Data Saves Businesses

Here are 3 examples of how data analysis is used by already existing unicorns to inspire you to use data as much as possible:

1. Netflix Cancels Recommendation Fatigue to Win

Netflix HQ found themselves in a challenging period, with a potential surge of cancellations on the horizon. Why? Streaming fatigue. Users were inundated with suggestions, feeling overwhelmed by content that didn’t align with their interests. They craved personalization, a reflection of their unique viewing habits.

Netflix, known for its pioneering spirit, refused to back down. They understood that the key to the problem lay in data, hiding user behavior. They developed a sophisticated digital framework, meticulously analyzing every click, scroll, and star rating. These data assets revealed a vivid picture of each subscriber’s preferences.

The results were nothing short of excellent. Armed with this new understanding, Netflix was able to tailor recommendations. No longer a generic approach, suggestions became personalized invitations to hidden gems and binge-worthy content. The effect was profound. Cancellations were reduced to a trickle and replaced by a wave of satisfied subscribers. Netflix solidified its position as the streaming giant. In 2013, Netflix won an Emmy award for “Personalized Recommendation Engines For Video Discovery.”

In 2023, Netflix smashed expectations, raking in an incredible $8.8 billion in revenue! 

How? This time, they looked at the data of non-paid account sharing between users and announced a global password crackdown. Again and again, by analyzing their data and improving product and advertising, Netflix has grown.

This dominant performance shows the streaming giant is firing on all cylinders. Netflix is looking to the future, forecasting continued healthy double-digit revenue growth for the year. 

2. Amazon Anticipates Customer Needs with Predictive Analytics

Imagine the relief when the customer clicks “order” excitedly, knowing that the dreaded “out of stock” message is passed. It’s a game-changer for both retailers and customers. However, for giants like Amazon, this scenario is becoming a reality. Their secret weapon? Data is the unsung hero of the retail world.

Amazon uses cutting-edge data analysis, like a digital fortune teller, to predict what you’ll want before you even know it. They delve into vast information — past sales, browsing habits, and broader market trends. All this data clearly shows what products are in demand and what might gather dust on the shelf.

The result is a mutual victory. Amazon maintains its inventory levels perfectly balanced, ensuring shelves are stocked with what customers desire. No more stockouts, no more disappointment. It is keeping Amazon on top of the retail game. So next time you hit that “order” button, remember — it is data work.

3. UPS Streamlines Delivery Routes and Saves Millions

For a logistics giant like UPS, every delivery truck caught in traffic is a significant blow to efficiency. The cumulative effect of these delays, akin to tiny daggers, could lead to a substantial headache. With a fleet spanning the country, UPS was constantly fighting traffic jams and desperately needed a solution to shave precious minutes (and gallons of gas) from its delivery routes.

But UPS had a secret weapon — data. They equipped every truck with a digital knight and a GPS that constantly fed information back to HQ. This real-time traffic intelligence and historical delivery data transformed into a magic map. It allowed UPS to analyze distance and navigate the ever-changing beast of traffic congestion. The result? Their routes became laser-focused, avoiding gridlock and streamlining deliveries.

The impact of this data-driven approach was significant. UPS now saves millions of dollars annually, thanks to reduced fuel consumption and more on-time deliveries. But the real victory is a smoother-running operation that ensures your packages reach your doorstep, regardless of rain or traffic jams. So, the next time you see the familiar brown truck, remember— data is that silent hero, making your deliveries faster and greener.

Is Unicorn Company DNA in Every Startup?

Overall, I suppose every startup is already a unicorn. There are no rabbit startups, mosquito startups, or possum startups. There are only unicorn startups. It’s just that only those who can see it reach the unicorn glade. Stats are precisely the points that help you get there, but those points:

1. not everyone has them,
2. they don’t fit everyone, 
3. there are few of them.

I know of teams that are just as dedicated to treating unicorn vision, and they are vital. Without them, a blind unicorn will most likely not make it to the clearing (I say “most likely” because there are circumstances where a unicorn just randomly ran and made it to the right place; I’m not implying anything; it just happens).

Sometimes, points can help initially, but they crack at some point, and then you need to upgrade them. It’s a whole science, too, where a unicorn needs to pitstop at the proper unicorn mechanics.

Only 10% of founders possess the necessary skills to successfully lead their companies through all stages of growth. Be in their range; use data. DATA is much more than money, success, or an idea. It allows you to consistently graze in a clearing with other unicorns without worrying about your eyesight. Statistics are essential in everything, from global to small; don’t fear them.

P.S. Statistics drop is here — the word “unicorn” was used in this text 18 times.

Author: Vlad Kytainyk, CEO of KITRUM

In the Startup of the Day column, Kamila Zahradnickova, co-founder of Lakmoos, shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originate from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

We create data models that simulate how people make decisions. Lakmoos uses our proprietary AI to create precise copies of target groups that companies can then interact with anytime. Unlike real people, our digital respondents never get tired or annoyed.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

Before founding Lakmoos, I was quite involved in corporate research as a behavioural scientist. I helped shape campaigns for Nestle and Ogilvy, as well as NGOs like The Nature Conversancy, and I was just flabbergasted by the amount of guesswork that was deemed acceptable. So I started wondering about where the friction was – basically, why companies don’t simply run proper testing with their target groups.

Then I met my future co-founder Jan, shared my frustrations, and we started thinking about how to bring voice of the customer into any meeting. Initially, I covered the science behind measuring minds, Jan leveraged his pioneering research to build our layered AI, and our third co-founder Roman developed the first version of the Lakmoos app.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

Right after founding the company in June, we hired 20 people to help us develop the core of the product over summer. While everyone was on vacation, we created 14,000 lines of code.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We founded the company in June 2023 and released our first public demo in October 2023. It’s not available for enterprise use.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Lakmoos is a SaaS product, meaning that after the implementation month, there are monthly fees based on the amount of users.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Right now, we’re focusing on five industries in the EU and US. Our model is layered and modular, meaning that it’s getting built step-by-step.

This means that banking layer can interact with telco layer, as financial behaviour is predictive of how much people spend on their phone credit. Using these optics, we chose industries that have enough data and also have a strong need to test their markets.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

Our demo has been co-created with seven European banks, now we have our first paying enterprise customers.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

There have been around 20 people in our team since the start. Most of the team are AI experts, data scientists, developers and methodologists. Right now, we’re hiring a sales team.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Yes, we first took on angel investment €210,000 in total. Right now, we raised our pre-seed of €300,000 with Presto Ventures to scale our sales with test kits to: banking, automotive, telco, energy, and healthcare.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

We aim to onboard 13 new clients by the end of the year, mainly from banking, automotive, telco, energy, and healthcare. In addition, by 2030, we wants to transform 20% of traditional market exploration, saving $30 billion in exploration costs and 35 billion hours of fieldwork globally.

In the Startup of the Day column, Laureen Höllge, co-founder of Mamio, shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originate from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Mamio is a mobile app for moms. Currently, moms can connect with each other on Mamio based on the age of their child and location, as well as find support throughout motherhood on a redefined forum.

In the future, Mamio will add a motherhood guide personalized by the age of the child and a personalised recommendation system for products and services. Mamio’s added value is that it can create a friendly environment for mothers, and most importantly, provide personalized support.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

We live in the age when there is an app for everything. Yet mothers (especially in the CEE and DACH region) still have to rely on old-fashioned parenting forums. We wanted to change that and provide them with personalised support always in their pocket.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

We launched our MVP in 6 months after having started working on it. The MVP launch was super smooth. What suprised us was that we had thousands of moms signed up for the product launch which showed us that we really tapped into a need that does not have a proper solution yet.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We launched the MVP in the beginning of 2023. Now, we work on both mobile platforms and we have tens of thousands more users and new functionalities as well.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

The application is free for users. The app will generate revenue through a personalized recommendation system, selecting products and services that can facilitate motherhood for moms and offering them curated options.

Today, it’s challenging for moms to choose the right equipment for themselves and their child. We can help them choose products and services based on the child’s age and maternal philosophy, and through partnerships, we can offer them special benefits for using such products and services,

Mamio already has dozens of partners, and more are carefully being selected.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Our team is building the product in Czechia before expanding to the broader region.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

Currently, we have 20,000 users who come to us without significant marketing expenditure and who are above average loyal and engaged to the app.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

We have 4 core members and 6 externists helping us build the product.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Yes, in February 2024, we closed a pre-seed funding round of €300,000 (7.4 million crowns):

• €200,000 of it are provided by Czech Founders VC
• another €100,000 are provided by Prague-based VC fund PurposeTech.

We also received support worth €60,000as part of the Technology Incubation from CzechInvest.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

Mamio’s team is finetuning new functionalities and preparing for expansion, so stay tuned.

There is a common belief among startup founders that the financial model is first and foremost needed by investors, that it is some kind of clumsy and archaic attribute of the fundraising process demanded by venture capitalists for some unknown reason. “Why make a model, if it’s not gonna work anyway?”, “How can I make the right assumptions at this stage of a startup’s lifespan?” and other phrases can often be heard from funders. I believe that it is the entrepreneur who actually benefits the most from developing a model.

An effective financial model is a very important element in business success. As you invest your time in creating a financial model, you begin to better understand what factors are really important, the mechanics of making a profit, and the relationship between various elements of the business model. Let’s look at why it is needed, what it consists of, and what the main requirements are.  

So what do founders need a financial model for? Reason 1 – To turn  your business into an equation and better understand how it works

In the first place, a financial model allows you to better understand your business at all levels. Since every financial model is based on an operations/growth model, you’ll understand what drives your startup’s growth and how your market works by drawing up a financial model.  You have, for example, a B2B SaaS where Sales is the main distribution channel and you build a growth model. In the process, you’ll need to model a funnel for each sales employee and understand what percentage of leads he or she needs to close for the company to grow effectively and break even at the sales level. This allows you to identify key metrics in key business areas. Modelling financial processes also serves as a powerful prioritisation tool. For example, you may find out that a 5% increase in customer retention is much more profitable for you than a 5% increase in conversion. This means that you should focus your organisation’s resources on this particular issue to improve business performance. 

Building a financial model also helps to set benchmarks for operational and financial performance. When launching a startup, it is very difficult to determine what indicators are standard for a particular industry. When creating an operational and financial model, not only do you identify the main drivers of your business, but you also ask yourself what they should be, what benchmarks and guidelines exist for your industry and business model, and start researching. The source for such benchmarks can be analytical reports, market research, investment funds, and your co-workers in the same industry. Going back to the previous example, you ask yourself how feasible is the percentage of leads closed by a salesperson in your B2B SaaS startup, and you start looking for an answer. Or you realise that the burn rate (monthly net loss) you set for the Seed Round is twice as high as was in the famous SaaS Funding Napkin by Christoph Jantz, a partner at Point Nine Capital, and that you need to change something in your vision of how the business should grow. 

Being involved in the financial model development gives you an understanding not only of certain milestones, but also of how to achieve them. To reach $100 million in revenue per year, for example, you need to burn through $200 million in investment. Doesn’t sound very attractive, does it? Very often priorities are reassessed at this point. Entrepreneurs can either temper their ambitions, realising the complexity of implementing them, or raise the bar of expectations, or find other ways to accomplish them. 

So what do founders need a financial model for? Reason 2 – A bad plan is better than no plan at all 

The financial model’s key indicators should serve as the company’s goals, which you will use to guide you in dealings with your employees or partners.

The model will also be a handy tool for checking the soundness of your business. Sharp deviations between actual and planned figures can indicate critical business problems and encourage you to deal with them faster and move forward with more frequent iterations!

Another benefit is the ability to align different teams working in your business. They may have different metrics and intermediate goals, but a common goal can help them better grasp the end result, their contribution to it, and interdependencies. It makes no difference if the sales team meets their KPI for the percentage of closed leads, when marketing doesn’t generate enough leads or their cost is sky-high. 

And, of course, developing a financial model has certain advantages in your relationship with investors. They will have a better understanding of your business, allowing them to make an informed decision rather than relying on their own assumptions. Also they will certainly see that you have the right qualities to be successful, such as analytical thinking and strategic planning. 

The timeframe for your financial model

While your main goal will of course be to focus on the future, you shouldn’t forget about the past. Your financial model has to cover the operations of your business from the very beginning or at least the last 12 months. The best choice is to prepare a financial model on a monthly basis . It is essential to understand that past performance should be included in the same file as current results and plans for the future. This gives you a better picture of the company’s growth trajectory. To make it easier to distinguish certain time periods, they should be highlighted in different colours. 

The financial model’s most important component is the near future. This section shows potential investors what you can achieve with their contribution. The planning horizon is normally set at 18-24 months. Why? That is the expected run rate for a typical funding round, so both the investor and you must understand how the funds raised will be invested and what you will achieve with them. The depth of detailed elaboration is 1 month. 

The financial model should also include your main goal, like achieving annual revenue of $100 million, for instance. Such goals are set for the long term, usually up to 5 years. The depth of plan refinement is a quarter or a year. 

The structure of the financial model 

1. Assumptions. Non-financial drivers of your business, for example, conversion funnels, cost of lead attraction, etc.
2. Revenue generation model. With the cohort approach, you model how your revenue will accumulate from month to month. Below is an example of the way it works for a combination of platform and user acquisition channel

3. P&L (Profit and Loss Statement). It is best to use the cash-flow method, as no one expects the correct IFRS or GAAP reporting from you. Though some areas may have their own caveats. For example, for SaaS services, monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is important, which may differ from monthly revenue if you sell annual or quarterly subscriptions.
4. Team. The team composition including positions. Salaries must be indicated, as they account for up to 50% of total expenses in nowadays startups, especially in the early stages.
5. Dashboard. Visualisation of the key elements, goals, and benchmarks of the financial model by means of graphs.
6. Unit economics of your business. Summarising the results. Demonstrating the financial model operation on a per-unit, per-user, or per-product basis. 

How do you make a model attractive to investors?

Even the best idea can be killed by a poor presentation. Therefore, you need to create a certain style of your document to display your financial model to potential investors in all its glory. 

To begin with, use no more than three colours so that the colourfulness does not irritate or distract. Be sure to highlight past and future events to avoid misconceptions about your plans. You should also underline strategic goals and KPIs, drawing attention to them. 

Use the following rule of thumb to understand which metrics can be presented in a general table and which should be placed on a separate page of the presentation: if an indicator accounts for more than 10% of income or expenses, it should be disclosed in as much detail as possible on a separate page. At the same time, the financial model should be easy to understand. If a certain calculation does not fit on a laptop screen, it should be simplified, perhaps by grouping certain indicators or showing a general perspective with a lower level of detail. 

When pitching a financial model to an investor, you shouldn’t expect them to have the same knowledge as you. Rather, display your expertise. Decode acronyms and explain key metrics. 

Again, it’s worth emphasising: don’t overcomplicate your presentation! Don’t use extensive formulas and don’t force the investor to scroll through several pages looking for links. They are more likely to reject your proposal because of such hardship in understanding your business. Remember that an analyst works on no fewer than ten different deals at a time, and you need to make his or her life as easy as possible. 

Bad practices of financial modelling for startups

1. Indicators, such as “market share by a certain year”. Sadly, this is how most companies model their growth. This reflects high expectations and a lack of understanding of basic financial modelling principles.
2. Calculation based on profit or the number of customers. This approach turns everything upside down. You need to start with the question of what exactly needs to be done to achieve certain outcomes, such as profit or number of customers.
3. Focusing solely on financial indicators. This may sound counterintuitive, but the financial model should be more than that. You have to understand and explain to the investor exactly how you actually plan to make money, not what kind of profit you want to get in two years.
4. Deception or concealment of facts. When making an assumption, add a reference to the source. This can be either independent research or the performance of your business in the past.
5. Excessive optimism. The brighter the picture you draw, the more critical investors will be. We all adore “hockey sticks” (the so-called exponential growth of startups — ed.), but it is better to be pessimistic.  

Financial model dynamics

A well-built financial model will help you attract investors’ attention and get the funding you need to grow your business. This doesn’t mean, however, that you can take it easy after your idea is approved. The financial model may be revised in the following cases: 

• A change in the business paradigm — a pivot, for example;
• A sharp deviation from the initial plans;
• Errors detected in assumptions;
• The need to raise additional funding;
• Preparing a report for investors.

It is recommended that you review your financial model at least on a quarterly basis if you plan to use it as an action plan or set of goals. It is also worth reducing the analysis period to one month, meaning that in early October you should have a full set of actual September figures.

Author: Oleksandr Matsiuk, Founder & CEO of RiseGuide by venture builder SKELAR

In the Startup of the Day column, Mykola Dorofii, founder of Dataisland, shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originate from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Our startup is aimed at improving the productivity of employees in companies. It’s an AI-driven tool streamlining documentation tasks and enhancing contact center/HR department efficiency.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

Every project starts with an analysis of potential demand. We conducted extensive research, focusing on identifying problems within companies. We paid special attention to those companies with which we had already collaborated.

Surprisingly, one of the most common issues turned out to be the management of employees, their knowledge, training, and preventing burnout. We realized that much in this area depends on the human factor: an employee may forget something, or another employee may explain things incorrectly. It was then that the idea was born to create a service that allows employees to promptly address their issues within the company,

If someone forgets something, doesn’t know, or encounters a situation for which they were unprepared, the employee can always turn to the neural network. In turn, it can interact with the company’s internal documentation and quickly find answers to the questions posed. The neural network also has the capability to independently assess the current level of knowledge of a specific employee.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

We spent about 6 months on creating the MVP. Our main mistake was the desire to build a completely unique and broad-spectrum product with a focus on the technical aspect.

Initially, we were developing and training only our proprietary neural network. Currently, we have transitioned to a combined approach, incorporating both our own neural network and third-party ones to ensure a more high-quality and accurate processing of information.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

The project was launched on June 2, 2023.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

We offer two service packages with different functionalities for companies:

• Document Management (Smart Employee)
• Testing

The cost varies from $500 to $1000 per month.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Right now, we are focused on the Ukrainian and European markets, but overall our solution can work for any company around the world. Especially those who have call centers and HR departments.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

At present, our main clients include Milleyson Holdings Ltd, Apercon Consulting Group, the Austrian catering company Do&Co, the warehouse robotics manufacturer Deus Robotics, and the National University of Physical Education and Sport of Ukraine.

According to conducted tests, the implementation of our service has led to an approximate increase in the efficiency of information retrieval by employees of these companies by 30-40%.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

At the moment, our team consists of only 15 people, but we are rapidly expanding, and we are primarily looking for those who could represent us internationally. We are seeking sales professionals who share our vision and could help propel us forward.

Our only current challenge is growth. Due to the small number of people, we are not able to grow as quickly as we would like,

Considering that this is a new direction, we have to explain and demonstrate our potential and specific business opportunities to each individual company.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

We have already received pre-seed investments from Milleyson Holdings Ltd, a Cypriot company engaged in the energy business ($300,000), and the Ukrainian consulting holding Apercon ($200,000).

Of course, we are open to exploring options for the next funding round, as we are eager to continue growing even further.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

In 2024, we plan to sign approximately 50 new clients and increase the company’s capitalization to $10-15 million. The market is just starting to heat up. We see tentative attempts by companies to move in our direction. Everyone wants to implement AI, but the issue is that currently, AI is still too broad-spectrum. If we look at chatbots, for example, we see how they can write beautiful texts or come up with cool poems, but that’s not exactly what companies need.

New clients are gradually joining us, but they do so very cautiously and with apprehension, which is quite logical. I believe that in about six months to a year, market adoption will be much faster,

Companies require specific solutions tailored to their specific problems. We see tremendous potential in this.

In the Startup of the Day column, Konstantin Bezuhanov, the co-founder of Evrotrust, shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Evrotrust is the evolution of physical identity documents in a digital-first world. We help regulated businesses to digitally transform their customer-facing processes and develop sustainable digital channels. To do this, the Evrotrust platform offers an end-to-end solution for reusable remote electronic identification and digital signing with qualified signatures, directly from the mobile phone.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

We sat down to think about how the world is changing and what are the current bottlenecks that are going to stipple this change. We realized that the success of digitalizing every aspect of our lives is dependent on the ability of participants to prove who they are with certainty and privacy.

In addition, we came to the conclusion that the internet has been missing a real identity layer since birth – a fundamental liability when scaling outside of entertainment and e-commerce. And then our team decided that this is a large enough and noble enough problem affecting billions of people that is worth devoting our lives to.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

By following our hypothesis of the problem, we also took a more ‘creative’ way to make our MVP. In essence, the MVP had to satisfy two main criteria, to allow us to move closer to our vision:

• First, of course, was the technical development, which took about 12 months to complete.
• The second equally important part was regulatory acceptance. Acceptance, especially when it comes to certification, was a challenge but this allowed us to complete an M&A transaction within the first year of the company.

When developing the MVP, we decided to approach it differently from current solutions because we’re confident about the must-have features of the “perfect”, identity solution. This confidence enabled us to tackle the problem from a different angle.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

Evrotrust’s operations started in 2018. Within 9 months, Evrotrust was the contracted vendor for 90% of the banks in the local market.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Comprehending identity means understanding that it is a basic human right. It is a key to fully participate in an economy as it unlocks basic needs like financial, health, education & utility services. Therefore, Evrotrust’s business model has been always free for the end user. This again was something unthinkable, since the legacy providers of certificates have been operating on the premise that the users pay for certificates.

We decided to turn this on its head, as it makes more sense – the relying party (e.g. the bank) will pay the transaction for the user (e.g. in a process where the bank wants to sign a contract or identify a new-to-bank customer). In essence, whoever receives value covers the cost,

In 2023, the strong traction was reinforced as we were recognized as a notified electronic identification (eID) scheme by the European Commission, opening the doors for citizens of all member states to access public and private services in the entire EU completely digitally in a reusable manner.

What are your target markets and consumers?

The problem is global. We have validated that identity is not just an EU phenomenon, in fact we already have great traction in non-EU countries as well as in Africa.

As of the end of 2023, Evrotrust has over 1.3 million users from 58 countries, and 150 enterprises from 11 countries have already trusted us. Currently, we are targeting European & African continents, but the solution is open to individuals globally.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

In 2022, Evrotrust was recognized by Deloitte as one of the 50 fastest-growing tech startups in Central Europe for its stunning 958% growth rate. We also have over 1.3 million international users aged between 18 and 80 and over 150 business clients, 15 of which are some of the major banking institutions worldwide.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

Evrotrust team includes 70 professionals. However, our goals for 2024 include new market penetration and team expansion by hiring top-tier executives, who have proven track records on walking our journey in the past.

The target for 2024 is to have the team size grow by +50%. The founding team comprises of strong expertise in regulatory and technical background, and we have a welcoming and diverse culture that we are proud of.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

In 2017, we attracted a €500,000 pre-seed investment from one of our first clients. In 2023, we attracted an investment of €2.5 million, from the Bulgarian Development Bank, distinguishing ourselves as a leader in the Central and Eastern European startup space.

At the beginning of 2024, we raised a significant pre-series A investment of €3.3 million from existing clients and private equity fund Silverline Capital.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

Our future plans are to continue to nail on the strong track record of enabling people to easily participate in the digital economy. We are actively scaling with new market penetration, team expansion, and a new product launch – a digital identity wallet for citizens across the world. This wallet will store personal documents such as identity cards, educational diplomas, and driving licenses, ensuring the utmost security and privacy for users, while promoting interoperability with various EU and US digital infrastructures.

As in the first stage, the selected Ukrainian startups will be announced gradually during the year and will receive:

• up to $200,000 in equity-free financing;
• mentoring support from Google;
• product support;
• $300,000 in Google Cloud credits.

Applications will open later this year.

Google created the support fund for Ukrainian startups in March 2022 and it has already provided 58 grants in the amount of $5 million. The list of participants included Skyworker.ai, Mindly, and Zeely. Thanks to this support, startups:

1. Attracted $15.8 million in additional funding.
2. Increased income by 100%.
3. Helped created new jobs.
4. Received recognition at the global level (for example, Forbes Europe 30 Under 30).

Earlier this year, Google announced the second cohort of 17 startups for its Growth Academy: AI for Cybersecurity program, which was joined by 4 startups from the CEE region, including one from Ukraine — LetsData.

Four startups in the cohort are from the CEE region, namely LetsData (Ukraine), Authologic (Poland), Patchstack (Estonia), and Talsec (Czechia). AIN.Capital tells more details about these startups.

LetsData — Ukraine

• Founded by Ukrainian founders Andriy Kusyy and Ksenia Iliuk, LetsData provides businesses and organizations with real-time threat detection and analysis to mitigate the early cybersecurity risks connected to disinformation.
• Since the launch, their AI-powered solution has experienced rapid growth, establishing operations in the US while continuing to anchor their technology and product development in Europe. According to the company, the startup helped to anticipate 900 risks and opportunities for disinformation across 50 countries. The solution analyses around 500,000 publications daily.

Authologic — Poland

• Authologic is Warsaw-based startup building a global e-ID hub via API for government-issued digital IDs, identity wallets, and bank IDs. The company was established in July 2020 on the initiative of the founders of Zencard, a company purchased in 2017 by PKO BP, Krzysztof Klimczak, Marek Rogoziński, and Jarosław Sygitowicz.
• In 2020, the startup secured $460,000 in a pre-seed round from SMOK Ventures and App’n’rol. And in 2023, Authologic was behind the development of Poland’s official digital identity tool, featured in the new version mObywatel.

Patchstack — Estonia

• Patchstack is a cybersecurity company focused on covering the complete lifecycle of open-source security — identifying new security vulnerabilities and helping open-source vendors fix security issues and mitigate vulnerabilities.
• The company was founded in Estonia and was accelerated in a cyber-security program (Cylon) in London. Patchstack was also backed in 2022 by the European Innovation Council who supported their R&D capabilities to expand the innovative approach to the wider open-source ecosystem. According to the startup, on a daily basis Patchstack powers vulnerability scans for more than 10 million websites around the world.

Talsec — Czechia

• Talsec is basically a security agent inside your phone apps. It makes special tools for app developers that protect apps from hackers, hide important information, and find sneaky malware. The company develops AppiCrypt, which offers additional API protection and prevents app impersonation using client app and device integrity control.

In the Startup of the Day column, Pavel Bulowski, the co-founder of Meiro, shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Headquartered in Singapore with R&D in Central Europe, Meiro is the only wall-to-wall Customer Data Platform (CDP) offering flexible hosting on every major cloud and on-premise in every corner of the world.

Meiro Customer data platform features an easy-to-use end-to-end solution for data management, analytics, personalization, omnichannel marketing, and advertising. Meiro CDP turns customer data into a revenue-generating asset by seamlessly tracking users across devices, touchpoints, and a growing number of marketing channels and unifying diverse data streams into a single rich dataset.

Built for enterprises driven by regulations or needing to own and fully control their tech stack, Meiro offers transparent, flexible, and scalable architecture that seamlessly integrates with clients existing internal systems, addressing data residency and control at the core,

Marketing professionals looking to optimize campaign performance use Meiro CDP to consolidate siloed customer data into a single customer view and to use data available for effortless marketing activation and personalized customer experiences that drive engagement and revenues.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

Meiro is our 2nd venture — we founded data consultancy for digital transformation & marketing projects. Talking to our clients, we saw the need for a solution to consolidate all customer touchpoints, online & offline, and to go beyond reports and dashboards by creating actionable insights and audiences segmented based on the behavior across all channels. With changing data legislations, the need for an easy-to-use, flexible platform also focusing on data security and governance was very clear to us.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

Our CTO created the MVP in a few months. What we saw was encouraging. This was the foundation of the CDP — data integration platform with Identity Graph as a core tech functionality for Meiro CDP.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We officially launched the product exactly 15 months after the incorporation of the company, in October 2018.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Meiro focuses on software license MRR with supporting revenue from services around the product implementation and adoption.

What are your target markets and consumers?

• EU (DACH, Central and Eastern Europe);
• APAC (e.g., Indonesia, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand);
• ME (Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar)

We cater to Senior marketing / UX professionals, Data science teams in medium-sized + large-sized organizations in different industries. Our clients come from banking, e-commerce, real-estate, tourism, gaming, and media verticals.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

Meiro CDP resolved Chemist Warehouse’s data management challenges by implementing a complex identity resolution which in turn enabled the consolidation of a holistic customer view and comprehensive customer profiling. With precise first-party data available in Meiro, Chemist can now see the complete history of users across devices and platforms, encompassing both known and anonymous interactions.

These features enabled Chemist Warehouse to centralize data points, gain better insights into customer behavior, and unlock numerous opportunities for growth while ensuring a gradual and solid progression

Impact achieved with Meiro CDP:

• +200 audience segments created with Meiro CDP
• +25% in Retail Media Growth
• 10.9 million of anonymous users became addressable with 1pt tracking

In addtion, top retail bank in Indonesia improves lead acquisition, and ad relevance and boosts direct marketing engagement with Meiro CDP.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

Meiro’s team currently consists of 50 people who are actively working towards our shared goals and objectives. As we continue to expand and scale our operations, we are planning to increase the size of our team to 70 members.

[Ed. You can find the full list of open positions at Meiro by following the link].

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

We have successfully secured $3 million in a pre-Series A round, led by Southeast Asian VC firm Wavemaker Partners, with participation from angel investors at Singapore-based Angel Central. This marks our first strategic funding round following five years of robust self-funded organic growth and profitability. The funding will be used to accelerate the company’s growth trajectory.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

We aim to fast-track our product development, bolster the team, and expand our presence in Europe and Southeast Asia. Additionally, Meiro plans to enter new markets, starting with the establishment of a branch in Dubai slated for 2024.

• Lezo.io is a platform that greatly simplifies the job search for companies and candidates. With the help of an AI algorithm, Lezo.io cuts out the superfluous and offers only those job offers or resumes that match the specific requests.
• Thanks to this, a company can find the right person by processing a much smaller number of profiles, and candidates are communicated with only when the vacancies meet their expectations and skills.

During the year of beta testing, Lezo.io achieved the following results:

• every seventh match ends with an invitation to an interview;
• 16,000 creative and tech talents in the base of various levels (from seniors to juniors);
• 550 partner companies seeking and returning candidates.

This is the embodiment of the skill-first approach in hiring, which is already a global trend. We launched a beta through a chatbot, thanks to which we can quickly improve the algorithm and give higher accuracy. By the end of the year, the match percentage will change from 1/7 to 1/5. And a convenient platform will appear,

Oleksandr Tregub writes.

The startup plans to enter one foreign market in 2024 and attract investors at further stages of development. Earlier, Project Institute announced its expansion into the Polish market. You can read the newspiece here:

In the Startup of the Day column, Andrii Cherednichenko, the co-founder of JobCannon, shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Regular recruiting services rely on text resumes that aren’t independently verified. Employers spend 2-3 interviews just to confirm a candidate’s basic skills and relevance. We’re flipping the script by putting assessments at the heart of our process, cutting hiring time in half and saving candidates time on the job hunt, while helping employers to get the most suitable candidate from the first interaction.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

So, at JobCannon, our founding team is a blend of three key elements that we believe are the linchpin for any startup’s success. Peter Kolomiets, our co-founder and CEO, brings a wealth of experience in successful investments. On my end, as a co-founder and Marketing Director, I leverage personal experience in building startups and user acquisition. And finally, we have Alex Molodyk, our COO, who brings his operational and management prowess into the mix.

Drawing on our varied experiences spanning the past two decades in different fields, we’ve developed a streamlined process for launching a startup, whether it’s an IT product or the recruitment business around it, right from the beginning,

What unites us is our commitment to solving the challenges related to hiring employees. It’s a lengthy process, and we’ve encountered situations where someone didn’t quite fit the team. These stories of mismatched hires motivated us at JobCannon.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

We started by testing the assessment in a recruitment agency, then did consumer research to understand our audience and shape the product. After that, we built our MVP. Currently, we are in the testing phase of platform and assessment improvement.

Our testing approach comes from our experience in the recruitment business, forming the core of our IT platform. Now, we’re excited to introduce our MVP platform, jobcannon.io, which focuses on finding the best user paths, tracking conversions, and planning the platform’s future.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

The IT platform launched in mid-January, and currently, we are enhancing the core candidate and company workflows while improving an assessment process. Next on the agenda are the introduction of new features and deeper integration of AI during the whole flow.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

When it comes to monetization, we’re looking at two main avenues:

• The “hiring fee”. This spproach aligns with the typical model you’d find in recruitment platforms and agencies. Right now, we’re in the process of building the workflow and legal aspects to ensure that both candidates and employers stay within our ecosystem after the hire. Usually, a hiring fee ranges around 7-9% of the candidate’s annual salary.
• The SaaS model. Here, the focus is on payment for a “verified” candidate. Plus, we offer additional features for an enhanced search experience, essentially a standard set for recruitment resources. As we go through the testing phase, we’ll be closely examining what works best for the overall stability of the company’s ecosystem and tweaking these models accordingly.

What are your target markets and consumers?

The primary target audience for our MVP consists of software developers specializing in major programming languages. We’ve adopted this approach because there’s consistently high demand for them, and we’re well-versed in the testing methodologies relevant to their field.

We’re initially focusing on Europe, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Israel. Why these regions? Well, we have a well-established recruitment process in place for these countries and an understanding of the market from “inside”.

The key challenges we address for candidates include a single test for over 100 relevant vacancies, fair assessment, and convenient job search. For companies, it means access to pre-tested, relevant, and motivated candidates. Combining all these elements results in a faster job search and vacancy closure for both parties by streamlining the initial recruitment steps (sourcing, reaching out, and the initial assessment of candidates).

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

Our primary metrics revolve around hiring and the speed of the hiring process. Since we’ve recently launched, we’re not in a position to draw conclusive metrics just yet. However, we are monitoring our performance indicators, continually enhancing them, and plan to share insights in the future.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

The team is divided into product and business directions. The product side includes departments of platform developers, product managers, and marketers. The primary goal of the product team is to thoroughly understand the pain points of our audience and create the perfect user journey from advertisement to completing testing on the platform.

On the business side, we have the sales team and recruiters. Their task is to attract B2B clients to the platform and work with candidates on the platform, helping them find jobs.

Currently, we have over 30 team members. Securing investments will help us scale even more and operate more efficiently.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment

It started as a self-funding project, and then we secured a pre-seed round. JobCannon attracted $500,000 in investment from Whitehill Capital with the support of the World Bank. Currently, we are in negotiations with several private investors and venture funds interested in financing the project for the seed round.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

Looking ahead, our R&D efforts will mainly focus on improving soft skills testing, adding assessments for hard skills, and involving Ph.D.-level experts to enhance our testing methods.

Our Big Idea is to become the “quality mark” for those seeking jobs by implementing affordable yet profound candidate assessments,

In the future, we aim to provide recommendations on how individuals can improve their skills to boost their careers, earn bigger salaries, and how to explore their characters to truly engage in what they find interesting and lucrative in life as general.

• This wearable collar device connects to mobile networks, collects data and gives updates on your pet’s location, routes, activity goals straight in the app.

• With the help of the tracker, you can set up virtual fences, safe zones and get alerts if your buddy ventures too far.
• The Petcube GPS Tracker sports an LED light, a special beeper for extra cues. It is packed in a IP67-certified durable water-resistant body and wrapped up in a flexible silicon case that glows in the dark.

With the new device, Petcube is evolving beyond cameras and continues to build a holistic platform for modern parents, where hardware, data, and content meet. Pet parenting is better with tech,

Andriy Klen commented.

In November 2023, the company launched a new generation of compact cameras for animals, the Petcube Cam 360.

In the Startup of the Day column, Vitaliі Shatalov, the founder of MathMaster, shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

MathMaster is a math service that helps solve math problems thanks to an auto-recognition algorithm and real-time, 24/7 advice from freelance math experts in online chat. Users have the opportunity to get fast and accurate step-by-step explanations for a wide variety of mathematical problems. If the algorithm cannot cope with the problem, a mathematical expert is automatically connected to solve it. It’s like Uber for math learners.

The number of users has already crossed the 10 million mark, the application is in the top 5 math Q&A tools in the USA. Such results were achieved during a full-scale invasion.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

Futurra Group, Ukrainian IT company behind MathMaster, managed to build several successful application groups that eventually formed separate business units. So, at the beginning of 2022, after long-term research of various niches, we chose a new vector of Futurra Group – digital education with the flagship application MathMaster.

Having done an in-depth research of the edtech niche, we saw a trend towards a rapid growth of automatic applications-tools for solving mathematical problems. A significant gap between the revenue of the top 3-5 players and all other projects also became evident,

The times of quarantine led to the rapid growth of the edtech market. Online learning tools became extremely popular, and venture capital actively poured money into this area. The trend remains unchanged even after the end of the pandemic. Nevertheless, so far only 5-6% of the entire educational market belongs to digital products: software, online lessons, etc. It is obvious that digitalization of education is promising and will continue to grow in the future.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

Initially, MathMaster had only the functionality of automatic recognition and solving of mathematical problems, but the team decided not to stop there. We wanted to provide a unique offer to users in order to stand out from the competition, so we began to study our competitors in detail and look for their “weak spots”.

We found that automatic solutions from competitors work correctly only for 50-60% of problems, while the rest remain unanswered. This is due to the fact that the user cannot always formulate a request in the correct format, and automatic response algorithms or artificial intelligence will not help in this case. We set an ambitious goal of covering 100% of user requests.

To do this, we decided to focus on live communication between the user and freelance mathematical experts. This is how the main MathMaster feature Expert Chat appeared in the application that allows you to quickly get advice and step-by-step help with any mathematical problem in an online chat 24/7. The user only needs to send a photo of their mathematical problem and receive an answer with an explanation from an expert.

The team of mathematical experts already includes more than 1,000 people. These are usually students of mathematics majors or teachers of mathematics. Good command of English and, of course, deep mathematical knowledge are important criteria for hiring them. Each expert passes a small math exam, training during onboarding and only then is allowed to work with real users.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

The service was launched in the beginning of 2022. The key people of the company finished the final planning of MathMaster late in the evening of February 23, 2022, in order to start implementing the new strategy on the 24th. But in the morning, this plan quickly changed to a plan to urgently evacuate the team from Kyiv. As soon as everyone was safe and moved away from the initial shock, we began to configure business processes in new realities.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

MathMaster is a cross-platform service (it has iOS, Android and web versions) and works on a subscription model. The price is from $7 per week to $99 per year. For this money, the user will receive more than 90 solutions per month, no ads, and a step-by-step explanation of any problem.

The service also offers in-app purchases. Users have the opportunity to buy additional coins if they run out of free points within the subscription. One coin allows you to solve one problem.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Most of the users of our service are from the USA — almost 80%. Conventionally, the audience of the service can be divided into three main groups: schoolchildren, students and parents who want to help their kids solve mathematical problems.

We set ourselves the goal of creating a convenient tool that will become an alternative to expensive tutoring. A kind of “personal tutor in your pocket,

A personal tutor in the USA is not a cheap pleasure. The cost of their services can reach $200 per hour. This is significantly more expensive than an annual subscription to MathMaster.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

About 400,000 new users join the service every month. The retention of payers on the 14th day is more than 50%.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

The product team is entirely Ukrainian, consisting of 60 people. MathMaster is already a large and complex product, so the team consists of a number of separate units. For example, there is an iOS development team, a web team, and an Android team. A large staff of experts and their hiring is taken care of by the operations team. There are also units of marketers, designers, financiers and analysts.

Moreover, for better operation of the service, 2 auxiliary products were also created:

• The first one is a platform for the automatic hiring of math experts, which allows the team to very quickly and efficiently onboard new freelancers to cover the demand. Currently, the hiring of experts is fully automated.
• The second product is MathMinds platform – a workspace for experts. MathMinds distributes experts among users and provides experts with built-in tools to solve problems quickly.

Since the service is growing thanks to digital marketing, a lot of attention is paid to hiring marketers and analysts. We are also always looking for strong technical specialists to implement innovative solutions faster and make MathMaster even more useful.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Futurra Group is a capital-intensive business: all earned money goes to further scaling and development of new directions. MathMaster was no exception. All profits received from utility applications and other projects go to the development of the mathematical service. It took a little more than $1 million to launch MathMaster. Now, the product is fully paying for itself.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

The company’s goal is to scale and distribute the application not only in the States, but also in the markets of Europe and Asia.

Now, MathMaster handles only English-language user requests, but already has a strategic plan to scale. It will take place due to the introduction of automatic translation technologies of other popular languages (such a step will increase the number of users).

Esper Bionics is located in a 3-floor building in an industrial area of Kyiv. It moved here in August 2023 from a facility that was too small for mass production. We are welcomed by the Esper Bionics’ Chief of Strategy, Bohdan Diorditsa, and Chief of Marketing, Dmytro Hanush, who lead us to the ground floor. Here we see the prostheses shop. We are wondering where to begin our tour. The production is not linear.

OK, let’s start with the definition. What is a robotic hand? It consists of a stump socket and a prosthesis. The stump socket is fixed at a stump, the remaining part of a mangled arm. The myosensors within help get signals from the brain and transfer them to the prosthesis so that a person can move the hand. In other words, the socket serves as an intermediary between the artificial and the biological part of the arm. It is developed individually for each customer and installed in specialized clinics. According to Bohdan, even the most up-to-date 3D scanners and expensive 3D printers can’t create better sockets than prosthetists. So, Esper Bionics manufactures only robotic hands.

We decided to start our tour on the ground floor with a CNC 3-axis milling machine. Using it, Serhii crafts metal parts for the future robohand, for example, for a palm. Most parts are made from aircraft aluminum, bronze, and stainless steel.

We may watch the production through the glass. Serhii leads the mechanism with software written and installed here at Esper Bionics. The machine is pretty large. The facility owner let the workers disassemble a wall and some windows to bring the machine inside.

Next to it is a universal lathe. There are some plans above it. Serhii follows them during the production. There are also essential tools needed for the production. For instance, here you see the finger assembly platform. The operator shows us its model on the screen a few seconds after the mill cut a detail from an aluminum bar. Doing so creates a lead nut bracket for a future platform.

“These assemblies are unique for our product. We cannot order them in some online shop, e.g. Rozetka,” Serhii explained.

Then, we move to a place Bohdan called “a warehouse of a healthy man.” He meant the shelves with boxes full of prosthesis parts. Each box is numbered and signed, so the workers save time searching for required components.

“You can find anything here—from separate arm parts to some stump socket components,” Bohdan said.

Andrii, a senior assembly specialist, shows us boxes located closer. They have codes with letters and digits. The letters explain to which prosthesis parts in the box belong. For example, LL means Large Left, the large prosthesis of the left arm.

Maksym fills the boxes. He works in the Esper Bionics warehouse. Not all pieces in the boxes are manufactured by Serhii with his machine. Some are imported. For example, prosthesis engines come from Sweden.

Andrii tells Maksym a box number, gets the right box, and the prosthesis assembly begins. For this, the mechanic takes a frame that looks like an artificial palm.

He puts it and the cables inside the hub. Then, he attaches the cables to the commutation board and motherboard that will receive signals. Andrii prepares the first module to be attached to the next one.

The modules are separate arm knots, for example, fingers. An engine, a lead screw, a spring, and a plate bow them.

So, when the motherboard transfers a signal via the commutation board to the cables, it arrives at the engine and produces a new signal. The engine starts, so the user can bend and straighten fingers.

Andrii works only on the first floor. However, the operators Vitalii and Pavlo are active on the first and the third floors, where the R&D department is located. New models are developed there. Then, they order the components from Serhii and assemble prototypes in the shop.

Later, the products are tested on special tables. And only after all tests are done, mass production may start.

In total, four assemblers work in the shop. There is also one assembly specialist who is involved in R&D. The orders come in batches. One batch takes six weeks on average for production. The number of prostheses in a batch can differ. Up to 15 Esper hands are manufactured per month. However, due to high demand, the production is going to be expanded. The team also plans to increase the number of its members to 16. New engineers work their first month under the supervision of the senior assembler, Andrii, no matter how experienced they are. This affects productivity and requires a lot of time.

“They are real engineers. They know how to code, print, cast, and braze some details,” Bohdan described Esper Bionics workers.

Esper Bionics R&D

We skip the second floor (it doesn’t belong to the production) and go to the third floor. It is the R&D department. Here, we meet the firmware team. Their job is to develop software for finger action algorithms. Next to them are specialists who deal with the electronics — cables and boards.

“Usually, they first create a large board and test it completely to ensure everything works fine. And then, they make the board smaller according to the arm size,” Bohdan explained.

The R&D specialists work on the correct functioning and signal transferring of robohands to provide the user with the same functions as a natural arm. It can be set up via smartphone.

A smart hand

Bohdan holds a robohand and his smartphone. He opens the Esper Bionics app and shows how to change the control scheme or set up the myosensor sensibility. For example, if a person’s stump enlarges in the morning, they can lower the sensibility. And the opposite—when the stump shrinks in the evening, and the skin does not perfectly match the myosensor, it is recommended to increase the sensibility for better signal transfer.

The myosensors are sensors that read the tension in the body, create the so-called biopotential, and transfer the signal to the control unit. They are part of the stump socket. The myosensors are installed in a place with the highest detected muscle activity at the remaining arm. However, the signal of the muscle contraction is very low. So, the myosensors and software in the hand apply special filters to increase the signal and disperse “noises” generated by other electronic devices.

Bohdan assures two myosensors are enough to control an arm. You can put much more, but remember that each cost about $1,000.

In the smartphone, you can also set up grab gestures the user can create with fingers. For instance, a sign of the horns during a rock concert. Or straighten the index finger to scroll a newsfeed in your smartphone (tap grab). Or form the hand comfortably to pick up a pen (pen grab). The fingers go into the position of the bottle grab if you need to take some round items.

“Speaking of a traumatic amputation, not a planned one, muscles are often damaged and the stump, with a non-perfect form. Accordingly, the users must learn how to strain different muscles again. That’s why people who begin to master the robotic arm are recommended to start with the simplest control scheme that they learn to strain two groups of muscles,” said Bohdan.

Suppose a person doesn’t plan to use some gestures for some time. In that case, grabs can be temporarily deactivated via the smartphone, so the fingers will not be able to form a deactivated combination. If needed, the grabs can be enabled anytime. At the moment, there are 18 combinations available in the app.

Parameters of robotic arms and how to improve them

The prosthesis phalanges can carry up to 12 kg. The arm can handle up to 30 kg—for example, it is enough to make push-ups. Bohdan says there are no problems with a prosthesis during push-ups, but one can feel pain in the stump because it is a living tissue stuck in the socket. There is also no problem in the case of pull-ups. However, some users fear the stump can slip out of the socket.

The prosthesis has a 2-year guarantee. Currently, Esper Bionics calculates the production costs for the prosthesis with a 5-year warranty.

However, the team works on how to prolong the life of the prosthesis and how to make it energy-efficient. The most active users charge the robohand every two to three days.

“Made, tested, broken, made different. Tested, broken again. Made again, not broken. It’s cool. Tested 100 times, not broken. That’s it—the thing is ready for mass production,” Bohdan described the development of new products.

The arm sizes are more or less universal. There are large and small sizes. The latter is suitable for women, not tall men, and teenagers. For kids, it is not recommended to use prostheses with myosensors since they grow fast, and their stumps grow as well. Then, the stump socket must be updated, and it costs time and money.

The Chief of Strategy of Esper Bionics said that a state program in Ukraine provides people with prostheses of different functionality. This program, however, doesn’t include functional prostheses with external power sources for children or adults. The only exception is the military, which can apply for robotic extremities with advanced functions or sports prostheses after a year of wearing a simple (mechanic or cosmetic) prosthesis.

The manufacturer is flexible in direct communication with donors and users. A person who needs a prosthesis should apply on the Esper Bionics website. The person will be contacted then by the physician, Lidiia, who will learn about the circumstances and parameters of the trauma, post-surgery complications, etc. She will tell the client more about the prostheses, and if the client agrees, look for a sponsor for this patient. It can be the opposite: First, a sponsor is ready to pay for several prosthesis installations, and the company looks then for people who need prostheses. After the installation, the company can organize a private meeting for the sponsor and the patient. Of course, if they want to.

Localization of production

“It must be great when the prosthesis service is located where a user is,” Bohdan says, speaking about the repair of the bionic robotic arm.

According to him, those who have received an Esper Bionics prosthesis can simply send it to the production facility to repair or improve the model in case of damage. The situation is different with bionic arms from foreign manufacturers: users must wait a month for the prosthesis to reach the service center and then wait for it to be repaired and returned to the owners. That’s why Bohdan emphasizes that Ukraine should have its solutions for prosthesis manufacturing.

“First of all, it is difficult for people who need prosthetics to have their prostheses serviced abroad. Secondly, in a year or two, humanitarian aid in the form of prostheses from other countries will end. And the guys will ask: What have you been doing since 2022? Where are our prostheses?” he explains.

According to Bohdan, only a few prosthetists in Ukraine can make robotic arms controlled by myosensors. Esper Bionics works with only six or seven prosthetists in the whole country.

While we chatted about postal delivery, Bohdan showed us the box where customers receive their prosthetics. It can be opened with a single movement—by tilting the lid. This is just one example of Esper Bionics’ attention to detail when it comes to people who are missing one limb or even both.

Plans for 2024

The company intends to significantly expand bionic hand production and develop its prosthetic leg this year. But Bohdan says that a prosthetic leg is much harder to bring to life than an arm, as more research is needed and certification of such a product is more complicated. In addition, the liability of an artificial leg manufacturer is higher than that of an artificial arm manufacturer: “If the leg doesn’t work, you’re likely to fall. Accordingly, a malfunction of a lower limb prosthesis can do much more harm than a malfunction of an upper limb prosthesis.”

The company is also planning to work on an alternative control system that will allow signals to be transmitted faster and without unnecessary effort. Dmytro has already designed such a control system, which will consist of an array of sensors.

“A person transmits a signal to the arm through sensors. The prosthesis has to ‘understand’ them and take a particular position. Then, the artificial limb presses the interface designed for the arm. This algorithm has many steps, but this is how the prosthesis works. We plan to develop an alternative control system with a conditional keyboard made of myosensors and designed for an amputee,“ says Dmytro.

There are already technologies in the world that are used in multi-sensor prosthesis control systems. One of them is Pattern Recognition, which recognizes specific patterns of muscle contraction. But this is not the same as myosensor interfaces.

“It would be good for us to create our own sensor system next year, which would also allow us to use algorithms for recognizing muscle contraction patterns and add a wider range of hand control. But that’s a story that will take time,“ Dmytro says.

In the Startup of the Day column, Maryna Vlasenko and Rahul Push, co-founders of Gin, share the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

GIN electric bikes, featuring the GIN Advance BMS (Battery Management System), embody the essence of a modern e-bike. Customer-tested and proven, our hybrid e-bike models provide an impressive range of over 150-170 miles.

At GIN e-bikes, our goal is to transform the daily commuting experience for long-range travelers by offering an affordable and sustainable solution. GIN X, our unique hybrid e-bike, is a game-changer for those seeking eco-friendly mobility.

Our e-bikes not only come at a significantly lower price of £999 compared to the industry average of £1400 but also outperform in terms of mileage (75-150 miles vs. 50 miles), weight (21 kg vs. 28 kg), motor life (5 years vs. 3 years), and battery capacity (666 WH vs. 375 WH).

The startup operates on a direct sales model (D2C) through our website, catering directly to end customers. We sell our electric bikes, offering a diverse range encompassing various models, motor capacities, colors, and additional technical features or frame designs.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

The visionary behind GIN electric bikes is Rahul, bringing over 12 years of entrepreneurial experience in sustainable businesses. Upon relocating to the UK in 2021, he identified the growing prominence of the electric bicycle industry in the country. With extensive practical experience in manufacturing and collaboration with overseas factories, Rahul saw an opportunity to contribute to this rapidly expanding sector.

Before the official launch and initial sales of GIN e-bikes, marked by the arrival of the first batch of 10 bikes from overseas, Marina joined the venture as a second full-time co-founder. Her role primarily focused on marketing and public relations to establish and promote the brand.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

Creating the GIN X crossbar electric bike prototype took more than 6 months. Our primary goal was to surpass the competition while keeping our product affordable (price-wise), which posed the most significant challenge in the entire process.

While making the first version of the bike, we faced some problems, like mistakes in how it looked that we had to fix. When we tested the bikes, we found some issues with the electrical parts, so we had to spend more time fixing them.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We initially planned to launch our product in early summer 2022, but due to a slight delay in the first shipment of the first 10 bikes, they reached our warehouse by the end of June. Consequently, we rescheduled the official launch to the end of summer, with sales officially starting in late July. The first sale occurred on July 28, and remarkably, all bikes were sold out within 2 days.

During this time, we experienced a surge in website traffic, with memorable moments of 10 sales per day and 1000 customers globally landing on our website daily. All of this occurred with zero investment in traffic and marketing, exceeding our expectations.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Our startup operates on a straightforward business model where we provide a physical product available for direct purchase on our website. Our revenue is generated through the direct sales made by our customers. We factor in production costs, and our profit margin is applied on top of that. The key principle behind this business model is to maintain healthy profit margins for each new bike model we introduce.

We also generate additional income through the sales of accessories, including items like padded saddles, phone holders, extra batteries, etc. These accessories have higher profit margins since their production costs are significantly lower compared to the bikes themselves.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Currently, approximately 80% of our sales originate from the UK. However, our strategic plan for the year involves expanding globally into the US and European markets. We anticipate significant growth in these markets, estimating them to be 5-8 times larger than the UK market.

Our target consumer base encompasses several categories:

• Commuters: individuals who require a bike for daily commuting, traveling to and from work;
• Delivery riders: people who use bikes extensively, riding for 5-8 hours per day for various delivery services;
• Leisure and fitness enthusiasts: those seeking bikes for recreational or fitness purposes, reflecting the cultural importance of biking in the UK.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

Yes, the product is already launched and these are several indicators that we can disclose:

• Customer retention: we’re achieving a solid 10% month-to-month customer retention rate, showcasing the loyalty of our customer base;
• Average order value: Our AOV has experienced positive growth, increasing from £1000 to £1150. This reflects the value our customers see in our products;
• Net promoter score: Our NPS stands at an impressive 4.8 out of 5, indicating a high level of satisfaction and endorsement from our customers;
• Global reach: we have customers in over 15 countries (UK, US, Spain, France, Greece, Switzerland, Ukraine, Portugal)

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

In our inaugural year, the core team consisted of just 2 full-time employees: the co-founders.

The remaining team members were outsourced to various roles. For instance, we have approximately 15 individuals employed in our overseas factory responsible for the manufacturing and assembly of our bikes. Additionally, we’ve brought on board two Virtual Assistants (VAs) managing customer care requests, a technician overseeing post-sales maintenance, a marketing team handling paid campaigns, and a separate SEO team. Our logistics partner takes charge of all deliveries, both within the UK and internationally.

Currently, we’re actively seeking a Senior Operational Manager who will play a pivotal role in managing executive tasks and contribute significantly to the ongoing growth of our business.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

We’ve secured our first round of investment, totaling £510,000 from Ukrainian syndicate Toloka.vc. The primary focus of this investment is to fuel the expansion of our sales. We’re excited about the opportunities this funding will unlock as we continue to grow and enhance our presence in the market.

Toloka.vc invests £510k in Gin, a British startup co-founded by a Ukrainian

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

We’re gearing up to establish assembly units in Eastern Europe, with a potential location in Poland, and in the UK. This strategic move allows us to take full control of e-bike assembly, customize bikes based on customer requests, and lower down production costs.

Our sights are set on a full-fledged expansion into key markets such as the US and Europe. We’ll be directing our marketing and PR efforts to establish a strong presence in these markets.

Gin is also planning to introduce new e-bike models, including a carbon frame e-bike (an ultra-lightweight option under 15 kg), a cargo e-bike designed for versatile delivery purposes, and a mountain rear suspension electric bike for those off-road adventures.

In the Startup of the Day column, co-founders of Fintellect, share the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Fintellect is a financial tool tailored for project-based firms. By integrating with banking, project management, and CRM platforms, it offers clear insights into team economics, hourly rates, and project profitability, all presented in our sleek, user-friendly interface.

We capture the critical data from the apps our customers use: bankings, time & resource trackers, and CRMs, and turn them into financial insights. We’re made for service B2B teams only, featuring special functional like project estimation tools, different business models coverage (time & material, retainer projects, revenue per employee) and great UX.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

Fintellect began with two founders: one with a history of creating over 30 marketing strategies, global outsourced marketing teams, and growing businesses fivefold in two years. The other founder transformed an IT startup into a $1.5 million revenue powerhouse, developing key web services and apps for EU and USA companies.

Fintellect’s team understands the B2B service agency world, recognizing its growth potential and their unique position to fill a gap in this expanding, yet under-the-radar market. With a partnership built over three years and a shared vision for Fintellect, we’re geared to make a significant industry impact.

As the business evolved, we were joined by a coding team skilled in high-load microservice architecture and agile tech. Together, our combined expertise spans marketing, design, development, and finance.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

We built initial prototype by 6 months, and tested it on the first users to aggregate the data. While building we conducted a lot of in-depth interviews to gather insights on users problems, business process, operational issues, and other things we need to understand to build the platform into their business.

Then we grew to MVP in one more year, having companies in closed beta and testing all the product hypothesis.

The hardest part was building the product during the full-scale war. Not the best time to do an early-stage startup, and to raise money for it. But we managed, and now Fintellect is live and we’re growing and building.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We launched it in October 2023.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

We are subscription SaaS, with a Basic, Pro, and Custom plans to use. Basic gives full access to Fintellect, Pro — gives additional consultancy and support from the team, and Custom works as the tailored R&D for specific needs of the company, on top of our architecture and use-cases.

What are your target markets and consumers?

A small project based service company, delivering professional services:

• 5+ full time employees;
• industry: digital design, software development, marketing & advertisement, IT recruitment, legal services, business consulting;
• markers: no CFO or financial controller (founder or partner managing financial planing)

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

We are at about €3,000 MRR, with a goal to grow 30% month-to-month during the next quarter. We are just couple of months live, so the goal for now is to grow traction.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

We have 6 people: two co-founders, two BE developers, one FE dev, and one QA. We plan to grow engineering team in the nearest future, to upscale our delivery.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Our team have raised €145,000 from Berkeley Skydeck this year, being part of their acceleration program. In the end of 2023 we also raised $50,000 from ZAS Ventures. Now the round is open, and we plan to close it in the next two months.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

In 2024 we want to grow Fintellect to be a financial assistant that will automate the most routine financial tasks, and drive the hours spent on manual work as low as possible. We will utilise integrations and automations to streamline the data into Fintellect, and turn it to kley insights founder needs to run a business.

On top of that we are building integrated AI CFO, that will answer the questions on profitability, project financial results, and will do the job, that financial manager usually do.

We have selected 12 Ukrainian startups of various directions that launched this year — this list is not exhaustive, but it gives an idea of what new projects appeared on the market in 2023.

This is the second part of the summary article about the main investments, startups, and expansions of 2023 in Ukraine. Read the previous article by following the link, here.

eTOLLs EU — an app for paying road tolls in the EU

Founders: Kostyantyn Mykhailiuk and Denys Dmytrov.

eTOLLs is a project of the Ukrainian service company «Штрафи UA». It was launched in February 2023. The application allows drivers to pay in advance for travel on toll roads of the European Union countries, thereby avoiding queues for receiving a vignette (a form of confirmation of toll payment). Also, drivers can set a route in the application at the beginning of the trip and find out about all necessary payments for driving. You can pay using eTOLLs on the roads of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Austria, Bulgaria, and Hungary. The application is available in the App Store and Google Play.

Mark — a medtech service for preliminary health diagnosis

Founders: Andrii Petrukh and Valerii Yasakov

The medtech app Mark has been available on mobile devices since April 2023. With the help of AI algorithms, Mark provides users with medical support that analyzes health indicators (health trackers, dynamics of well-being, etc.) and, if necessary, warns about the need to consult a doctor. You can also find the right clinic and doctor in the app, make an appointment, and resolve issues with the insurance service.

Anima — mental health diagnosis via webcam

Founders: Roman Gavrysh and Serhii Danylov

The neurotechnological startup Anima was presented in February 2023. It allows users to assess the state of their own psyche online. Diagnosis is based on eye-tracking technology — the movement of the retina is monitored by the camera of a laptop, computer, or other gadget used by the client. In this way, the camera determines the distortion of attention, the level of anxiety, depression and predicts the risk of developing dangerous conditions. After diagnosis, Anima provides recommendations for maintaining mental health. One of the co-founders of the startup, Serhii Danylov, is a neurophysiologist.

The service is free for military personnel. The price for testing for civilians starts from UAH 39.

Flat Planet — a guide to Ukrainian and foreign cities

Founder: Dmytro Dubilet

Dmytro Dubilet announced the launch of the Flat Planet tourist application in December 2023. The startup can replace guides, because it has audio content synchronized with geocoordinates. It is currently in beta testing, but is available in the App Store. Nevertheless, Flat Planet already has 120 tours in 45 cities in Europe and the USA. Such virtual guidewalks are planned not only through the streets, but also through museums and galleries. The management of these places will be offered a partnership under the terms of which the application team will produce content for free, then translate and voice it in different languages. Information or audio will be contained by links on QR codes near the exhibits. Museums and galleries will decide for themselves whether their tours will be paid — they will receive the full amount of income from this.

Instock — an innovator in customer fulfillment robotics

Founder: Yehor Anchyshkin

Work on the startup began back in 2020, but it was only in May 2023 that it was brought out of stealth mode. Instock is the designer and manufacturer of robots that take goods from shelves and hand them over to operators, saving workers’ time. This system is based on a solution called Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS). A robot can process up to 600 units per hour. Such a robotic system is designed for e-commerce. It can be assembled as a framework – for example, you can add more racks or robots, adapting in this way to the needs of each user.

Rewish — a platform for creating wishlists

Founder: Zhanna Orlova

Rewish was launched in April 2023. The platform, with the help of which you can create your own wish lists and share them with friends, is being developed within the Ukrainian IT company Valuetek. You can add not only products, but also places, movies, and events that you want to visit. Also, on Rewish, you can specify the price of the product or service and provide a link to the online store where you can find each gift. Currently, the user base of the service is 51 thousand users.

JustWork — a marketplace for marketers

Founder: Serhii Bilobrov

JustWork is an IT startup that provides marketing advice for entrepreneurs. It was launched in August 2023 and developed in cooperation with the digital marketing agency Promodo. The agency’s director, Oleksandr Kolb, is also a co-founder of the Ukrainian venture syndicate Toloka.vc.

During registration, the business owner provides all necessary information for a better understanding of their needs, including geography, subject, sub-topic of the case, volume of goods, and experience working with marketers or directly with advertising. The system provides a summary of the project information and offers various advertising services to the user, such as search engine optimization, targeted advertising on Meta platforms, and email marketing. It also selects specialists who can assist the user.

The cost of services depends on the specialist’s level of experience (middle or senior) and the duration of the collaboration (one, three, or six months). Specialists with at least 3 years of experience can offer their services on the platform.

The program allows marketers to create a work plan using a designer template. Additionally, the system monitors deadlines and sends notifications if work deviates from the plan. According to the project website, representatives from over 100 small and medium-sized businesses have already used JustWork’s services.

Nasnaga — a health monitoring program

Founders: Anton Avrynskyi, Volodymyr Narubenko, and Ivan Lyashenko.

The startup was launched in July 2023. Among the co-founders of Nasnaga is the CEO of the drug search and delivery service Liki24. The project offers the services of professional consultants who help monitor health status and implement healthy habits to improve the quality of life. Several service packages are available to users, which can be combined.

• personal laboratory check-up – 40 complex analyses;
• support by a Health-coach during the entire journey of lifestyle transformation after a health check-up;
• course of use of vitamins and minerals;
• course with an expert of narrow specialisation.

The programme’s services are available not only in Ukraine, but also in Poland and the United Kingdom. Citizens of other EU countries can only use the first package, i.e. laboratory check.

TheWays — a personal consultation platform

Founders: Oleksii and Natalia Yelenevych

TheWays was launched at the end of April 2023. The idea behind the product is to help users overcome career and business challenges through expert advice. To do this, the user submits their request on the platform and describes the problem, and the system offers them experts who can help in solving it. The client chooses the most acceptable option and preferred format for receiving an answer to their question, whether it be a video recording, a phone call, a face-to-face conversation, or a mentoring package containing four consultations with an expert. If the user has not found an expert to meet their needs, they can provide a more detailed description of their problem and a consultant will be sourced for them free of charge from the current pool or new consultants will be recruited.

Uspacy — a CRM system for small and medium-sized businesses

Founder: Dmytro Suslov

The Uspacy startup was presented in February 2023. It is a workspace that combines messenger, task management, CRM (software that automates interaction with customers), and other products for internal company communication. On the platform, you can conduct both group and individual chats, make public posts for the team, and receive and provide information about customers.

There is a free, standard (from UAH 266), and professional (from UAH 533) subscriptions. The options differ not only in cost, but also in functionality. According to the platform’s official website, Uspacy now has 64 partners.

AISDR – sales automation using generative AI

Founders: Yurii and Oleh Zaremba

The AISDR startup was founded in August 2023. It is an artificial intelligence-based service that can create personalised electronic advertising campaigns, find and correspond with potential customers and engage them in cooperation. In this way, sales will become more efficient, while business owners do not need to increase their staff. The cost of using the service is $750 per month for sending 1,000 letters.

Swarmer — a multi-drone control software

Founders: Serhii Kuprienko and Alex Fink

The Swarmer startup was launched in May 2023. It deals with the development of software based on artificial intelligence, which allows you to control several drones with the help of only one – the rest work semi-autonomously. In this way, the drone operator can perform their work more efficiently. The mechanism solves complex problems not only on the battlefield but also in agricultural affairs and construction. The website lists the prices for the drone platform (from $500 for a license) and on-board artificial intelligence (from $2,500).

• About 200 projects will receive €12 million in grant funding. Applications will be accepted across 5 types of support, with the possibility of receiving up to €60,000 in total:
  • Innovation Services — up to €10,000;
  • Entrepreneurship — up to €25,000;
  • Deep Tech Incubation — up to €25,000;
  • Rebuilding Ukraine — up to €25,000;
  • Deep Tech Scale-Up — up to €50,000.

The Seeds of Bravery project was initially announced in May 2023. The current application deadline is February 20, 2024. Startups can apply here.

• The program aims to strengthen Ukrainian innovation environment. The rest of funding costs will be used to train entrepreneurs, promote projects, and facilitate access to international markets, as well as integrate the Ukrainian innovation ecosystem into the European network. In addition, the program will support at least 20% of startups led or co-led by women.
• The European Union is funding 200 deep tech startups in Ukraine through the “Seeds of Bravery” project, with €20 million allocated to strengthen the innovation environment. The project, coordinated by FundingBox, aims to train entrepreneurs, promote projects, and integrate the Ukrainian innovation ecosystem into the European networkYEP Accelerator.

In the Startup of the Day column, Jivko Djamiarov, one of the co-founders of Ancestral Superfoods, shares more details about the startup’s idea, its products, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Ancestral Superfoods is a company focused in the development of sprouted and fermented functional foods, driven by the idea of contributing to the health of the gut microbiome. The name of the company is not accidental, because on the one hand we want to emphasize regional fruits and ingredients that we believe are not inferior to so-called superfoods, and on the other hand because this is how we want to pay tribute to our ancestors. We have a strong focus on e-commerce, thus building our presence in foreign markets and combining this approach with distribution and retail sales.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

The idea for Ancestral Superfoods was born in the intensive care unit of an Austrian hospital where I was recovering from a stroke. Being on the border between life and death, not knowing if I would cross over, I promised myself that if I survived, I would dedicate my life to creating functional foods that would help prevent the diseases of modern living such as obesity, diabetes, stroke and heart attack.

“The main ingredients of AncestralSuperfoods’ complex include ProViotic – Lactobacillus bulgaricus and selected combinations of wild-growing fruits and sprouted seeds. All products are raw and organic certified.”

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

It took about four years to get from prototype to MVP. One of the main challenges was related to the production technology and the refinement of the recipes. Apart from that, bringing the prototype to market gave us a lot of useful feedback, with the help of which we were able to solve problems related to the packaging of the products, improve the design of the packaging, as well as the recipes of the products.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

The real launch of our products was in the fall of 2019, after we went through a year-long testing phase with their prototypes.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

We use a hybrid model that consists of e-commerce, direct sales, and retail sales.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Our target markets are in Western Europe, USA, Australia and Asia. Our main target group is men and women who suffer from gut flora imbalances, IBS or other digestive problems.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

Since the start of 2019, we have been able to enter 9 markets outside of Bulgaria and achieve sales of around €125,000 in 2022 from the Bulgarian market.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

Currently, the team of founders is working on the startup on a daily basis and we also have support from our investors and freelancers.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

We recently closed an investment round and received a strategic investment of €200,000 from the NV3 fund. The investment will be used to expand our product portfolio, strengthen our marketing efforts and enter new markets.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

We are about to start selling on Amazon in several of their European stores as well as launch our online stores in the first three of our target markets.

• Over the past five years, the value of Ukrainian startups has increased more than 9 times, from €2.5 billion in 2017.
• Currently, there are 1,500 active startups in Ukraine, and more than 600 startups were founded by Ukrainians or graduates of local universities.
• As for foreign startups, more than 500 of them have opened offices in Ukraine, demonstrating interest in the capabilities of the local market.
• There are also more than 285,000 IT specialists in Ukraine.

“The so-called spinoff companies occupy a special niche among innovation enterprises. As a rule, they have already been carrying out innovative activities for at least five years from the moment of state registration. The founders of such companies can be scientific institutions, institutions of higher education or companies that have received a license to use technologies or objects of intellectual property rights developed by such a scientific institution or institution of higher education,”

the Ministry of Statistics writes.

In the Startup of the Day column, David Cermak, the founding team of Eilla AI share more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

For M&A advisors and investors, one of the biggest time constraints is the volume of mundane tasks associated with the deal workflow. Eilla AI’s technology automates these processes by mirroring industry professionals using generative AI.

The platform also unlocks new insights and supports complex decision-making through aggregation and analysis of large amounts of information from various sources in significantly less time than is currently possible.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

Eilla’s inception was a product of an insatiable curiosity and a clear vision of what AI could bring to the financial world. While studying at the University of Cambridge with a Masters in AI, Nikola Lazarov worked on ChatGPT’s predecessor and Generative AI for his thesis. From there, he transferred his knowledge to London-based Hedge Fund, where he developed trading strategies using Generative AI. And while the world was still wrapping its head around the potential of models like ChatGPT, he recognized a big opportunity.

Determined to bring his vision to life, he reached out to his lifelong friends from the Bulgarian city of Veliko Tarnovo. Together with Petar Petrov and Nikolay Babulkov, they set out to harness the power of AI in a way that could mirror the complex tasks performed by financial professionals, but with unmatched speed and efficiency. And as they say, the rest is history.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

It took us one month. That’s what most investors love about us — we experiment a lot and bring ideas to life much quicker than other startups.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

The AI Platform for M&A, VC and PE was launched early 2023, but Eilla’s first prototype was launched in June, 2022.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Monthly subscription based on credits and user seats.

What are your target markets and consumers?

M&A banks, VC and PE funds mainly in the US and UK.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

More than 200 M&A banks, PE and VC funds have requested an early access to our platform two weeks after we announced our fundraising round.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

The team consists of 5 people, but we already started the hiring process, so we are looking to grow the team to a total of 14 people by mid 2022. Looking for Full-stack developers, AI engineers, UI/ UX designer, Infrastructure Engineer, Marketing Manager.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Recently, we secured $1.5 million led by Eleven Ventures and joined by Fuel Ventures. The fresh funding will help us to further expand the team and position on markets.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

Our main priority is continue building a great product that VCs, PEs and M&A banks NEED. Other than that, our focus is expanding the team and filling our insider program, which we recently launched. It allows us to work closely with funds and banks to help us improve our product and tailor the platform to their needs. The program is already half-filled and our goal is to fill the remaining spots in the next few weeks.

In the Startup of the Day column, David Cermak, the co-founder and CEO of Blindspot shares more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

If a DDoS attack occurs and a customer is attacked, all traffic is routed through the Blindspot infrastructure. The scrubbing center separates malicious traffic from legitimate traffic, which is allowed to continue on to the customer’s network.

“Quality and reliable DDoS protection means the customer will not even know they’re under attack. From their point of view, the data passes through and no abnormalities are detected.”

A simple analogy would be a security guard at a sports stadium who only lets the non-problematic fans in. The guard decides by checking their records and actual behavior, as well as their friends and known associates.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

The primary reason for DDoS solution development was to meet our own cybersecurity needs. Of course there were other reasons that led down this path. Statistics was one of them – according to data, the frequency of DDoS attacks is on the rise, as well as the dependence on the digital infrastructure, which is unprecedented to any point in history.

Another reason was that the on-premise solutions have very limited capacities and often are not able to deal with the high volume of attacks, simply because the infrastructure is insufficient. This has been proven numerous times in the past.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

From the initial idea to an MVP it took approximately 3 years. On our way to the MVP we’ve encountered various problems regarding different expectations of our potential customers. We had to think of different models of deployment as some of them need to have their traffic analyzed and scrubbed all the time, which is the nature of our “Always-On” deployment model.

Some, on the other hand, prefer to have the traffic filtered only during the moment of attack, so we stop the attacks “On-Demand”. For this deployment type, the business needs to provide us with their data samples.

However, in some cases the customer data policy is so strict it doesn’t allow them to provide any data to third parties – in such cases, we’re able to provide two other types of deployment where the detection of an attack takes place within the client infrastructure itself and is only redirected to our infrastructure for scrubbing when the on-premise (client side) detection goes off.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

There was no official launch date. Once we’ve finished the development of the Blindspot DDoS protection solution and we were sure that it works flawlessly, we started deploying it. The first deployment of the solution took place in the spring of 2021.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Our business model is simple. We deploy the solution with only very little effort on the side of our partner or an end customer and we charge the client with the volume of the scrubbed traffic.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Our target markets are Europe, North America, and South-East Asia. The end clients would be those who want to protect themselves against the cost of the downtime — the companies that lose revenue or reputation.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

It’s just too soon to send out any metrics or analysis of the performance of our service or startup. The Blindspot solution is by now deployed only for few clients and our monthly income from it counts in lower tens of thousands of USD.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

Currently, our team at Blindspot Technologies consists of 20 people. However due to our ambitions and plans to grow the product, we are ready to adequately expand our team as needed.

“We encourage one another and establish a space where you can freely share your thoughts and opinions. We are proud to be members of the team that emphasizes collaboration and aspires to grow successful individuals as well as good people.“

At the moment, we are mainly looking for developer positions. We envision young talents with a passion for cybersecurity who can create products with a real impact on cyber space.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

In November this year, we secured a seed round of €1.4 million:

• 700,000 from Presto Ventures
• €300,0000 from Damir Spoljaric (Gi21)
• €400,000 from Prozeta

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

In this field, our expertise also lies in network operation, cloud services, and R&D. We aim to create and operate a network that requires us to only configure the services themselves, not the network devices, such as switches and routers, as that should be automated, and to some extent in our infrastructure, it already is. We aspire to become the world leader in the preferred DDoS protection solution providers.

Our ambition is also to open new representative offices in South-East Asia and North America in the near future.

In the Startup of the Day column, the founding team of Readmio, share more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

In the world of Readmio, the initiation of storytime often varies – sometimes it’s the parent who suggests reading a story, and other times, it’s the children who are eager to dive into a new tale.

“Typically, it’s the child who takes the lead, choosing a story from the app. Then, the parent steps in as the storyteller. As they begin reading, Readmio enhances the narrative with a rich tapestry of sounds and music. This is an opportunity for screen-free time, focusing solely on the audio experience.”

Readmio naturally encourages parents to become more involved in the storytelling. The app is designed to inspire parents to add elements of voice modulation and even some facial expressions, bringing the stories to life. This not only makes the reading session more dynamic but also enriches the overall experience for the kids, making it a truly memorable listening and reading adventure.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

“The creation of Readmio began with my previous venture: a B2B agency specializing in mobile app development. Leading a team of 150 until our acquisition, I cherished every moment of building that company. Post-acquisition, with four children at home who loved storytime, I was naturally drawn to the intersection of the mobile world and storytelling, leading to the birth of Readmio.”

Ilya Novodvorskiy, one of the co-founders commented.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

The development of the MVP took us 10 months. A significant portion of this time was dedicated to crafting our proprietary voice-recognition engine, which operates offline, ensuring complete privacy as it keeps all interactions within the confines of your child’s room. However, technology is just one facet of Readmio.

We poured our hearts into creating content, writing stories, designing illustrations, composing soundscapes, and developing our own content management system. For our Minimum Viable Product, we launched with nearly 100 original stories.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We launched the platform on the Children’s day — 1st of June 2020.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Reamio’s business model is centered around a subscription service, offering various plans including monthly, yearly, and even a lifetime option. We frequently introduce special promotions, such as extended trials or half-year subscriptions.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Currently Readmio is supporting languages including English, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Czech, and Slovak, with Portuguese set to launch in December. This year alone, we’ve expanded our linguistic repertoire by five languages, with a strategic focus on penetrating major markets in North America (US, Mexico) and Latin America (e.g. Brasil) next year, following our growth in Europe.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

Our key performance indicator is the number of stories read on Readmio and the time spent in these engaging sessions. To date, our users have delved into over 4.2 million stories, dedicating nearly 20,416 man-days to reading with their children. Since 2020, our revenues have doubled each year.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly?

Our team is small and compact. This small size fosters quick decision-making and a close-knit atmosphere. As we grow, we’re on the lookout for a marketing expert specializing in app growth.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Our funding journey began with an initial investment from ZAKA VC, followed by a second round from 0100 Ventures and DEPO Ventures, totaling €1.6 million. This funding has been instrumental in evolving Readmio from a free MVP to a subscription model and expanding our language offerings and geographical reach.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

Looking ahead, we aim to quadruple our revenues by 2024, with ambitious plans to expand our product offerings and enter new markets. We’re also brewing some exciting new developments, with plans to unveil at least one new product in the first half of 2024.

In the Startup of the Day column, Dmytro Grerchko, co-founder of Deskree, shares more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Deskree’s mission is to make backend infrastructure accessible to any development team. We are a low-code platform that helps developers building backend in minutes vs months.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

We used to be a software development agency and Deskree was initially an internal product that we’ve used for ourselves. Later, we realized the scale of opportunity and decided to focus 100% on it.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

The MVP took approximately 8 month to develop.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We launch our product in closed beta in November 2021, and the public release was made in May 2022. And in January, we are planning to launch our R&D project, which we have been working on for the last six months. I will not go into detail yet, but basically, we have found a way for programmers to earn money from people using their code, wherever they are.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

We are a B2B SaaS with a subscription model + metered billing per API call. We also offer enterprise cloud engineering program for larger organizations.

We have a free plan and paid plans from $20 to $5,000 per month. The most popular is $70/month. It all depends on what the client needs. When the back-end is built independently, without our help, the project will cost $20,000. The same thing with us will cost $70 per month.

What are your target markets and consumers?

We have users from all over the world, with the biggest mass located in NA, LATAM, and Europe. Deskree is available for both SMEs and large corporations.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

The number of Deskree users has grown from 300 to 10,000 developers worldwide over the last year. Next year,we have grown to more than 10,000 users and are on path to become profitable early next year.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

We are a team of 11. Two of them are Ukrainians living and working in Canada.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Our startup has received $1.5 million from VC funds like Hustle Fund, Forum Ventures, N49P, FlyerOne, Vesna Capital, and many others as well as angel investors like Vlad Magdalin (Webflow founder).

“We started raising funds at the worst time ever—in November 2021 when we were about out of funds. This time was very stressful. We received our first check from our primary investor, Forum Ventures, on the first day of the full-scale war.”

Dmyro commented the investment.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

Next year we are launching our secret R&D initiative that will help developers and open sources libraries monetize their content, on top of that we are also developing a “virtual CTO” project powered by our internal AI development.

Ravio has published a report on growth, hiring, and compensation trends from over 150,000 compensation datapoints across European tech companies. AIN.Capital shares key points of the report.

Hiring

• Startups have cut hiring by 30-50% in 2023, due to rising inflation, worldwide reduction in VC funding, and an almost-closed IPO window.
• Late-stage (Series C+) companies have dropped down the most — 31%, prioritizing stability rather than growth.

Attrition

• Attrition rates have increased for early and growth stage startups, due to increased need to retain top talents.
• However, late-stage companies still experience talent leakage at 18%, compared to previous year’s 22%.

Salary increases and equality

• Pay increases are down by almost 50% compared to last year. This year, the typical employee in a European tech startup can only expect an increase of about 4.8% compared to 8%.
• Whilst this is still above average across other industries and company types, it does pose a risk given the high importance of employee retention currently.
• Regarding equality of positions, only 19% of executives in Europe’s startups are women.

• We can that the gender pay gap reduces as the job level increases. However, the representation of women is still incredibly low at these higher job levels.

Benefits

Cash compensation is important, but it isn’t everything. Startups need to have a competitive total compensation package to attract and retain the best talent – and that includes benefits:

• The most-offered fringe benefit is private health insurance with 54%.
• Cycle to work scheme is 51%.
• Home office allowance is 51%.
• Professional development fund is 45%.
• Mental health service subscription is at 44%.

What do you do in general? What is your expertise?

I’m a full-time investor since 2019. But before this, I was a full-time entrepreneur for 15 years. I also spent three years in the Swedish armed forces. After the military, I studied economics and finance in Stockholm. I started my first company as a student. I moved to Kyiv full-time in 2019 and started investing as a business angel in early-stage companies.

But the first investment we made in Ukraine was already in 2014-2015. So we have been investing in Ukraine, like Ukrainian tech startups, for almost 10 years. Back when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014, almost nobody was investing in Ukrainian tech companies.

Overall, we have invested in a number of Ukrainian startups including YouScan, Awesomic, Cargofy, Allset, Let’s Enhance, Competera, Legal Nodes, and Datrics. Last year, we also acquired shares in Beetroot, a Swedish-Ukrainian IT company which is having a big impact in Ukraine, including through Beetroot Academy, which has trained more than 10,000 Ukrainian IT professionals. On the topic of education, in 2023 we also helped launch Pareto Business School, which offers an online mini-MBA program. We have several Ukrainian Pareto MBA alumni already.

You’re the founder of the investment company Hype Ventures. Tell me more about it.

It started with just me making early-stage angel investments. But then we took all these different investments, put them into one company, and got more shareholders on board. So it’s been a very organic process. 

Hype Ventures is not a fund. If you are an investor, basically there are two options. Either you can invest through a fund, or you have an investment company. With a fund, you are investing mainly other people’s money. If you have an investment company, you can say it’s like a small family office. 

You basically invest your own money or the money from a small group of people who decided to invest together. It’s more flexible in terms of what you can invest in. You can invest small checks, big checks. For example, the smallest check that we did was $25,000. And the biggest check we’ve done is like $700,000. There’s a big difference, and that’s a bit untypical.

This flexibility is good, because in the last 12 months, we started investing in defense tech startups, making our first investment this year. Now we’re actually actively looking for defense tech startups. I’ve been here maybe 10 times since the full scale invasion and I’m seeing a lot of activity in the defense tech space.

What is the first defense tech startup that you invested in?

The company is called HighCat. They have their R&D in Germany, but they also work with Ukraine. We were the first investors in this company. D3, the defense tech fund based in Kyiv, invested in them after us.

This year, in November-December, we hope to make two more defense tech investments. It’s a very interesting area due to several reasons. The first thing is: you can help Ukraine win the war faster. And the second thing is: you can also make money. And if you can make money out of it, it means it’s more long-term. You can take this earned money and reinvest into more, and more, and more startups in the same space. That’s the idea.

It’s good for defense, because Ukraine is defending Europe directly. Furthermore, some technology developed here can also be used in, for example, Sweden or Finland, also boosting defense there. So, if you invest in defense tech, you are helping Ukraine win. And, at the same time, you’re helping the rest of Europe.

I think you’re very correct. Defense tech is a lot more promising than other industries right now, especially in Ukraine. Now, other than defense tech, what does Hype invest in?

Well, we started with AI, big data, and cloud startups. That’s when we saw that there were a lot of cool companies in Ukraine. One example is Awesomic, a cloud-based design service. It has just amazing founders. And another company called Cargofy is doing logistics and is also doing very impressive work.

So one thing that we’ve also invested a lot of time and effort in this year is Pareto Business School. Pareto offers a mini-MBA at a price that full-time MBA programs can’t match. Usually, MBA programs take one or two years and cost a lot of money. But this one provides a very concentrated, summarized, and practical-oriented course. It takes around five hours per week. It’s based in Stockholm, Sweden, but it’s online, so you can get this Nordic-style business education anywhere, including in Ukraine. Already, we’ve graduated two cohorts of 15-20 people each. I’m also one of the guides on the program.

So, we’re very active, as you can hear. But the main thing is, we’re an investment company, investing in defense tech in Ukraine.

And why did you decide to come here and invest in Ukraine?

In 2019, I was still in Sweden doing some other stuff there. Then I broke up with my girlfriend and started thinking about what to do next, where to spend time and so on. In 2019, we had already made investments in Ukraine, for example, in YouScan. And I had a lot of friends here. So I just decided I’m going to come here and see what the startup scene is like in more detail.

Here, I started going to a lot of startup events. And just met a lot of people. It was actually very good timing: 2019, 2020, and even 2021. It was a boom time for tech companies in Ukraine. And it was just a lot of fun. It’s a very different vibe here. People are more straightforward here. If they don’t like something, they will tell you that they don’t like it.

Ukraine is also similar to Sweden in that Sweden is a country with a small internal market. So, Swedish startups usually go to the United States. For example, Spotify, which started in Sweden, expanded very quickly to the US. And it’s the same with Ukrainian startups. They test the product in Ukraine. But then they go to the US to become big global companies. This is a big benefit for investors like me.

You talked about investing in two more defense tech companies this year. Tell me more about that.

We have looked at tens of different tech startups in Ukraine. There are some areas which are really, really interesting. I spent a few years in the Swedish military and I can talk about defense tech for hours. Of course, drones are really interesting. In Ukraine, as you know, after the full scale invasion, people were improvising a lot. There were and still are hundreds of different teams building different things. It’s still quite fragmented.

But what we’re seeing now is that these startups get more and more structured and organized. It’s also important to standardize things. Because war is about mass production and standardization. That’s how you can really get the cost down and how you can win the war. If somebody hasn’t been in the army, or maybe seen how real industries work, it’s really hard to understand how complex this is.

So these kinds of drone startups are doing a very important job. But it’s important to keep in mind other things that also need some innovation in the military world, such as logistics. The question is: “How can you make logistics more efficient?” Anybody who has studied military history knows that if you can win like the logistics war, then you can win the whole war. And if you cannot feed your soldiers or give them ammunition, then you’re done.

Drones are very sexy, and very cool, but things like logistics, medical care, software and communications are crucial. In the past, war was very hardware-oriented. Now war is becoming more and more software even though the killing is mostly done by artillery. There’s lots of electronic warfare going on, and the Russians are good at some of those things. When you fly in Ukraine, it’s a kind of GPS denied environment. You cannot trust satellite navigation. This is why you have different startups who are doing alternative navigation solutions for drones. This is very important. It’s not an easy task from a software point of view, so this is where software startups can be very helpful.

Another thing which is extremely, extremely important, which, I think, doesn’t get enough attention, is training. Training is, probably, the most important thing in war, in addition to morale and fighting spirit. I would like to see more startups that are trying to improve the training of soldiers. If somebody heard of something like this please send it to me, because I’ve only seen one or two pitches that are connected to military training.

What piece of advice would you give to these aspiring defense tech startups?

I would advise them to go outside. It’s actually the same thing as with normal startups. It’s about leaving the building. The idea is: you have somebody who’s a programmer, and they sit and develop the most amazing product in the world. And then they go outside, and they try to sell it. But nobody’s buying it. This is a classic case. 

So the piece of advice to everybody who is an entrepreneur is: leave the building, go out, and talk to your customers.

Who are your customers? Well, they are the soldiers. So go out and talk with the soldiers, even go to the frontline if you can. To be fair, many entrepreneurs do this in Ukraine. Get a friend who’s in the armed forces and just talk about what those guys need. What’s their biggest problem? Ask yourself how you can help them solve this problem. Of course, they can talk about the war and killing, but a lot of the problems are very domestic and practical. You know, like, how can I keep in touch with my family? What do I eat? How and where do I sleep and wash myself? How do I rotate? And if we think it’s going to be a long war, which I think it’s going to be, then you have to think about these things long-term.

In conclusion, what would you like to say about defense tech in Ukraine?

I don’t claim to be a big authority on this, but I think many people don’t understand military stuff and this is a real problem. Ukraine changed a lot in the last ten years. The military is getting rid of the general feel of the Soviet military, as a low-status and bureaucratic thing. Back then, including during the post-Soviet years, if you were a smart person, you would not go to the military. Since very few people wanted to go to the military, because of corruption and other problems, there is now a whole generation which is not very familiar with military things.

Since the full scale invasion, and even after the start of the war in 2014, this has been changing in Ukraine. In countries like Finland and Israel most young people receive military training. So they know something about the military. It brings new talent and new ideas, which can both help to develop the military and contribute to a general startup culture in society.

In Ukraine, there’s still a lot of work to be done, regarding the defense tech industry. But you’re on the right track.

Lastly, people think that you’re either outside NATO or you’re in. Actually, it’s more of a scale. So, Sweden is not yet in NATO formally, but in reality Sweden is 90% in NATO, and Ukraine, I would say, is like 25% in NATO already. So it’s a spectrum and you’re already on the way.

In the Startup of the Day column, the team of Zibra AI shares more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

Zibra AI was co-founded by Alex Petrenko, Vladyslav Zavadskyi and Den Dmytrenko, in 2021. Vladyslav (who later became the technical co-founder and Head of R&D at Zibra AI) had been working on technology to accelerate 3D processing using the power of AI. He shared those ideas with Den, as he knew Den was helping tech ideas develop and scale. Den realized that that idea could become the basis for a startup and be scaled. Later, he introduced Vlad to Alex Petrenko, who previously held senior business development roles at CoWorking Platforma and Talkable.

Then, they gathered a team together and started developing a unique solution for the gaming industry. Being gamers themselves, their goal was to automate the most time-consuming processes, enhancing the rate at which gamers experience new titles and ensuring a more streamlined workflow for developers.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

We were working on a core technology itself for about 5 months before we started building actual solutions based on the core technology. It took us around 11 months to launch the first MVP and roll out those features to the gaming community for testing purposes.

“Our product is complex and we faced a lot of challenges with porting our solution to a full range of devices to create a first platform-agnostic solution that could work anywhere.”

Another challenge was around running a series of optimizations to fin into strict performance limitations of mobile platforms.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

Our goal is to build a platform for creating AI-generated assets for any virtual world and experience. The product is very complex. To complete its development entirely it will take more than a couple of years. We cannot afford to wait, so we are building it with the principle that each component can be implemented separately.

We began with liquid physics and later added smoke and fire, cloth simulation, and much more. Currently, we are working on adding functionality for generating 3D objects and packaging all of this into a single platform for creating 3D content for all virtual worlds.

Several components of this product, specifically solutions for creating realistic liquid physics, smoke, and fire, are already on the market. Currently, Zibra AI’s tools are used by more than 100,000 users worldwide.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

We started with a community bottom-top approach and rolling out our features for free to the indie development community. Now, we have more than 2,500 active annual subscribers and are ready to make a shift into our second step in GTM — serving SME gaming companies with Studio licenses. After we’re planning to add ENT-level customers and expand outside of gaming (VR/AR + Filming/Production).

What are your target markets and consumers?

Having iterative steps in our GTM, our ideal target customer might be slightly different depending on the company’s stage. Right now, we’re focusing on SME gaming studios that are purchasing a typical studio license without any customization.

Afterward, we’re planning to add ENT-level companies because that’s the only way to grow and stress test our solutions. Primarily targeting regions with big gaming development communities — US, Asia, and Nordics.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated?

Zibra AI launched its flagship product, Zibra Liquids, in 2021. Since its launch, the company has garnered significant recognition from industry leaders and has formed strategic partnerships with major players such as Epic Games, Nvidia, and Unity.

In May, Zibra AI was selected as one of only 32 out of 1,600 applicants (and notably, the only participant from Eastern Europe) to participate ina16z’s SPEEDRUN program, which led to a $500,000 investment from a16z.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

Currently, there are 25 people on the team. Twenty-three of them are located in Ukraine. During the full-scale war, we expanded the team by hiring an engineer from Poland, and a sales manager based in the USA.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

We’re closing our seed round now with some notable investors onboard, including a16z, Hartmann Capital and Metavision.

In 2022 we closed our pre-seed round, $1,2 million with some notable angels, including Sebastien Borget, Phil Libin, Scott Hartsmann, SID Venture Partners, and Gismart. Before that, we did a small round of $500,000 locally in Ukraine to bootstrap the project.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

Primarily, we are focusing on growing our tech expertise by hiring top ML and 3D talents from the gaming industry and accelerating our development pace. With our seed round, we’re aiming to lay the groundwork for our b2b process and start scaling fast.

AIN.Capital shares the key takeaways, as well as general data per each CEE country featured in the report.

Key takeaways regarding AI in CEE

• Overall, the AI ecosystem in Central and Eastern Europe has experienced a significant rise in the number of AI companies being founded from the mid-2010s onwards, peaking between 2018-2019.
• In the period between 2015 and 2023, a staggering 694 AI product companies sprang to life.
• Between 2021 and 2023 alone, the AI product companies raised at least $4.2 billion. By August 2023, the startup ecosystem had raised approximately $8.2 billion.
• Within the region, there are over 120 active VCs interested in AI startups.

• Nevertheless, the ecosystem is still in its early seeds. Out of the companies featured in the report, more than a third (40%) had raised pre-seed and seed rounds, while only approximately 13% had later-stage funding. The median funding amount across the stages is $1 million.
• With over 150 startups, healthcare and life sciences stand out as the industry with the most AI innovation in the CEE region; Also one of the best-funded.
• A big challenge for the future growth of the ecosystem is that there is a limited number of education institutions in deep tech and AI, leading to local talent often succeeding overseas. Another concern is the absence of a proper national AI strategy in most countries.
• As of today, there are over 900 AI startups in the CEE region, with 30% having headquarters in other more developer countries.

Data per country

• Bulgaria — has 77 AI-focused startups in 2023, most prominent are Hyperscience, Payhawk, Quantive, DRONAMICS, and Alcatraz AI. A total of $950 million was raised by Bulgarian AI companies so far.
• Croatia — has 38 product companies, with the biggest being Rimac Automobil, Infobip, Cognism, Reversing Labs, and Gideon. Croatian companies raised a total of $2 billion to date.
• Czech Republic — offers 158 AI startups to the world, biggest are Rossum, Resistant AI, Deepnote, Phrase, and Parrot. A total amount of $560 million was secured by Croatian companies.
• Greece — has 158 AI companies, which raised a total of $765 million. Spotawheel, Causaly, Plum, Netdata, and Balena raised the biggest amount.
• Hungary — a total of $360 million was raised by 63 AI companies. SEON, Bitrise, Almotive, Turbine, and Commsignia are the most prominent ones.
• Poland — provides 199 startups to the market, which raised $870 million to date. Silent Eight, Infermedica, Synerise, Nomagic, and Cosmose being the most popular ones.
• Romania — has 117 AI companies, which raised $2.4 billion, with UiPath, FintechOS, DruidAI, FlowX, and Dexory securing the biggest amount.
• Slovakia — has 31 AI product companies. To date, a total of $100 million of funding was raised. The most prominent include Brightpick Photoneo Group, Fuergy, Segron, Powerful Medical, Atomontage.

In the Startup of the Day column, the founding team of Outfindo shares more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Outfindo brings “Guided Selling” approach the ultimate experience in matching customers with the right products by asking them questions they can easily answer. This is applicable to any complex product segment. Outfindo started with bikes/e-bikes and is now launching a new product vertical, in cooperation with major e-commerce platforms: washing machines. More product segments to be announced soon.

We assist the customers in product selection through conversation, significantly reducing the number of products that meet their needs, based on several informed decisions. Integration into the partner’s website requires no more than a few hours of work, and subsequently leads to automatic software and design updates.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

Jan Mateju claims that his main inspirations were friends & family when asking for help choosing the right bike:

“I knew how to help them when choosing a bike, but when choosing any other complex product for myself, I felt lost. That was the impulse when it hit me – how e-commerce has become so product-centric and has completely lost the ‘store expert’ approach we are all familiar with from the local corner shop,”

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

We embarked on our journey by launching our own B2C platform, allowing us to rigorously test and refine the concept of guided selling. This approach ensured unbiased development, extensive user testing, and invaluable insights. After witnessing the remarkable results on our platform, we swiftly developed the first SaaS MVP in just a matter of months. Thanks to the current tech stack, we are able to make other guides for other verticals in a few weeks.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We started in 2020 with bikes & e-bikes, and to deliver a unique guided selling experience, we decided to build it on our own platform. We did not want to be influenced by any brand or big player in order to deliver a really unbiased solution where the customer is in the center, not the product.

Once we had enough data to know how we compare with “ordinary” e-shops and we were sure about the impact of our solution, we started with the SaaS go-to-market strategy (2023).

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Monthly fee for SaaS solution we offer is set up on the value we deliver to the partner. Value based pricing makes is affordable for small businesses and enterprise as well.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Our goal is to venture into the market across Europe and North America. This includes not only the Product Guide for bikes/ebikes but for all complex products.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

Outfindo’s product increases customer engagement on the partner’s website – 40% of visitors interact with the guide, increases partner website conversion (up to 3x) – and significantly reduces returns (in some cases by 70%).

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

Currently, Outfindo’s team consists of around 25 people. This allows to maintain close connections across the company. Everyone knows each other, we’re aware of one another and what each person is working on. However, for expansion and growth, we certainly need additional helping hands.

We’re currently seeking a Senior Sales Manager, Data Analyst, and several other roles. So, if this catches your interest, be sure to check out our LinkedIn page.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Our previous €1.1 million investment was led by JARO Capital, joined by several business angels. Recently, we raised €900,000 seed round for expansion into new markets and launching new verticals. The investment was led by Presto Ventures, with participation from Patero and Longevity Fellows.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

“Our mission is the same from the very beginning: to help people choose the right product seamlessly and effortlessly, even when buying online,”

Besides expansion, it’s primarily about adding more verticals. Currently, apart from bikes, we offer the Product Guide for washing machines. Next in line are phones and major household appliances, and for outdoor enthusiasts, equipment like skis.

Kostiantyn Boriak, Doctor of Technical Sciences and Professor, told AIN.Capital about the cloak of invisibility creation, what makes it unique, and why it is not everywhere in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The project began in 2014

“It all started with the idea to protect our loved ones in 2014 when Russia attacked us. My friends went to the ATO (Joint Forces Operation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine) and then, for the first time in the ATO zone, faced the problems of using TICs by enemy intelligence units and on enemy armored vehicles (while French thermal cameras were being installed on Russian modernized T-72M tanks). We decided to develop some kind of protection against this,” Kostiantyn Boriak told AIN.Capital in an interview.

Its full name is “PNM-1, Camouflage Cloak for Military Personnel against Thermal Imaging Surveillance and Reconnaissance Equipment.” Currently, scientists at the State University of Intellectual Technologies and Communications are working on it. But when it all started, this institution did not exist yet; it was established later.

“In 2016, our educational institution’s name was the Odesa State Academy of Technical Regulation and Quality (OSATRQ), merged with the Communications Academy in 2020. Since then, the new educational institution has been called the SUITC,” Kostiantyn explained.

The first prototype of the cloak of invisibility Boriak and his colleagues, S.V. Lienkov and A.F. Diachenko described in an article back in 2015. Since then, the project has had eight iterations, and scientists continue improving it.

The parameters of the Ukrainian cloak of invisibility

• The cloak blocks heat radiation and makes the soldiers invisible to the enemy. This is vital for snipers or Special Operation teams performing combat missions.
• It weighs up to 2.5 kg, is highly protected from rain and sleet, does not burn, and protects against high temperatures.
• The cost of one prototype of that coat is about 400 euros, which is significantly cheaper than its Western counterparts. Kostiantyn says that a similar NATO-style product costs over 2,000 euros.
• Most of the materials used to make invisibility cloaks are local production.

“We had two goals in mind. First, to develop a product that would protect our soldiers. Second, to make it so that we would not depend on imports and be able to establish the entire production cycle in Ukraine. I believe we have done the impossible at our own expense,” summarized Kostiantyn.

Why isn’t the cloak in mass production yet?

Soldiers from various units have successfully tested the cloak in the field. But to launch mass production, the team needs orders. Volunteers’ requests for single pieces are not enough because sewing a single coat is 4-5 times more difficult than sewing ordinary clothes, so it is unprofitable for contractors.

“In 2016, I demonstrated this project in Kyiv at an Arms and Military Equipment exhibition. We received a lot of requests and questions, and everyone liked it. Foreign experts from Turkey were very interested—they asked questions, took pictures, and offered to cooperate. And when they received all the information, they disappeared and did not answer the phone calls. An interesting fact is that 5-6 months later, in the spring of 2017, information appeared about the Turkish army receiving anti-thermal-camera camouflage means in the form of cloaks,” says Kostiantyn.

After the exhibition, we received a few orders from individual volunteers. We made ten samples and gave them to our friends in the military and volunteers—we didn’t have enough money for more.

The scientists received two patents in Ukraine for a multilayer material used in the construction of the cloak. Still, after a significant (approximately 10-fold) increase in the state’s monetary contributions to maintain the patent and the lack of demand for manufacturing, research was frozen until better times.

“Everything was on hold until the full-scale invasion. And on February 25, 2022, I took this product out of the garage, and we decided to resume the project and improve it,” Kostiantyn said.

Project resurrection

In 2014, Kostiantyn invested 2,000 euros of his own money in the prototype. Further expenses were not calculated, as the cloak is still in development. The sample demonstrated by Fedorov is the 8th version of the invisibility cloak for 2023, and it will not be the last.

The scientists have filed a new application for a Ukrainian patent for the 8th version of the improved cloak and are awaiting the decision of the Ukrpatent’s experts. In this way, they hope to protect the know-how in its basis. According to Kostiantyn, this radically different approach distinguishes the cloak from foreign analogs, making it effective in the field and cheaper in production.

“When making the cloak, we do not interfere with the existing physical processes of heat exchange between a human being and the environment, but only adjust and adapt to these natural phenomena so that they go invisible to thermal imaging surveillance equipment of the enemy.

Adapting to the conditions of nature and controlling physical natural processes has yielded positive results. Our cloak can be used for almost unlimited time without losing its camouflage features—they are stable, like natural phenomena, and do not deteriorate from long-term use.

And this is the main advantage over foreign models, which have certain limitations and lose their “invisibility” after a long use. Foreign analogs work on the principle of reflecting or absorbing infrared energy, and we have added controlled natural convection to our sample cloak, and it works.”

The project applied to the state MillTech accelerator Brave1 in May and passed the selection. Since its publication by Fedorov, the cloak has received much attention. However, it is still a story with an open end. This time, the developers hope to convert it into a result that will not go in vain as in 2016.

In the Startup of the Day column, the team of Pluspoint shares more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

The core product of Pluspoint is a platform that enables local businesses (ranging from restaurants to medical clinics) to manage customer reviews on Google, Facebook, and various other online platforms. Additionally, it assists businesses in intercepting and responding to negative reviews while retaining their customers.

After receiving a service or purchasing a product, customers are prompted to review their interaction experience with a company or platform. Positive feedback is automatically published on popular review platforms, while negative reviews or complaints are reported to business representatives or the support team, complete with necessary details to ensure swift response and issue resolution.

Currently, Pluspoint offers integrations with over 8,000 key services, including online review platforms, CRM, ERP, BI, analytics, and email marketing services.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

The funder has been interested in this market and sector for a long time. Firstly, the market size for online reputation management platforms exceeds $1 billion and continues to grow annually. Online reviews are among the most critical factors influencing Local SEO development.

Also, online reviews played a key role in attracting new customers for one of Sergii’s previous companies. In fact, we replicated some of the functionality offered by Pluspoint using various third-party systems.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

It took us just over three months to develop our initial prototype aimed at dental practices. In the course of the first month, we managed to secure a client which was an encouraging milestone.

We quickly encountered a series of challenges that prompted us to reevaluate our initial strategy. One of the major roadblocks we faced was establishing contact with the decision-makers within dental practices, which proved to be more difficult than we had anticipated. This not only slowed down our sales cycle but also restricted our ability to scale and grow our customer base in a substantial manner.

Therefore, we decided to shift our focus and extend our services to encompass a broader spectrum of multi-location service businesses and franchises. This transition was aimed at enhancing our reach and improving the potential LTV of our clients, allowing us to build a more sustainable and prosperous business model.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

The initial commercial version of the product was developed in the summer of 2021.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Pluspoint operates on a SaaS model and is available for companies worldwide.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Currently, Pluspoint is localized for Portuguese and Spanish-speaking markets. The company boasts a clientele in Europe and South America, collaborating with companies such as Lycamobile, Papel Craft, and German Doner Kebab.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated?

From a customer base standpoint, we have successfully expanded our reach and now have over 100 clients spread across Spain, Portugal and Brazil. As for the direct impact of our service, we have noticed a remarkable uptick in customer engagement metrics for our clients. On average, there has been a three-fold increase in the number of reviews our clients receive and a significant positive shift in the rating scores, with an average improvement of +0.8.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

Pluspoint’s headquarters are situated in the United States, and the team comprises members from Ukraine, Portugal, Spain, and Brazil. All Pluspoint employees have been working remotely since the establishment of the company.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, and the purpose of the investment.

In 2023, Pluspoint has secured $400,000 in funding. The investment was led by Pragmatech Ventures, a venture capital firm and startup studio. The team plans to allocate 70% of the funding towards expanding its sales geography, with the remaining 30% earmarked for product development.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

The company’s future plans involve expanding available integrations with popular messaging platforms, introducing the product to new markets, and incorporating AI features based on LLM (Language Model).

What is Mantis Analytics

• Mantis processes thousands of messages and gigabytes of data from mass media, social networks, and information platforms in real time. Then arranges everything on an interactive map.
• The data helps counter disinformation and hostile propaganda more effectively. After all, everyone can see how the Russians spread fakes and exchange information.
• Mantis Analytics is fully based on modern machine learning technologies, uses NLP and LLM models for fast and effective analysis of huge volumes of unstructured data.
• Mantis was born as a volunteer project that was tested within the defense-tech cluster Brave1. You can learn more about the cluster and what it offers startups in the defense sector by following the link below.

The startup’s story

• Mantis Analytics was founded by Maksym Tereshchenko (CEO), Ostap Vykhopen (STO), and Anton Tarasiuk (Director of Expertise). The current team is more than 10 people, half of whom work full-time.

“It all started as a non-commercial initiative. In March 2022, everyone was trying to figure out ways to help. There were many different chats where people cooperated to do something. Advertisers were chatting, journalists were chatting, and of course, the AI community was chatting, too. In one of these chats, AI, ML, and NLP specialists came up with an idea to create a tool that would help analyse the information space to be able to extract important data from all the information that was and is being shared today to help understand where the truth is and where the lies are, what the enemies are saying, and how to counter them in the best way,” Anton Tarasiuk told AIN.Capital.

“Then we cooperated with the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine — the task was to monitor the information space, to see the main narratives being promoted by the enemy in order to counter them.

Gradually, other users and clients appeared. In February 2023, it became clear that “you can’t stop an idea whose time has come. We have the best NLP and ML specialists in Eastern Europe with extensive international experience on our team. We already have a product. That means we are a startup! Now we are at the stage of full corporatization and are moving on to attracting the first seed investments.”

• According to Anton, Mantis Analytics is already talking to investment funds and plans to raise a seed round in the near future. Before that, the product was developed at founders’ own expense, with the help of infrastructure and other grants. In particular, they received $25,000 from Brave1.
• Mantis Analytics cooperates with the National Security and Defense Council. And, additionally, with several government agencies, which the startup cannot disclose. As for foreign users, as of September, the startup already has a commercial commitment with one American analytics center and is negotiating with another.
• While Mantis Analytics is preparing the platform for production state, the team is focused on project collaboration. In the future, it is planned to sell a subscription to the platform. The company does not plan to close the non-commercial projects, because helping the state to protect cognitive security is part of the startup’s mission. In addition, such cooperation is a valuable source of expertise.
• Currently, the first version of MVP Mantis Analytics is working, which is already being used by some customers in test mode. At the end of September, the company plans to launch the second version of MVP, which will have a significantly expanded set of functions. The next one will be the production version.

The company’s main product is Zibra Effects, which automates the creation of 3D resources and visual effects in game development, metaverse, and other related areas. The startup was founded in 2021 and is based in Kyiv.

In an interview with an AIN.Capital editor, the Zibra AI co-founder and CEO Oleksandr Petrenko told why they applied to Speedrun, what is the current stage of the product, and how they managed to raise millions of investments amid the full-scale invasion.

Why did you decide to apply for the Speedrun program? How did you manage to pass the selection? What are your expectations from the program?

Since the startup was launched, we have dreamed of working with the a16z team. In October 2022, we managed to meet several partners of the fund. After that, we continued communicating, exchanging updates, and meeting during gaming conferences.

After one of these meetings, I saw a post on LinkedIn by Andrew Lee, who wrote about the launch of the Speedrun program.

I intuitively filled out the form and immediately received a letter saying I was the first who did so.

The Epic Mega Grant from Epic Games, which Zibra AI received in 2022, also helped me to get into the accelerator. It was an additional validation from one of the most prominent players in the tech industry that added credibility to what we were working on.

However, the team, the right product, and the fantastic demo we prepared for the final selection played a crucial role in getting us into Speedrun.

It is reported that the company has already raised $2.5 million in total. How did you manage to raise investments during the war?

Yes, that’s right. In total, we raised $2.5 million during the war. Part of this investment is related to the seed round, which we will announce very soon.

In 2022, we completed a $1.2 million pre-seed round, and now we are working on closing the seed round, in which a16z invested.

It wasn’t easy to attract investments. We met war in the fundraising process.

In early February, we had a few commits, but the first email I received on the day of the full-scale invasion was from one of the potential investors who refused to invest in us because of the war.

I was devastated. But later, we realized we had two options: either to give up and close the project because funding was minimal or continue working no matter what. We chose the second option, and by the end of March, I could close the first tickets from angel investors for more than $300,000.

We decided to close the angel tickets first because getting venture capital investments is a very long process. We wouldn’t have had time to do it physically.

We managed to attract investments thanks to the coordinated work of the company’s management and co-founders Vlad Zavadskyi and Den Dmytrenko. We should also mention our COO Roman Mohylnyi and CTO Oleksandr Puchka, who were also actively involved in the fundraising process. However, of course, all this would not have happened without the phenomenal performance of the entire team. They not only actively volunteered from the beginning of the war but also worked almost 24/7, implementing milestone after milestone. The tech company Roosh also played an important role, helping us with its networking and constantly supporting our team.

Receiving angel investment eliminated the threat that we would run out of money at some point. We made several strategic iterations and initiated negotiations with several venture capital funds. Then, SID Venture Partners and Gismart helped us a lot, supporting us with more significant investments and enabling us to close the pre-seed round.

Currently, there is a boom in AI technologies in the world. Has it helped you with fundraising in any way?

At the end of 2022, the world saw a boom in the field of generative AI, which we have been working in for almost three years. This has made it easier for us to access venture capital funds but also complicated our work. Over the past eight months, many companies have announced their solutions based on generative AI, which has caused a lot of noise. It has become more difficult for funds to determine which projects are really worth investing in and which are just trying to raise money amid the hype.

At what stage is the product? Do you already have customers and users? Please share the traction figures.

Our product is very complex. It takes years to complete its development. We cannot afford to wait, so we build it based on the principle that each component can be implemented separately.

We started with water physics, then added smoke and fire, tissue simulation, and much more. Now we are working on adding functionality for generating 3D objects and packing it all into one platform to create 3D content for all virtual worlds.

Several components of this extensive product, namely solutions for creating realistic water, smoke, and fire physics, are already on the market.

Zibra AI technologies currently have more than 90,000 users worldwide. It is a significant achievement considering that we launched our first solution, Zibra Liquids, just before the full-scale war in early 2022.

How many people are in your team, and how many more do you want to hire? Are they all in Ukraine?

There are 25 people in the team now. Twenty-three of them are in Ukraine. Even during the full-scale war, we expanded the team by hiring an engineer from Poland and a sales manager from in the United States.

About Bimp

Bimp is a comprehensive ERP system that covers management accounting processes: production, inventory, finances, interaction with counterparties, and sales funnel.

The project was launched at the end of 2022, and for most of the first year of the war, it provided free access to entrepreneurs. Today, using the system costs $29/month per user.

The basic configuration is ready, and the system is already being used by more than 200 companies, including Headway and BMF Ukraine. Customization is also being done for two large businesses (invoices starting from $100K for individual modifications and implementation).

Primary clients include B2B trade and retail, manufacturing, HoReCa, construction, and service businesses. The Bimp team consists of 30+ employees.

Development timeline with a focus on IT

Currently, the Bimp team focuses on customizing the product for medium and large businesses, as well as comprehensive improvements.

By the end of 2023, party accounting, logistics module, expanded exchange rate calculation, and the ability to decipher local accounting analytics using AI are priorities.

The product is already integrated with many IT systems, including Monobank, Nova Poshta, Rozetka, Poster, Checkbox, Opendatabot, and more. In the coming six months, there are plans for extensive collaboration between Bimp and Privat24 for businesses.

Bimp’s competitors in the Ukrainian ERP Market, battling with 1C

The main competitor to Ukrainian ERP, primarily, is the russian software 1C, which is still used in Ukraine (according to Bimp’s internal research, by over 50% of trade and manufacturing businesses).

The main reason for the slow migration from 1C is its locality. Russian software was installed directly on enterprise computers many years ago, and Ukrainian businesses, having customized the system and paid for a license once, have become accustomed to it.

In addition to 1C, the Bimp team considers German SAP (which is actively being implemented in Ukrainian government structures), Belgian Odoo, American Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 as competitors.

Advantages of Ukrainian Bimp over Western ERPs include:

• The ability for phased engagement of functionality
• Customization to individual needs, based on the basic configuration
• Integration with Ukrainian systems, services, and banks

Bimp Results over the last 1.5 years

The Bimp team shared the startup’s traction and forecasts with us, judging from the growth, for the next 5 years — the number of subscribers, ARR, LTV, and CAC:

By the end of 2023, Bimp plans to connect 1000 businesses to the ERP, thereby increasing annual revenue to $2 million. Currently, the team is considering offers from venture funds and business angels.

• JustWork is a marketplace for entrepreneurs and marketers. Small and medium-sized businesses can order marketing services on the marketplace, and marketers can quickly and conveniently monetize their expertise.
• The platform allows companies to post the details about the projects they want to hire a marketer for. After that, the algorithm selects a specialist who has the required level of competence and time. Next, the marketer forms a workplan and, if the company approves it, they start cooperation process.
• The company launched a closed MVP in 2021, but due to the full scale war the product development ceased. The team came back to the project only in the summer of 2022. JustWork was released on August 15, 2023.

“On the JustWork platform, you can find verified SEO and PPC specialists and pay them by the hour for their services. All tasks are categorized into different types. You can cooperate both hourly and on a subscription basis. It is very easy to hire a specialist for $200-300. JustWork’s system will offer you task and result management in a convenient and understandable way,” said Oleksandr Kolb, Promodo founder, when he announced the project in December 2022.

• At the end of 2022, Promodo invested more than $100,000 in the project development. Agency employees also became beta testers of the platform.
• According to Bilobrov, over 300 marketers work through JustWork. 30 companies are using JustWork today. On average, a customer spends 5 minutes looking for a specialist.
• The platform monetizes on the percent from the specialists’ fee. JustWork is focused on the European market, and Ukraine will become a test site for the marketplace.

In a commentary to AIN.Capital, Promodo founder Oleksandr Kolb, who became an investor and partner in the project, explains how the idea of creating JustWork came to be and why they decided to invest during a full-scale invasion.

“We also hope to develop the platform abroad: we already have an English version and the first customers who come from outside Ukraine. We’re seeing that the market is slowly recovering. Promodo is growing as a company, so we invest in this project, as we believe it will be cool, and the value we put in it will be well received by customers. Thanks to the next big product, we will continue to improve the digital marketing industry in Ukraine, Europe, and the whole world.”

The first product was drones responsible for plant protection. According to the founders, they managed to spray 6000 hectares of Ukrainian farmers using FarmFleet platform and to attract 15 service companies in Ukraine. In June 2023, the startup raised $550,000, with a valuation of $3.7 million. Currently, FarmFleet is aiming to get $10-20 million turnover and to increase the team in its US branch.  

In the Startup of the Day column, Valerii Iakovenko, co-founder of FarmFleet, shares more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

FarmFleet is a software startup, a platform, and it is an ERP system for the companies that are using robotics in agriculture to provide services to the farmers. On the other hand, it is a tool for farmers to secure allocation of the resources to perform technological operations when it is needed

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

We are working with drones and robotics for the past 10 years, and agriculture in Ukraine became one of our favorite industries. In past 3 years a segment of crop protection technologies appeared on the market and Ukraine became one of the global leaders in the speed of technology integration.

The modern farmer doesn’t want to spend hundreds of thousands on the machinery that works 10 days in a year – he wants to hire a professional service and not waste time and money on expenses to maintain machinery that stay in a barn. This is a story of resource management and a tool for the young agriculture companies to evolve robotics as a service idea into powerful businesses.

If you can better understand your own possibilities, plan your work ahead, use weather data on top of your planning – you can make additional 20% volume of operations in the same period of time and increase your pure efficiency. In realty, it is not about drones, it is about all technological operations.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

We spent 6 months to create MVP, and released the product just before autumn agriculture season. The product was developed in a very hard times, during full-scale russian invasion, and a part of our team was deployed, but work continued even when our colleagues were on eastern frontline.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

Farmfleet started to work in late August 2022, just before the largest crop protection season started in Ukraine. We managed to spray 6000 hectares of Ukrainian farmers using FarmFleet platform.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Since the platform delivers direct finance benefits for its users, there are several ways of monetization, from the subscription model, to the commission of the jobs provided for service operations, and since everything in agriculture is being calculated per hectare or per acre – there is a fee per each hectare of performed jobs. Depending on the type of user, the monetization is different.

However, this is about Ukrainian experience, when we are talking about global expansion and United States as a first international market – the business model will be not the same, since pain points of American farmers and not the same, and the products itself must be redesigned.

What are your target markets and consumers?

We are looking into market of agriculture service using robotics, and the first market to expand will be United States of America, where we want to learn more about functionality and possibility to evolve faster and become global startup. At the same time, Ukraine remains our main market where we have a head office.

The new businesses in agriculture in the US are opening up, and we want to help them work more efficiently, safer. At the end we want to grow more food and spend less resources, not only for monetary interested, but because of sustainable future that we help to create. Drones and robotics saves water, fuel, manpower and help to reduce pesticides usage during each application.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

We managed to attract 15 service companies in Ukraine and cover 6000 hectares of service, our end goals are to obtain a share in all plant protection operations on the region that we cover. In terms of financial indicators to be achieved before next round, – we are looking to get $10-20 million turnover.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

Currently, Farmfleet team has 20 members, we have our own service teams, project leads. In next months we plan to increase hire more personnel in the USA for our US branch, and we are planning to increase our developers team in Ukraine.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Farmfleet was created using our own investments, and we have just received a pre-seed investment of $550,000 with evaluation $3.7 million.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

We plan to expand not only in geography, we plan to cover more technological operation. It is not only plant protection stage and not about drones, only – robotics as a service in agriculture is far bigger. FarmFleet has to become a center of this ecosystem.

Currently, the company operates in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and some European countries. In June 2023, Localazy announced its second investment of €0.5 million from JIC Ventures, Garage Angels, and 12Bullets.  In total, it raised €1 million for the development of the product. The startup’s current valuation is €4.5 million.

In the Startup of the Day column, Vacláv Hodek, founder and CEO of Localazy, shares more details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Imagine you have a product that helps people solve their problems, but they actually cannot use it because of a language barrier. Let the real story answer this question.

For 76-year-old Raskiya Bala, it was an extremely strenuous task to ask her granddaughter for help every time she wanted to make a phone call. Save for the fact that phone calls were actual lifesavers then, Raskiya would not have owned a phone. The Hausa native and Non-English speaker had to wait for her phone and service provider’s features to be translated before she could access them.

Localazy is a continuous translation management platform that strives to make the localization and translation process efficient and enjoyable for your project. It supports a wide variety of third-party integrations, frameworks and a comprehensive range of formats through its developer-friendly command line interface (CLI) and API.

Inside the platform, we also offer various automated professional translation services and built-in machine translations. We want to change the way people approach localization, with emphasis on automation while maintaining quality.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

Before Localazy, I ran a software development agency, and we produced mobile apps for the worldwide markets. Some of our apps were really successful, reaching over 15 million downloads. From the very beggining, localization was a huge part of their success, demonstrated with such achievements as having the Japanese market to be the second best one after the US (obviously). And you can’t reach the Japanese market without proper localization.

However, keeping actively developed apps translated into 30+ languages was a demanding task, and existing tools helped but didn’t mitigate the pain we went through with keeping updated translations for ever-changing texts. We even developed our own tools to assist us and save us time and money.

All these ideas eventually became a basis for what is now Localazy.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

The idea for Localazy formed in my mind for a couple of years as I struggled with the localization of my mobile apps using existing solutions. It took us about one year to get to the MVP — the first version of Localazy that really helped our customers to get their mobile apps (we focused on mobile apps for the MVP) localized into more languages.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We launched Localazy in April 2020, and back then, it was a much smaller service mostly aimed at developers of mobile apps. It eventually became the solution it is now: a localization platform that helps various customers save their time and money and bring their products and services to more users around the world.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

Localazy has several revenue streams:

• Our core service is SaaS, meaning that you can get all the amazing features that make the localization of your product or service easy for a monthly/annual subscription.
• We can also help with professional human translations or delivery of localized files, and both of these services are paid on a usage-based basis

What are your target markets and consumers?

We already have customers worldwide, and we are mostly present in European and US markets. However, we also have many customers from Asia, Latin America, and Australia. From single developers to enterprises, we help all types of companies with digital products and services.

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

There are several different metrics we watch depending on who’s involved. For me, as CEO, typical SaaS metrics such as MRR/ARR, churn, ARPU, LTV are important. We’ve already reached profitability, so I’m mostly having my eyes on cash flow.

From the product perspective, we collect a lot of feedback from our customers and analyze how users are interacting with Localazy, what the bottlenecks are, and how we could remove them.

From the marketing perspective, there are hard metrics such as CAC:LTV as well as the softer ones, such as number of community interactions.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

Our fully remote team consists of about 10 core members. The fully remote mode needs a bit of different approach, and we have found a great way how to cooperate effectively together using many different tools — Slack, ClickUp, Fibery, Around, Miro and so on.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

Since launching, we have closed two early-stage investment rounds. The first one from Lighthouse Ventures; the second one consists of Lighthouse Ventures, 12 Bullets, JIC Ventures & Garage Angels. Our current valuation is €4.5 million.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

There are over 4 billion people online behind language barriers, and we strive to improve their quality of life via better understanding in terms of language and cultural alignment of products.

Our goal is to become the best solution whenever you need to bring your product or service into more languages. But beyond that, we don’t only want to be the solution for translating your texts, but the resource that helps you to actually reach success in foreign markets.

We are still very early in the game and keep improving Localazy to serve our customers even better. In everything we do, we focus on our core principles of automating the localization process, keeping the users in the control seat, and providing them with a clear UI.

It’s a challenging task, as we have several different users using the service – developers, translators, managers – and each of them is expecting Localazy to do a job that is a little bit different in every case.

Pay attention if you’re in finance, SaaS, AI, cybersecurity, health and fitness, IoT, or MedTech startups. 

Ukrainian professionals have extensive experience in working with projects in these industries. Many successful startups you know have Ukrainian talents as their founders. Some notable examples include Grammarly (SaaS), GitLab (SaaS), Monobank (Finance), Reface (AI), Betterme (Health & Fitness), and Clario Tech (Cybersecurity), among others.

Ukrainian engineers have played crucial roles in creating products like Petcube and Ring (IoT), as well as Cardio.AI and Esper Bionics (MedTech). They also have vast experience collaborating with major medical companies worldwide.

So, as you’re here reading, let me answer the questions on your mind. 

Ukrainian talents don’t need pity; they need good projects, just like other professionals.

Is the war still going on in Ukraine? Yes, russia continues to commit horrible crimes. 

But it doesn’t mean Ukrainians are frozen in their career development or hindered in driving businesses. 

Quite the opposite.

Co-working spaces for remote workers in Ukraine are well-equipped with light, internet, and bomb shelters. 

City governments support infrastructure at all levels, and businesses ensure workers have safe places to do their work. 

Ukrainian talents bring the same international values as other professionals around the globe, with even more enthusiasm and responsibilities. Founders are closing and opening new businesses, while startup founders are raising millions in investments. 

Ukrainian tech companies donated over $55 million to war relief causes in 2022.

The fact that Ukrainian people have to live and work in a war is horrible, and Ukraine should win as fast as possible. 

But Ukrainians don’t seek pity. 

Ukrainian tech talents need trust as business partners and the opportunity to work on the same good projects as people worldwide.

In return, you’ll have the most talented and dedicated individuals on your team. 

Ukrainians are located across the globe too. 

It’s worth mentioning that you can still collaborate with Ukrainian talents who relocated before or as soon as the war started. Check the map we created using our open survey (Q1 2023) among skilled professionals (with 4.5 years or more of experience).

Engineers are located:

Managers are located:

You can directly hire Ukrainian tech talents. 

1. Search on LinkedIn, Djini (specialists at all levels), highfive.expert (5+ years of experience, both tech, and non-tech), and local recruiters.
2. Utilize platforms like https://www.deel.com  or similar services for employment purposes.
3. Enter into a direct contract with the specialist as an individual entrepreneur. This allows the specialist to pay taxes independently in Ukraine.

Many EU-based specialists already have residence status, working permits, and individual entrepreneur accounts in Ukrainian banks.

Engineers with extensive experience working with US startups often prefer direct contracts, agree on gross compensation, and handle their tax obligations independently in Ukraine. 

Ukrainian software engineers with 5-15 years of experience are a perfect match for startups. 

They have experience in various industries, use modern stacks, possess a product mindset, an international background, good English, and salary expectations feasible for businesses at different growth stages.

«Working with Ukrainian professionals has been a rewarding experience for Redstone Solution OÜ. Their strong work ethic, pursuit of quality, and intelligence are truly impressive. They show great motivation and dedication, always ready to take on tasks and contribute to our goals.

I recommend any company, especially startups, to consider Ukrainians when hiring remotely. Their commitment and passion can be a valuable asset to any organization.» — Jérémy Cochoy, CEO of Redstone Solution OU. 

«As an early-stage healthcare startup based in Silicon Valley, we were determined to maintain lean product engineering operations while upholding high-quality standards. We sought experienced individuals who possessed exceptional problem-solving skills, a fast learning ability, and the capacity to contribute beyond mere programming expertise – qualities commonly found in top-tier technology companies in Silicon Valley, but without spending the entire runway during the first few months. Given these requirements, the decision to hire Ukrainian engineers was a no-brainer for us.

Whether building our core team or expanding an existing engineering team, I wholeheartedly recommend considering Ukraine as a go-to destination for future tech hires.” — Artem Petrov, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Caret Health. 

You can hire the following engineers who participated in our surveys (Q1 2023) and shared their data:

• Software Engineer/Developer
• Mobile Engineer
• Machine Learning Engineer
• Machine Learning Researcher
• Penetration Tester
• Data Engineer
• Big Data Engineer
• Data Scientist
• DevOps Engineer
• Director of Engineering
• Engineering Manager
• QA Engineer
• Solution Architect

Technology stacks they are proficient in:

Average salary expectations vary based on years of experience and technology stack expertise.

More than 50% of experts prioritize the following:

1. The opportunity to work on impactful products and with new technologies.
2. Advancement in their careers by taking new steps.
3. The chance to work in new industries or different job functions.

Ukrainian managers with 5-15 years of experience have often worked with US and European markets, operate on a solid monthly budget, and have proficiency in product development.

I advise you to pay attention to Ukrainian managers. Many of them have years of experience in leading teams for famous products. For example, Olha Noha, CMO at US company SplitMetrics, or Ruslan Nazarenko, Senior Product Growth Manager at Vimeo, based in Los Angeles. Some of them are also founders of well-known products.

You can hire the following non-tech specialists who participated in our surveys (Q1 2023) and shared their data:

• Growth Marketing Manager
• Marketing Manager
• Product Manager
• Product Marketing Manager
• Strategy Manager
• Business Analyst
• CEO
• CMO
• COO
• CTO
• Delivery Manager
• Development Director
• Development Manager
• Head of Communications
• Product Owner
• Project Manager
• Recruiter
• Product Designer

Average salary expectations depend on years of experience, market, and budget they have worked with.

Conscientiousness, goal-oriented mindset, a mature approach, and a strong sense of responsibility for delivering results—we understand that you are searching for these skills, and you will find them in Ukrainian tech talents.

If you are exploring the market of Ukrainian talents, seek consultancy. Share your requirements, and colleagues will advise if they can fulfill them, provide an exact budget estimate, and suggest how to promote the proposal. You will be pleasantly surprised by the level of engagement and client service.

Author: Viktoriia Prydatko, founder of VP Team and highfive.expert