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Humans of Lift99 is a series of stories from LIFT99 members, highlighting the inspiring people we see around us every day. Not all of us are founders (yet), or even startuppers, but we all have a story to tell or a skill to share - it’s what makes our community as amazing as it is.
Here is the story of Vicky Brock - founder of Vistalworks, member of LIFT99.
Humans of Lift99 is a series of stories from LIFT99 members, highlighting the inspiring people we see around us every day. Not all of us are founders (yet), or even startuppers, but we all have a story to tell or a skill to share - it’s what makes our community as amazing as it is.
Here Is The Story Of Carlos Paniagua - Cto Of Glia, Member Of Lift99
Estonian Startup Awards 2020 took place on January 14, 2021, to officially wrap up the past year and celebrate the most outstanding achievements of Estonian startups. If you want to know who made it to the shortlist of Estonian Startup Awards 2020 and who took home the prizes in our 9 categories, you are in the right place. Sit back, settle down, here we go!
#EstonianMafia Wall of Fame keeps growing despite 2020 being probably
one of the most challenging years for founders and startup employees.
Warm welcome Paxful, RangeForce & Klaus to the Wall of Fame!
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.
Staying on a stage in front of the huge audience and listening to your heartbeat just seconds before you start to pitch … An exciting moment, isn’t it? Right now it all seems almost unreal - like it was in a different life. We are all living in a new reality today we are forced to adapt to and online pitching has fallen into the category of doing things in a new way that was a rare scenario before.
Ukrainian Startup Awards 2019 recognized the most impactful activists and fastest-growing Ukrainian startups in 9 categories. Whom did the community nominate, who won, and what does it mean for Ukrainian startup ecosystem for 2020? Read all about what happened at the awards ceremony at LIFT99 Kyiv Hub on January 24th, 2020!
Ragnar Sass is a leadership figure on a truly international scale — his ever-growing team at LIFT99 is dedicated to building up startup ecosystems and helping founders from non-traditional startup markets succeed. Ragnar Sass launched his first startup back in 2007 when the phrase “startup ecosystem” wasn’t yet known. In the past 13 years, he has co-founded several startups and impactful organizations, including Pipedrive and Garage48.
15 startups on the Wall of Fame are marking the beginning of a new chapter for the Ukrainian startup ecosystem. Among the locomotives is a widely-known unicorn Grammarly, which raised $90M in 2019. Readdle with their 100M product downloads. And People.ai, which raised $60M with a valuation at about $500M. Who else is on the Wall and is there landscape for the next unicorn?
Ukrainian startups are the heroes of this story. They are the ones creating massive opportunities for themselves, and if they succeed, for the whole country in general. That’s why we’ve created a list of 400+ Ukrainian startups - to gather into one place the core of the Ukrainian startup ecosystem, the most important ingredient, the startups themselves.
Raising your first round might seem like a mission impossible. Raimonds Kulbergs has put together a list of the most active Estonian angel investors, including their investment focus and ticket size. May this be a piece of the starter-kit for all the young founders out there… so they wouldn’t “half-ass through the process”. Like Raimonds did.
Yuriy believes that if you don't have any high level professional experience, you can’t build a great company – unless you are a true prodigy. The idea for AXDRAFT is based on some real struggles he was facing as one of the top lawyers in Ukraine, the same unnecessary hassle that all lawyers experience daily. His idea took off and today he’s a YC graduate, sharing his story and practical tips with others founders, in person, via our Salto network, and in Ukraine in general.
The morning after the LIFT99 Kyiv Hub TAKEOFF – the grand opening party of our Kyiv hub – a message popped up on our team’s Slack channel: “Guys, did anyone go on the roof last night?”. After long silence another message popped up: “Well, there might have been around 20 people on the roof... including some famous journalist, some hot shot investors, and startup founders. Oopsy daisy!”
Yes, Houston, we had a party!
Oliver is one of those inspiring people who, by some magic, seems to have more hours in his week than the rest of us. He’s running a coworking centre, organizing hacker competitions, and building a scaling startup in cybersecurity. In a few years, he’s come further than many do in decades. How? “I have absolutely no fear of failing!”
![Ukraine's Top 15 Startups Launching the Wall of Fame [2019]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59e0ec65b1ffb652c49849db/1572097928331-HDCOLCYKN4LPPYHS91TV/OG_20191024_286511_Small.jpg)
