$265M Reasons I Moved to Mentor Startups in Kiev

Recently I moved to Kiev, over 3M people capital of Ukraine to explore the local startup ecosystem. Currently I’m mentoring startups as Entrepreneur in Residence at UNIT.City, soon to be one of the largest tech parks in Europe.

That’s less than 1/3 of the planned #techpark, a whole city in the city, the ambitious @unit.city 25ha real estate development #biggoals #doingitright

On April 13th with Startup Lithuania and UNIT.City we’re organising a networking event for startups and investors from Ukraine and Lithuania. Once I started sharing the event, got some weird reactions.

Strangely to me, lots of people asked me, why Ukraine Eddy? Isn’t Ukraine dangerous? I have been traveling to Ukraine and working with Ukrainian designers & engineers since 2010, so those question sounded a bit funny. Media mostly shows scary news to generate more views and if you don’t have any business with Ukraine, knowledge about the country might very limited. Lets rectify this.

Ukraine is Safe

First of all, nope, Ukraine is not more dangerous than in any other big country (with exception fo some areas in the east of the country . Check out how Peter’s vlog, how an American with no Ukrainian and very little Russian, moved and lives in Ukraine.

Big, Cheap and Friendly

Ukraine is the largest country in Europe by territory and has 42,5M people. That is the 6th largest country population in The Old Continent. Labor and prices are cheap. Ukrainian folks are friendly and quite easy to start a conversation (at least for a Lithuanian with good English/Russian). Kiev and Lviv, my most visited cities in Ukraine have awesome local cuisine and lots great international restaurants. Many cool places to go out too :)

Thank you for the warm welcome @olga_afanasyeva! Great to learn about Ukrainian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association, excited to meet #UVCA members at Startup Lithuania Roadshow in Kiev on Apr 13th! More info

Easy to Fly to Kiev

There are 2 airports - Boryspil International Airport and Kyiv International Airport (Zhuliany) with multiple international and domestic flights. Situation is especially good for cheap direct travel to Vilnius, Lithuania with ~1.2h flight:
3 flights per week from Zhuliany with Wizzair,
DAILY flights from Boryspil with Ukrainian Airlines,
and Ryanair will soon start flying twice per week from Boryspil.

Great Designers and Developers

Back in 2015 with our startup TrackDuck (acquired by InVision in 2017, I have left recently) we ran into major issue - we urgently needed design and frontend help. Out of the blue, Paul, a Ukrainian designer from Hexagon agency reached out asking to meet us in Vilnius - he was an avid user of TrackDuck service with his customers in US. Meeting led to first couple of small design task Paul helped us out with. Shortly after we were working on product improvements and new landing pages with the whole Paul’s team. It’s great to have backup for urgent design and engineering work, now I’m always open to network with people that know what they are doing.

$265M Reasons More

However, the most interesting part of Ukraine to me is it’s already big and growing startup ecosystem [stats taken from this awesome report - The DealBook of Ukraine 2018]:

• In 2017 alone, over $265M were invested in Ukrainian startups - that’s a whopping 231% increase from 2016.
• 95% of volume for these investments came from foreign investors,
• At least 32 investment were led by VC’s from abroad,
• Average seed round increased to almost $500k.

All these numbers indicate growing and maturing startup scene. However, it’s personal conections and seeing the startup scene development in Ukraine that made make this move in the end.

Also, I really like borsch. :)

p.s. All most active early stage startup investors from Lithuania and Ukraine will network in Kiev on April 13th, 2018 during Startup Lithuania Roadshow | Kyiv Pitch Battle for Startup Fair. Join us!

• Practica Capital
• Business Hive Vilnius
• Contrarian Ventures with Smart Energy Fund
• Open Circle Capital, 
• members of UAngel and UVCA