To stand out among a crowd of budding technology companies, three Ukrainian companies first had to loom above a field of one in five applicants. Three did. Hopeful startups, Izzly, Publicfast, and Settle had their exhibition fees waived to attend a conference in Dublin on Nov. 4-6 where 20,000 entrepreneurs, journalists, and venture fund managers meet and greet, and sometimes make deals.
It’s the busy autumn conference season, when tech companies with brilliant ideas search for investors who believe in their mostly untested products at such events as TechChrunch’s Disrupt Europe in London and Webit in Istanbul.
As in Dublin, the events take pride in providing vast networking opportunities. Awards are often given out for the best startup, and the three Ukrainian companies are looking to walk away with €75,000 in Ireland for that honor.
Each went through a competitive process for the nearly free ride to Dublin. Izzly and Pulicfast tracked through the event’s Alpha program for early-stage beginners, while Settle applied in a more mature-stage category.
Izzly: Speak naturally
Izzly is a seed-stage startup founded by Anatolii Stepaniuk and Artem Norba of Kyiv. The service allows users to search for rental properties or houses that are on sale using their voice and natural language.
It plans to make money by sharing commissions with real estate agents for each closed deal. In order to stay afloat, the project will need to have at least 500 deals a month, said Stepaniuk.
Izzly’s team is currently working on an alpha version of the engine, which will use third-party voice recognition software and Izzly’s own algorithms to connect people looking to rent a flat or a house with the best offers. It will be available on both Android and iOS, as well as on desktops as a web application. The team plans to enter the public beta stage in a year or so, starting with users in Arizona and then gradually expand into the other states. In an exchange with the Kyiv Post, Izzly’s Stepaniuk stated that he expects most of the revenue to come from the U.S.
Going to Dublin, Izzly expects to showcase its prototype and, most importantly, to investors. The startup is currently looking for a seed funding round of $500,000 to boost product development.
Publicfast: Influence key
Publicfast is a young Ukrainian project founded by Kostyantyn Ryabov and Vitaliy Malets. Its website is meant to be a place where brands and opinion leaders meet and collaborate.
The idea of marketing through opinion leaders is that brands find social media influencers, be it professional bloggers or just people popular with a relevant audience, and promote a brand through word-of-mouth. The startup claims to have developed a “unique algorithm” that assigns those who register as opinion leaders an influence score from 0 to 100, which can be used by clients to determine how much they want to pay.Publicfast will first operate in Ukraine, but has plans to expand to Europe. In Dublin, the startup wants show that “Ukrainian startups are no worse than their European and American counterparts,” Ryabov said. “Secondly, we are negotiating with several European potential partners and want to show off our product to them. And last but not least, we are raising Round A (first significant investment).”
Settle: Smarter paying
Unlike the first two startups, the payment platform Settle was considered too mature for the Alpha program at the Web Summit, but young enough for another program called Start, explained Settle’s founder Stas Matviyenko, who also is an advisor to Publicfast.“This year Start will showcase 150 of the world’s highest potential young companies,” Matviyenko added. “We got $1.5 million of investments from venture fund Life.SREDA – it was the factor, which helped us to become participants of (this) program.”
Settle, which was officially launched in early August in Kyiv, wants to speed up the service at restaurants and cafés – particularly when settling a bill. Users can register their bank card in the mobile application, and pay for orders and leave tips quickly just by using their smartphones.Currently there’s only one venue in Kyiv that uses Settle, Chashka Espresso Bar. The startup, however, wants to go beyond hotels, restaurants and cafes eventually. It sees potential for the application to be used at gas stations and in taxis as well, Matviyenko said.
The startup’s founder already has a positive track record He is the co-founder of the mobile loyalty program Advice Wallet. Launched in 2013, Advice Wallet has raised $300,000 in funding and is valued at $2.5 million by Russian venture fund Imperious Group.“We hope to attract a new round of investment, we expect to get many new useful contacts, and we are looking for partnerships with European banks,” stated Matviyenko.
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].
