Top 50 Startups from Ukraine that became a success
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Everybody can have a bright idea that might turn out to be a good product, even if you lack the money and the technical expertise needed to implement it. You can secure the investment and simply outsource product development and management in operations, so you can concentrate on growing your business.
Today we list (in no particular order) 50 startups from Ukraine that turned their ideas into great products and became a global success. Some of these startups outsourced the development of their products, some outsourced marketing, some built their production facilities in China — but the course of action all of them chose was correct.
All of them are known worldwide (though to a different degree) and all of them are listed as Active on Crunchbase, meaning they are still operating profitably. All you need to achieve this is an idea of how to solve a real-world problem (and do it better than the competition) implemented in a functional, easy-to-use and appealing product. Outsourcing helps a great deal with that, due to giving access to a pool of talented specialists, which reduces the time-to-market and development risks for your product, along with supporting its steady future growth.
- DepositPhotos
- Grammarly
- Jooble
- TripMyDream
- PetCube
- Technovator
- SolarGaps
- Flawless App
- Softcube
- Fly-Re
- Bookimed
- Atlas
- Epom Ad Server
- Hurma System
- GameTree
- TravelPost
- Ugears
- modnaKasta
- Morbax
- Clubberspot
- Ready To Travel
- Titan-Electro
- GreenFuel
- The Burger
- Klumba
- Address.ua
- Viewdle
- Ajax Systems
- Looksery
- Augmented Pixels
- Kwambio
- Allset
- Attendify
- Competera
- Invisible.io
- MacPaw
- People.ai
- Preply
- Readdle
- Restream
- YayPay
- YouScan
- Dreamteam.gg
- InkHunter
- Let’s enhance
- Rentberry
- Respeecher
- YouTeam
- QROK
- Myhelix
DepositPhotos
Dmitriy Sergeev founded DepositPhotos in a basement office in Kyiv back in 2009. The website development was booming and content creators needed tons of DRM-free vector images and photos. A small team developed a convenient UI and several affordable subscription plans, which resulted in one of the 5 biggest photobanks worldwide 10 years later.
This startup attracted $5 million in 2015 from TMT Investments and EBRD when it already was a successfully growing product. Currently, DepositPhotos is headquartered in Florida, the US, has several international offices, employs more than 400 people and provides services in more than 190 countries, with estimated annual revenue topping $17 million.
However, Dmitriy Sergeev does not want to be remembered only as the creator of a photobank. In one of his interviews he stated that he is a serial entrepreneur by nature, and if an opportunity to do something great (and earn money) presents itself — like flying to the Mars with Musk — he will jump straight to it.
Grammarly
This most popular plagiarism and spell checker worldwide was released back in 2009 by Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko in Kyiv. The company still has an office there, but is currently headquartered in San Francisco and the main office is in New York. Grammarly is available as a plugin for Chrome, Mozilla and Safari, as well as a standalone iOS and Android app.
In 2017 it was integrated with Google Docs and the number of Chrome plugin downloads exceeded 10 million. The company has also received $110 million in funding from General Catalyst that year. Nowadays, Grammarly is listed by Forbes as one of the most innovative startups in Ukraine, with more than 20 million people using it daily.
Jooble
Jooble is a worldwide job search engine founded in 2007 in Kyiv by Roman Prokofyev and Evgen Sobakarov, which is currently among the top 5 search engines worldwide, competing with giants like Indeed, Monster and Glassdoor. Jooble works in more than 60 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas and serves more than 50 million people monthly. Job listings are available in 24 languages, and aggregate offers from more than 25,000 job portals.
TripMyDream
This is one of the most popular trip planning startups worldwide. Founded in Ukraine in 2015, it was named the most popular trip planning service across the globe by SeedStars Summer 2016 contest. More than 360.000 people have already made the trips of their dreams using this app. TripMyDream received $500.000 of seed funding and 5 years later is one of the most popular trip planners on the British market.
PetCube
Founded in 2012 by Yaroslav Azhnyuk, Andrey Klen and Alexander Neskin, Petcube is a company that helps pet parents to stay in touch with their pets over the Internet. Pet cameras with voice control, laser pointers for playing with cats and treat dispensers for dogs help pet owners stay in touch with their loved doggies and kitties. The company has had 11 rounds of funding so far, has sold more than 100.000 pet devices worldwide and has received very warm coverage from multiple media and influencers, who are now able to interact with their pets while on a business trip or just away. Cubic Wi-Fi cameras watch your pet and you can even share the resulting videos in the PetCube network.
Technovator
Technovator is a wireless charger for smartphones and other mobile devices, effectively charging up to 4 gadgets in a 5-meter radius. Founded by Leszek Sawicki, Ruslana Dovzhyk, Arkadii Romanenko and Igor Likhovyi in 2015, this startup is headquartered in Poland and has its R&D center in Ukraine. With manufacturing facilities located in China and wide adoption in South Korea, with its very gadget-oriented culture, TechNovator is poised for a strong push to European and American markets.
SolarGaps
These photovoltaic smart blinds released 2017 are able to produce up to 100 Wh per 1 square meter of blinds. Installed on the outside of the building SolarGaps blinds prevent unwanted heat gain that allows to use AC less, or even refuse from it completely. Users can control blinds and get reports on its performance by an easy-to-use mobile app.
Founded by Yevgen Eric in 2015, this startup has won multiple awards for innovation, eco-friendliness and renewable energy efficiency. What started as the means to produce affordable electricity in your own home, has grown into a global platform, where every Solar Gaps owner can control their devices remotely, store or sell the excess energy, etc. The team is relatively small, but they have caused significant traction, especially in the countries that have sunny weather most of the year, and the market growth expectations are great.
Commentary from SolarGaps team representative, Julia:
We did IT outsourcing at some points when we did not have in-house professionals.
Julia
Sometimes outsourcing is the most reasonable way to implement the project, so of course we recommend startups to consider it in their projects.
Flawless App
This startup is a tool allowing the designers to see what their mockups will look like when they will become mobile apps. Flawless App was founded by Liza Dziuba and Ahmed Suleiman back in 2015. By allowing to visualize the mockups mid-development, the founders ensure the designers can save up to 30 hours monthly, based on feedback from global customers like Disney, Uber, Spotify, eBay and other brands. While the UX simplicity was the key when developing this app, it works inside the iOS Simulator out of the box.
SoftCube
Softcube was founded by Oleg Lesov back in 2013 and has attracted more than $400.000 in funding since. It is a platform for creating video ads, which are much more compelling and appealing, as compared to static images. Run by a team of Big Data experts, this app helps transform the eCommerce experience for thousands of customers. The company is headquartered in Washington DC but maintains the R&D center in Ukraine.
FlyRe
Founded by Anton Demekhin, Lesia Ananchenko and Pavlo Loznevyy May of 2015, FlyRe is a platform for trading reinvestment risks, which helps multiple companies share the potential risks while reinvesting to minimize the potential losses and maximize revenues. The company uses Big Data algorithms to gather statistics and help market players make informed decisions. FlyRe has attracted more than $200.000 in investment and the platform is actively holding reinvestment auctions.
Bookimed
Eugene Hotyanov and Evgeniy Kozlov founded Bookimed as a platform for finding medicare facilities and booking your stay there back in 2014. This company is headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine and has raised $500.000 in a single funding round in 2017. The app has served more than 300.000 customers since release and is steadily becoming the most popular solution for people that value their time and convenience when planning their healthcare procedures.
Atlas
Atlas Export is a company specializing at exporting organic foods from Ukraine. It was founded in 2014 by Alexey Rashchupkin and Ivan Kalinin and became profitable immediately, by signing a contract for delivering organic honey and various berries to Europe and Middle East. They received $200.000 in seed funding in 2014 and tripled their income the very next year. The company is headquartered in Kyiv, fields a team of nearly 10 specialists and constantly grows its market share.
Epom Ad Server
This SaaS solution was founded by Alex Lunkov, Sergey Chudnovsky, and Anton Ruin in 2011 and provides a programmatic approach to buying and selling traffic, white label ad campaigns and in-depth analytics allowing the advertisers to maximize the impact of their ad campaigns across all verticals — web, mobile, in-app and online video. The company serves more than 50 million impressions monthly as of 2020 and is steadily growing to become the market leader.
Hurma System
Hurma System is an all-in-one solution for recruiting, HR and OKR. Founded by Vladimir Fedak in 2017, the platform was released in 2018 and boasted 400 customers by the end of 2019. Due to secure Single Tenant architecture, use of Machine Learning algorithms in processing candidate profiles and an ability to import data from a wide variety of tools, social media and file formats, Hurma System works as a one-stop-shop for all recruitment and HR-related needs of a company of any size. The project secured $200.000 additional investments in 2020 and continues to actively evolve, adding new features all the time.
GameTree
We play games online to relax and maybe find new friends — but how to ensure you don’t experience toxicity and find games and teams you will enjoy? GameTree is a free app for web, iOS and Android combining psychology and AI to help analyze your personality and find games you will enjoy most, even before you buy them. This app also helps boost your gaming experience by helping you connect with players that will be a good match for your team psychologically.
GameTree was one of 8 winners selected among 400 contestants of Startup Hub Poland accelerator and was has President Yushchenko family as an investor. The startup secured $650.000 in investments in 2018, was exhibited at TechCrunch Berlin 2019 and is already successfully building a strong community. The community grew to nearly 150.000 players from CIS, EU and the US with nearly no ad coverage. GameTree currently negotiates a multi-million deal with one of the world-leading gaming news networks.
Commentary from Juke, GameTree representative:
“We used IT outsourcing a couple of times: we had a code-review by an outsourcing firm and we had illustrations/icons/badges done by another outsourcing firm. They were both positive high-quality experiences, though the illustrations were a bit more expensive than going direct.
Juke
Generally, IT outsourcing is good in proving an MVP to validate a market that a company isn’t 100% sure on pursuing. It is also viable for limited scope projects, as opposed to ever-increasing features, and also useful for needs when needing to rapidly scale and have lots of funding.”
TravelPost
Lots of people want to buy goods globally without paying too much for custom fees and store upsells. TravelPost is a global C2C marketplace that allows buyers to find travelers that will purchase and deliver their parcels for a fee. Founded by Yaroslav Lvovych in 2017 and currently headquartered in Kyiv, this startup has received more than $500.000 of seed investments and boasts stable growth of its user base.
Ugears
Ugears is a globally-known manufacturer of wooden toys, models and mechanisms assembled without glue. It presented the idea on Kickstarter and had booming success throughout all 4 of its campaigns to date. It was founded by Denis Okhrimenko and Gennady Shostak in 2014 and has raised more than $700.000 through equity crowdfunding Kickstarter campaigns.
Denis Okhrimenko has since founded 2 new startups and funded them successfully through Kickstarter. This models suits these entrepreneurs, as they ship their physical products — DIY wood-made mechanical 3D puzzle sets cut by lasers — to their customers. Thus, if you want to ship physical products to your customers — you might succeed using Kickstarter, just like Ugears did.
modnaKasta
ModnaKasta is an online shopping platform with access only by invitations, which represents an elite club of fashion buyers, who can benefit from weekly discounts up to 70% on various brands. The startup was founded back in 2010 by Andrey Logvin, Oleg Skripnichenko, Yusuf Ibili and Sina Afra from Markafoni, a Turkish multi-national shopping outlet. ModnaKasta received $1 million in investments in 2010-2011 and remains a profitable endeavor ever since.
Morbax
This innovative Digital Talent Management platform uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms deriving from neuroscience to increase the efficiency of skill assessment, talent evaluation and staffing workflows, thus empowering your recruitment. The platform is able to collect and systematize information from a wide variety of sources to build digital profiles of candidates that can be searched for a perfect match within a minute after request. Morbax HR was founded by Mamed Khalilov in 2018 and received $150.000 funding from seed investors.
Clubberspot
Millennials cannot imagine a good night club party without some rhythmic and enthralling music, so good DJ’s are always in demand. Clubberspot is a global marketplace, where DJ’s offer their services and bookers can offer them employment opportunities at nightlife events globally. The service offers convenient posting of offers, communication channels, signing of contracts and handling escrow payments. The platform was founded by Ivan Zhuravel, Nikita Tsarenko and Serhii Matsenko in June 2018 and has raised $200.000 in seed funding to date.
Ready To Travel
Yet another thing the Millennials cannot imagine their lives without are travels worldwide. ReadyToTravel is an online ticket booking platform with a powerful search engine, able to quickly locate the tour of your dream and book all the necessary tickets in one go. This venture was launched back in 2012, has received $250.000 in investment in 2013 and steadily grows its audience since then.
Titan-Electro
Electric cars are becoming ever increasingly popular and most of European countries have started banning diesel engines, but what if a gasoline/diesel car owner doesn’t want to exchange his Volkswagen for Tesla or Mercedes? Titan-Electro offers a solution! This startup operates a network of upgrade car shops, which replace the internal combustion engines with custom electric-powered carriages able to make 200-400 km on a single charge (based on the road conditions and traffic intensity).
The startup also offers a software for tracking a fleet of such vehicles, which is extremely useful for small logistics and delivery companies. Founded by Rob Shaver et al in 2017, this startup was able to raise more than $500k and is already successfully operating in the US.
GreenFuel
As we mentioned above, more and more countries in the US and worldwide foster the adoption of electric vehicles. One of the things that hinders the widespread adoption of such transport is the lack of charging points. GreenFuel is a startup producing, installing and maintaining electric charging stations in Ukraine and other European countries. This startup was founded by Dmitriy Nikolayko in 2014, raised $100.000 and successfully operates a network of EV charging stations along with developing a software for controlling the charging process.
TheBurger
TheBurger is a franchise for cooking and delivering the best burgers in Ukraine. It is a pioneer of burger delivery in post-USSR countries, founded in 2012 by Valentin Snigur, Arkadiy Oganian and Alexander Tretiak. The company grew to nearly 100 employees in their core facilities (mill, bakery and organic meat farm) and has grown to a successful franchise over the years, boasting 40% YoY growth in income.
Klumba
Toddlers grow so fast they outgrow their clothes and shoes before wearing them out. Besides, lots of wares for kids are needed for several months only, and they remain practically new — so why not sell them again? This idea has inspired a Ukrainian startup Klumba (flowerbed) to build a marketplace for selling/buying new and used items of clothing, shoes and various other wares for kids. This endeavor started in 2012 and while not as popular as eBay or OLX, it has found its niche and is growing at a stable rate.
Address.ua
Real estate is one of the most profitable industries worldwide, but it is also very prone to machinations. Thus, an independent property advertisement and evaluation platform can be of great use. This idea came to a group of real estate companies that launched the Address.ua platform back in 2010. The startup received $310K in seed funding and has since grown into one of the leading property evaluation platforms operating in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Moldova.
Comment from Address.ua team representative, Maxim:
We had a coding-for-equity contract with an IT outsourcing company. We had a group of engineers previously working on other online classifieds such as rabota.ua and turne.ua, and we agreed the R&D-4-equity model allowed us to save precious cash at the early stage. The IT outsourcing model is highly recommendable. But at the end of the day it’s not a model that matters — it is the people you deal with and the terms you agree with them. I’ve seen a lot of companies fail at that model, however it worked perfectly for Address.ua
Maxim
Viewdle
Viewdle was one of the most successful startups from Ukraine. It was founded in 2006 by Laurent Gil and Yegor Anchishkin and focused on using mobile phone cameras for training computer vision models and enabling augmented reality experiences in gaming, social media, advertising and marketing and other domains. The startup received $12 mln in funding and was acquired by Google/Motorola Mobility in 2012 for an undisclosed sum between $30 and $45 million USD.
Ajax Systems
This is one of the most promising Ukrainian startups. Ajax Systems is developing and producing the new generation of cordless security systems operating with smart motion detection sensors. Ajax Starterkit is a smart wireless security system engineered to protect commercial and residential properties of any scale. Ajax detectors react to burglars, fire and flooding. If trouble comes, the system immediately activates the sirens, alerts all of the users via mobile app, and requests help from the alarm response company.
The Ajax product line currently includes 27 gadgets for indoor and outdoor protection of premises. It features motion, fire, and leakage detectors, as well as the control panels (hubs), range extenders, keyboards, smart sockets, relays and panic buttons.
The system is designed to speed up the commercial installation process for the professionals and provide the end-users with easy to use experience.
The Ajax wireless detectors don’t cover the walls with cables and seamlessly fit any interior.
Jeweller radio protocol unites all of the Ajax system devices into a securely encrypted wireless network to deliver immediate alarms. The proprietary two-way radio communication technology allows the detectors to operate up to 7 years on the pre-installed batteries and establishes a reliable connection even in the multi-storey buildings (up to 2,000 m).
In 2011 Ajax Systems was only an ambitious idea. At a tiny place in Kyiv, Ukraine, five engineers lead by Aleksandr Konotopskyi (CEO) gathered to develop, assemble and test the Ajax MVP. Today the Ajax Systems assembly line produces more than 250,000 devices per month, the startup has grown 30-fold in the past three years and currently employs over 800 people. The company has delivered over 2 million units worldwide. All of them are developed, assembled, and tested in Kyiv, Ukraine. Over 400,000 people in 93 countries protect their homes and businesses with Ajax already and 1129 alarm response companies react to Ajax alarms.
Ajax is the most awarded wireless security system in Europe. It received titles of «The Best Innovative Product» (Securika MIPS 2017, Russia), the «Intruder Alarm of the Year» (Security & Fire Excellence Awards 2017, UK), and the «Security & Firefighting Risks» (Les Trophées Expoprotection 2018, France).
Looksery
Girls LOVE to make selfies and adore editing them in real-time. Looksery is an app that brings this process to a new level through intense use of AI to adjust the facial features, applying powerful filters or even turning real pictures into cartoon heroes using ML models. This range of features helped Looksery, a startup from Odessa, Ukraine, generate more than $1 million monthly via App Store and Google Store and made this application one of the most popular apps. This allowed its founder, Victor Shaburov, to sell the startup to Opera Software corporations, and now the team of 45 mathematical and Big Data geniuses works on developing new incredible products for Opera browser.
Augmented Pixels
This AR/VR product is also from Odessa and was built to help navigate drones and provide interior design. It is currently used by National Geographic, Zoom3D, Jayman, Harkus and other industry-leading companies. After showcasing the product, its founder Vitaliy Goncharuk was able to secure $1M in investments, which allowed him to relocate the team to the Silicon Valley and continue developing Augmented Pixels in close collaboration with the US market leaders.
Kwambio
Kwambio is one of the Ukrainian startups that has already made a name for themselves globally. A marketplace for 3D designs and items, a collaborative space for sharing design ideas and hiring artists to implement them, a manufacturer of Ceramo One — the world’s fastest 3D printer and much, much more… In 2015 Volodymyr Usov founded Kwambio as the first global marketplace for selling and buying 3D designs for artworks and industrial items. After securing $500K from private investors from Odessa, the company went a long way and is now rapidly becoming a leader in providing designs, materials, 3D printers and additive technologies allowing the customers to express and implement their creative ideas.
All Set Now
You’ve surely heard about Allsetnow or might be actively using it already. An app connecting 2.500+ restaurants and diner chains in 12 US cities with millions of customers daily, enabling the dine-in and pickup services, helping people save time and eat healthier, while doubling the table turnover rates for the restaurants, significantly increasing their income — Allsetnow helps make your everyday life healthier and more efficient. This startup was founded by
Anna Polishchuk, Arsentiy Farenik, Dimitri Nikulin, Pavlo Tiron and Stas Matviyenko in 2015, was able to secure nearly $9M from private investors/VC funds and partnered with Google and Apple since then.
Attendify
What started back in 2011 as an app for event marketing has grown to include a CMS for event coverage, a mobile app for attendees, a lead generation platform and a simple website builder able to provide visually stunning websites for your events using a variety of templates. Attendify has revolutionized the event marketing industry and remains one of the global market leaders there. Founded by Artyom Yaremchuk and Michael Balyasny, Attendify has secured $2,1 M from VC funds and has grown to a profitable business with nearly 100 employees.
Competera
Both brick & mortar and online retailers can succeed long-term if they can provide the optimal pricing which lets them satisfy their customers and maintain profit margin at the same time. Competera is an award-winning pricing software for enterprise retailers globally — the company has over 90 customers across 26 countries.
The company uses a blend of machine learning algorithms, data science and retail expertise to help retailers set the right prices for every product in the portfolio at any given moment. Launched in Ukraine in 2014 by Alexandr Galkin, Alexandr Sazonov and Andrew Mikhailov, the company has grown into a global player with offices in the UK, US, and Singapore, in addition to Ukraine.
Comment from Competera team representative, Jane:
As a product company, we stick to working with in-house teams.
Jane
Invisible.io
Back in 2005, Invisible founders Anatoly Gaverdovsky, Konstantin Vaganov and Vlad Voskresensky wanted to create an enterprise OEM. What they came to after 15 years is an ecosystem that enables the businesses to integrate various enterprise applications with each other seamlessly. This way, enterprise staff can utilize all the features from a dozen of applications from their favorite environments like Google Disk.
Partnership with Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and other enterprise software vendors, multiple accolades showcase the level of quality and dedication the company puts into developing truly great and innovative products. WIth $1,5M raised as a seed investment in 2006, Invisible.io is currently a global integrator of enterprise solutions, helping businesses save $500K annually on average, while increasing productivity for nearly 600.000 people worldwide
MacPaw
If you are a Mac user, you have definitely used one of MacPaw products like Setapp, Gemini 2 or CleanMyMac. The company was founded by Oleksandr Kosovan in 2008, while he still lived in his dorm and had 3 part-time jobs to pay for his education. Since then, MacPaw has grown into a global company with offices in Ireland, the USA and headquarters in Kyiv, Ukraine. With a mission to deliver the best app to every Mac and 30 million active users worldwide, MacPaw is clearly a successful company going strong.
People.ai
When Oleg Rogynskyy decided to form a team of AI experts to develop a product able to predict sales opportunities using the power of Machine Learning back in 2016, he surely wanted to succeed. However, he barely could have anticipated to become a leader of sales growth and marketing industry in 4 short years, raising $100M in investments while being evaluated at $500M. The software that efficiently captures all prospect’s contacts and publicly available data to drive sales and maximize revenue opportunities is a great help for any business.
Preply
The world becomes global and many people move abroad to live and work where they want to. Learning the language you need through traditional courses can be hard in your area, so why not learn over the Internet, working with a personal tutor from your target country? This idea has led to Dmytro Voloshyn, Kirill Bigai and Serge Lukianov launching Preply — the global marketplace for private tutoring. The platform is immensely popular nowadays, with several thousand tutors from 185 countries across the globe helping more than 100.000 students monthly to master new languages at their own pace and from the comfort of their homes. This popularity helped Preply secure more than $5.6 million in investment from the leading European investment funds and grow steadily over the years.
Readdle
Have you already tried Spark on your Mac? You will never want to use another email client again. And that is only one of multiple gems like PDF Expert or Calendars 5 developed by Readdle. Well, 32 apps failed, but the remaining 12 were downloaded from the App Store nearly 125 million times and were crowned as App of the Year several times. Founded in 2007 by Andrian Budantsov and Igor Zhadanov, Readdle builds world-class iOS productivity apps that compete — and outpace — various enterprise analogs. More than 150 experts work in the international team headquartered in Folsom, CA — and they promise us more great apps in the future!
Restream
Why stream only to Youtube or Twitch, when you can restream to multiple media platforms simultaneously? This idea came to Alexander Khuda and Andrew Surzhynskyi in 2014, and thus Restream was born to help online video streamers get more revenues and analyze their streaming more efficiently. The company became profitable nearly immediately and is currently used by more than 1 million content creators in 80 countries worldwide to communicate and interact with a global audience above 1.000.000.000 people.
YayPay
Founded by Anthony Venus, Eugene Vyborov and Saul Frank in 2015, YayPay helps businesses and customers analyze their online payment workflows, automate the invoicing and predict the cashflow using Machine Learning and data science. Healthy financial operations are the requirement of any successful business, so YayPay is very popular globally and was able to secure nearly $14M in investments.
YouScan
Keeping track of what people say about your company was always a task of utmost importance and complexity. YouScan is a powerful social media listening tool that produces a stream of all mentions of your brand, be it a picture, a text, a link or a logo. The data is categorized and easily visualized, allowing the global brands like L’Oreal, Michelin, Pepsico, Nestle, Auchan, McDonalds and dozens of international marketing agencies to monitor and manage their online reputation. The company was founded by Alexey Orap in 2009, has secured $1.3M till 2016 and currently works with hundreds of industry leaders globally.
Dreamteam.gg
Online gaming is becoming increasingly popular and millions of gamers are looking for teams to enjoy playing with. DreamTeam is the first professional network for gamers that solves problems for hundreds of millions of players who want to find teammates, improve skills, manage clans, or earn money and rewards through skill validation. The platform was founded by Alexander Kokhanovskyy and Vlad Panchenko in 2017, has attracted $15.3 M investment and now has more than 1.7M registered players and 400k teams.
Commentary from DreamTeam representative, Anna:
Sometimes at the beginning of the project’s lifetime, IT outsourcing can be a good solution
Anna
InkHunter
How to know if a tattoo design fits you before going to the tattoo parlor? With InkHunter, an AR app that allows trying on and buying tattoo designs real-time — you can be sure you make the best choice. The startup was founded by Oleksandra Rohachova and Pavlo Razumovskyi in 2016, has received $160K in funding and is currently headquartered in New York.
Let’s Enhance
There are multiple online image processing tools but Let’s Enhance is different. Let’s Enhance provides automated image processing at scale. Driven by AI it ensures the significant improvement of image quality: increases resolution, removes image noise, compression and restores details.
Sofiia Shvets and Vlad Pranskevicius launched the product in 2017 to help businesses and individuals enhance image resolution. Used by more than 200.000 customers since then, a platform is a great tool for all your visual processing tasks.
Rentberry
As much as $87Bn are blocked annually in a form of long-term apartment rental deposits. This money can be used much more efficiently than simply serving as a safety measure. Rentberry allows that by providing a closed-loop rental marketplace for landlords and tenants, where they can save time and hassle on signing papers, while ensuring their contracts are secure. Lily Ostapchuk and Oleksiy Lubinsky launched Rentberry in 2015, and it has grown into one of the leaders of the long-term property rent market in the US since then, attracting nearly $9M in investments.
Respeecher
Text-to-speech conversion using AI and deep neural networks is possible, but as text has little prosodic data, the output is monotonous. Respeecher circumvents this problem by using innovative Machine Learning technologies to convert the voice of a speaker into a voice of another person according to a prerecorded pattern, effectively cloning the voice and adding emotions to previously monotonous speech applications. Founded in 2018 by Alex Serdiuk, Dmytro Bielievtsov and Grant Reaber, this startup is currently headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine, has raised $1.5 million through seed funding and is actively hiring specialists to continue advancing its product.
YouTeam
Outsourcing the software development can save money — or become a nightmare of remote team management. YouTeam is a platform helping US startups build dedicated teams overseas within several days. This startup provides a handpicked pool of talents checked by HackerRank or TopTal scores that come with a Project Manager and help you deliver great products at a fraction of cost of hiring such a team in the Bay area. Founded by Anton Mishchenko and Yurij Riphyak in 2014, YouTeam has successfully attracted $620K over the years and is steadily growing into one of the leaders of the US outsourcing market.
QROK
It’s hard to find your way in some public place, if you visit it for the first time. QROK is an indoor navigation app helping you locate your destinations inside malls, theaters, galleries, convention centers, hotels, airports, etc. Most importantly, it shows the way to the nearest exit in emergency situations. QROK was founded by Igor Snizhko in 2014, is the only app licensed to use Google Maps in CIS countries, has raised $500K in investments and is currently headquartered at Vienna.
MyHelix
Defining the best diet based on YOUR GENES has never been easier. MyHelix was founded by two girl biologists, graduates of the Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University. MyHelix app helps determine the daily doses of alcohol, caffeine and other products based on unique DNA parameters of every customer. The DNA tests are done in-app, the results are emailed to every customer and a personal dietitian helps develop a perfect diet for every case, helping the clients become healthier and happier. Using Big Data analytics and biological and dietary knowledge, Dariya Loseva, Oleksandra Alokhina and Ruslana Shadrina provide personal dietary recommendations, which become steadily more popular among youth.
Conclusions: your startup can succeed too!
We have listed 50 stories of people who trusted their ideas and worked hard to make them a reality. They used their core expertise to build great products and outsourced on demand to make the lives of billions of people happier, healthier and more productive every day.
Your startup can also be on this list. Find a trustworthy team with technical expertise required to build a Proof of Concept and secure the seed funding. Then build an MVP with them and release your product to begin your way to success and global popularity! If you already have such an idea — IT Svit is ready to help to make it a reality!