2021 turned out to be a record year for Ukrainian IT in all respects. Ukraine got the first decacorn, Grammarly; its total amount of venture investments over the year exceeded $1 billion. Apart from that, in 2021, Ukrainian venture funds entered the American market by investing in promising projects from the US.
One-click analytics for marketers
Last November, Ukrainian funds Digital Future and Adventures Lab invested in Narrative BI, a B2B advanced analytics platform. The San Francisco-based startup raised a $1.2 million pre-seed funding round. In the round, Ukrainian companies were also joined by US funds.
This is a no-code analytics platform for Marketing/Growth/Sales teams that automatically generates actionable data insights based on company statistics. As the main advantage, the service offers to minimize dependency on IT departments. It allows one to use existing marketing and analytical tools in one click, get insights in an accessible form, and share them.
Startup founder Michael Rumiantsau has a Belarus origin. He believes that in making the right business decisions, the main role is played not by intuition but by broad analytics.
"Advanced analytics is a game-changer for growing teams. It is evidenced by the constantly growing interest from their side in more understandable and intuitive tools. With the support of our investors, Narrative BI will continue to innovate by creating a powerful platform for human empowerment to benefit rapidly growing teams and businesses all over the world," he says.
Previously, Rumiantsau was the CEO at FriendlyData. The startup was bought out by ServiceNow, and Michael was offered a serious position in a new project. However, he decided to develop his business and his ideas, and investors especially noted this quality of the founder.
"This is one of those cases where, as an investor, I got impressed not only by the product but also by the history of the company. Instead of a comfortable office and a serious income, the founder of Narrative BI has chosen an opportunity to create a new business. It says a lot about his ambitions and personal qualities," emphasizes Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Timofeev), Founding Partner at Adventures Lab.
This year, the creators of Narrative BI are preparing to launch a full-fledged version of their service.
AI will communicate with customers
In the fall of 2021, Digital Future, a Ukrainian fund, invested in the Ukraine\US project Outloud.ai, an AI-based retail platform that allows users to automate voice communication with customers. Among the startup's clients, there are several large American restaurant chains, such as Burger King.
The deal value was not disclosed.
According to Digital Future founder Alex Vitchenko, when selecting projects, the fund team pays attention to several key criteria including a business model that can be scaled to the markets of Western Europe and North America. In Outloud.ai, they have precisely seen this potential.
"Unlike the online world that is convenient to analyze the interaction between a client and a service, the same sphere in offline is non-transparent yet. Outloud.ai solves this problem with proprietary voice analysis technology in noisy environments and helps businesses understand what problems they have on their front line. We were also convinced by the size of the target market and the founder's good experience in the American retail industry," notes Vitchenko.
Outloud.ai has previously attracted investments from USF, and last summer, it graduated from Y Combinator.
Service that helps buy an apartment in the US
At the beginning of last year, an American startup with a Ukrainian team, Propertymate, raised $1 million funding from the Ukrainian venture capital fund Pragmatech Ventures.
The startup was founded in 2018 by Bohdan Hnatkovsky and Sofia Vyshnevska. The team has offices in New York, Austin, Kyiv, and Lviv. This is a platform that allows buyers of primary real estate to find all the information they need about new construction homes. Thus, home builders or agents can communicate directly with interested clients. The service is based on AI algorithms.
Propertymate clients include Lennar, D.R. Horton, Taylor Morrison, and Pulte Homes. The platform is used by major players in the American real estate market: Keller Williams, eXp Realty, and Compass.
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, home builders tried to reduce marketing costs and switched to other sales options. Propertymate is just one of those. The service takes a commission from a transaction only with customers who have made a purchase. The number of clients over the past two years has grown 65 times.
"Despite COVID-19, the US primary real estate market is booming. We experienced even greater demand for our service, and now, thanks to investments, we are planning to start work in Dallas and Houston over the next six months," says Bohdan Hnatkovsky, founder of the startup.
Currently, Propertymate works in Austin, but thanks to investment from Pragmatech Ventures, the company is planning to scale up to two more cities.
Notary services from the comfort of your home
American startup OneNotary has raised $1.75 million in investments from American and Ukrainian venture capital funds. Negotiations began in 2021, but the deal was closed only in January 2022.
The founder and CEO of the project, Ivan Zinkov, is from Ukraine. The team is mixed with some of the employees based in Ukraine. Among the investment funds that financed the startup, there are Ukrainian companies such as Adventures Lab, U.Ventures, and Digital Future.
OneNotary is an online notarization platform in the United States that allows one to certify the necessary documents remotely.
"Our company's mission is to help businesses close deals faster by offering the integration of online document notarization into their working tools," says Zinkov.
Previously, in the United States, online notarization was legal only in a few states. During the quarantine, everything has changed. Currently, relevant legislation has been adopted in 39 states. Notarization is required in every area, whether it is real estate, car sales, or education. Each industry, state, and even each county has its own rules and procedures. According to the developers, with more than 10,000 notaries in its system, OneNotary successfully covers these requests.
Adventures Lab founder Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Timofeev) pays attention to the project team and their high motivation.
"The guys passed the easy money test and turned down an offer to sell the project to one of the big US players in legaltech. Many would consider this offer very lucrative. And that happened when they were working to the limit, out of their financial comfort zone. Such dedication to the project demonstrates their desire to further develop it independently," notes Tymofieiev.
In the future, OneNotary is planning to enter the global market.
AI to help developers
In October 2021, the Ukrainian venture fund TA Ventures invested in Spice AI, a Seattle-based startup. Other foundations and angels from GitHub and Microsoft also participated in the round. The total amount was $1 million.
It is an AI-powered platform that allows developers to use integrated machine learning algorithms in applications. This saves time and effort in building software development. The idea is that if, for instance, an app you are creating controls an air conditioning system, then the AI algorithms will offer a low power consumption option.
Spice AI founder Luke Kim previously worked at Microsoft for 10 years, including in an engineering position. He says that he knows from personal experience how much integrated artificial intelligence mechanisms help programmers in the software development process.
