It’s been a year since we launched Ukrainian Startup Wall of Fame, highlighting the first 15 fastest growing Ukrainian companies. The reason why we have created it is simple: there is an enormous amount of exponentially growing Ukrainian tech companies and extremely courageous and talented individuals who come up with cutting-edge ideas, launch products worldwide, optimize everyday life and challenge the world for the better.
Yet, there is an unspoken challenge - as mentioned by LIFT99 Founder, Ragnar Sass: “Ukrainian startups tend to hide their origins”. This creates one of the biggest obstacles on the way of educating local startup founders, tech entrepreneurs, and the rest of the startup community.
Ukrainian Startup Wall of Fame is our take on this challenge. We want to show that Ukraine has great startups, superstar founders, and you do not need to be in the Valley to have all the success. We want to help startups exchange the experience, share success-and-failure stories (which are equally important).
This year, we have updated the criteria by which you can get on the Wall of Fame:
1. You have to be a startup
a tech product company, with a presence of angel/venture capital as opposed to corporate funding
2. Your business & product are clear and transparent
you are not involved in shady business, you are honest and open about what you do, you focus on delivering quality first
3. You have at least 1 Ukrainian founder
because Ukrainians CAN start a global business, deliver the vision, invent a new game and master it
4. You have a significant presence in Ukraine - minimum 40% of your team is located in Ukraine
you have a local entity, you create working places in Ukraine, you pay taxes to the Ukrainian government, you educate and raise your team
5. > $2M annual revenue and/or > $5M+ funding
your business is working, you have users and the market is treating you well, you’ve got lots of traction and you are focused on growth
6. 70% - 100% YoY growth
“Grow so quickly it discourages anybody from even trying to compete” © Peter Thiel
And last week 6 new startups joined the Ukrainian Startups Wall of Fame!
*due to the confidentiality policies of the companies, we have made available the data and numbers that the companies have explicitly given the agreement to make publicly available or that have been publicly available before.
Launched in September 2015 Lalafo is growing exponentially. Currently millions of users have fun and get extra cash selling their stuff on Lalafo. Most of Lalafo users come from Central Asia & Europe where Lalafo is #1 C2C marketplace in a number of markets.
Lalafo is a C2C marketplace powered by artificial intelligence
Founded: 2015
Mobile app downloads: 10M
YoY revenue growth: 70%
Markets: Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Greece, Ukraine
“Our goal is to create an experience of buying second hand items online as convenient as buying new”
Liki24 is a service optimizing search and delivery of medicine.
Founded: 2017
Monthly users: 2M
YoY revenue growth: ~ 600%
Markets: Ukraine, Poland
Total funding: 6 million USD
Liki24 collaborates with 4500+ pharmacies over Ukraine collecting prices and availability for over 55 thousand goods. Therefore, users may order their medicine at best prices and save up to 30% thanks to smart algorithms of pickup and delivery.
“We help people get medicine at best prices in the most convenient way - either pickup with previous booking or delivery. It saves your nerves, time and money”
Reface is an AI-powered app where people can swap faces in the videos and GIFs in just a few seconds.
Reface became the first Ukrainian app that reached #1 in the US App Store, overtaking Netflix, TikTok and Youtube. The plan for 2021 is to create the first platform for content personalization.
Reface offers state-of-the-art technology for high-quality face-swapping
Founded: 2019
Team: 65
Users: 100+ countries
Downloads: 53M
“Our vision is to shape the future of digital content with personalization and AI technologies
”
3DLOOK is the creator of an AI-first fit and sizing automation SAAS for apparel manufacturing and retail. Patented mobile body scanning technology connects people’s body measurements to the brand fit and delivers the body data needed for brands to operate more efficiently in a digital manufacturing model. Helps apparel brands reduce costs associated with returns and inflated inventories, and the need for such solutions has been accelerated during COVID-19
3DLOOK uses body data to deliver hyper-personalized shopping experiences to consumers and save costs for retailers.
Founded: 2016
Team: 59
Total funding: > 5M USD
YoY revenue growth: 500%
“Our long-term mission is to create an industry-standard solution for human body data capturing and visualization, and digitize bodies of online consumers around the world”
With over 57 clients globally, spanning Fortune 500 B2B enterprises such as Cato Networks, Hexaware, NVIDIA, and high-tech MLEs, Influ2 plans to expand its functionalities, grow its client base, and bring in senior sales hires.
Influ2 is the first person-based advertising platform that takes a smarter approach to B2B marketing
Founded: 2017
Team: 32
Total funding: > 3.4M USD (largest round of seed funding in the history of account-based marketing (ABM)
YoY: 251%
“I started my career in advertising, and, as I transitioned to B2B, I was shocked by how helpless ads are in the B2B world. So we built Influ2 with the purpose of making advertising truly work for B2B marketers”
PromoRepublic is a social media marketing platform that helps enterprise companies, marketing agencies, and SMBs succeed on social media, grow brand awareness and sales at the local level. After discovering there’s an organic demand from multi-location brands, they decided to start building a product to scale to an enterprise market. PromoRepublic is on the way to a tailored solution for marketers in the franchise and direct selling industries.
PromoRepublic helps brands connect with local audiences on social via intelligent Social Media Marketing Suite.
Founded: 2012
Team: 53
Total funding: 5.5M USD
YoY revenue growth: 200%
“We believe that the social media space is getting overcrowded, and the recent worldwide lockdown has affected it even more. So businesses need to be authentic to connect with their audiences online. That’s why we’ve built a solution that helps small businesses, agencies, and brands stand out in the social media chaos with valuable content and conversations.”
Total Number of Ukrainian Startup Wall of Fame participants now is 21.
We actively keep track of the companies who we have added last year. And we are amazed that they have not only survived COVID-19, but adjusted their solutions, teams, and improved their business metrics.
Here is a short 1-year recap of the First Wall of Fame batch:
1 Investment
Grammarly made its first investment in the Seattle-based company Docugami
2 Pivots
Attendify pivoted into virtual events platform
Allset pivoted into no-contact pick up and on-site ordering
2 Exit & Acquisition
3 Fundraisings
Restream raised 50 million USD (in total: 53.4 million USD)
Preply raised 10 million USD (in total: 15,5 million USD)
Allset raised 8.2 million USD (in total: 16.6 million USD)
Despite-the-Crisis People Growth:
MacPaw
68 people have joined the company (even during the quarantine MacPaw has managed to keep and even grow the team). There are currently 280 employees at MacPaw.
Revenue Grid (ex. Invisible.io):
hired 60+ people
Grammarly:
the number of Grammarly's team members exceeded 400 in all 4 offices
Ajax:
the number of employees in the company has grown up to 1200
YouScan:
has grown by more than 10 teammates, surpassing the 100 employees mark
eNPS (employees satisfaction benchmark) increased to astonishing 77 points
12 Releases, Updates, New features
MacPaw
CleanMyMac X came to the Mac App Store, 12 years after its original release.
Setapp, the first independent subscription service for macOS, expanded to iOS.
MacPaw announced the ‘Setapp for Teams’ beta launch
Restream:
Attendify:
Attendify virtual events platform
Grammarly introduced a bunch of new features:
Custom style guides for Grammarly Business
Grammarly for iPad, which optimizes the Grammarly Keyboard and the Grammarly Editor for tablet users
Advanced writing feedback on Google Docs
The new browser extension with advanced features for professionals
YouScan:
added an OCR (optical character recognition) to our powerful image recognition capabilities
launched Insight Wall
Being on the Ukrainian Startup Wall of Fame is a statement. Statement of quality, transparency, mission, lots of craziness and courage. It shows that great products are made by great people, irrespective of where you are.
“Being on the Ukrainian Startup Wall of Fame is a statement.”
We have highlighted 21 great startups as of now. And we strive for more.
Companies that meet the criteria will be shortlisted and added to the wall. This time, we would like to emphasize on one more important criterion - giving back to the community - the most crucial part of building an ecosystem.
Authored by Tanya Chaikovska, CEO & Team Lead of LIFT99 Ukraine
26 October 2020