Less than three months after its creation, the network of Ukrainian business angels UAngel appointed a new top manager in early September. The new executive director of the entity is Regina Makhotina, who also has been working with the EastLabs startup accelerator since 2012.
The initial leader of the network, Jaanika Merilo, remains a member of the board and continues to participate in UAngel’s development, Makhotina told in an exchange with the Kyiv Post.
“The decision was made that there’s a need for an executive director who would be able to work full-time,” Makhotina explained her appointment.
Among the main tasks of UAngel in general and Makhotina in particular are attraction of new members, creation of deal flow, as well as public relations and educational activities, said Nataliia Berezovska, the chairman of the network’s board and managing partner at Israeli-funded Detonate Ventures that operates in Ukraine.
At the moment, there’s about 10 members in the network, excluding its founders, said Berezovska.
“We work very actively with those interested in becoming members of UAngel, meet them every day, learn about their investment preferences etc.,” Berezovska added.
One of the prospective members, Ukrainian entrepreneur and angel investor Yaroslav Maximovich, told the Kyiv Post that his main expectations from UAngel is meeting and networking with fellow angels, which can lead to joint investment projects.
Berezovska also said that although having plenty of plans to work on and activities to attend to, UAngel has still not been registered by the Justice Ministry.
“The only reason for that is bureaucratic negligence, as ‘everyone’s on vacation’,” Berezovska added.
Taking the new position at UAngel, Makhotina also remains part of the EastLabs startup accelerator, which ceased to take aboard new startups since July 2014. Also among the board members at UAngel is EastLabs’ managing partner Eveline Buchatskiy.
Unlike classical venture investors, angel investors in their money-placement philosophy usually go beyond pure monetary return as they are driven by a willingness to develop a certain business sector or mentor the younger generation of entrepreneurs. However, it’s the arrival of venture capital in late 2000’s that pushed Ukraine’s information technology sector development.
Nation’s $1-billion large tech startup market bets not just on the local community of some 16 million internet users which Oleksandr Olshansky, head of Internet Invest Group, expects to reach 25 million by 2017, but also on the global demand.
Andrii Degeler is the Kyiv Post’s information technology reporting fellow. Degeler has been covering the IT business in Ukraine and internationally since 2009. His fellowship is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe. He can be reached on Twitter (@shlema) or [email protected].
