Reasons for the growth in the number of successful startups
- The market has finally got its own success stories (exits, big rounds).
- The coronavirus opened the doors of Western agents for Ukrainian projects, who suddenly found themselves within the distance of a Zoom call.
- The Ukrainian ecosystem has been filled with many Belarusian startups and specialists with a strong product background.
According to Evgeny Sysoev, Managing Partner of a Ventures Capital, the three agreements in 2021 in the Ukrainian venture capital market are:
- The first Ukrainian decacorn — Grammarly (a startup with a $10 billion valuation);
- IPO of GitLab;
- Sale of the Depositphotos company.
The biggest investment rounds of the year:
1. Grammarly raised $200 million with a valuation of $13 billion. In November, the company attracted investments of $200 million. Business valuation exceeded $13 billion.
2. Firefly Aerospace received about $200 million in investments. The aerospace company of Ukrainian entrepreneur Max Polyakov raised $200 million (round A) in May 2021.
3. Ukrainian People.ai raised $100 million and became a unicorn. The American-Ukrainian company received $100 million during the new round of Series D than its rating in it exceeded $1.1 billion. A couple of years ago, the company was valued at $400 million. Among People.ai clients, which develops AI for sales: AppDynamics , DataRobot, Ivanti, Okta, Zoom and others. Thanks to its partnership with Zoom, its revenue has tripled during the pandemic.
4. Startup airSlate (formerly PDFfiller) raised $40 million to $50 million. In January 2021, workflow startup airSlate announced a $40 million investment from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and other funds. And a month later — another 50 million dollars from the Silicon Valley bank. At that time, the company had about 600.000 customers and 25 million users worldwide.
5. Preliminarily raised $35 million, among the investors are the founders of Booking and Unity. In March 2021, the Ukrainian company Preply, developed an educational marketplace, announced an investment round of $35 million. The company was founded back in 2013, and this round exceeded everything in its entire history.
6. Revenue Grid raised $20 million. By 2020, the Revenue Grid company was called InvisibleCRM, founded by the famous Ukrainian entrepreneur Vlad Voskresensky. The company is developing a SaaS platform for automated sales.
7. Ukrainian SOC Prime raised $11 million in investments. In October 2021, the SOC Prime startup team announced $11 million from Streamaled Ventures and Rembrandt Venture Partners. The service brings together cybersecurity experts and pays them a reward for using their content.
