On September 27, a side event for Lviv IT Arena was held to strengthen the connections between Ukrainian startups and European investors. The Bridge of Trust also hosted a startup competition, where 11 Ukrainian startups pitched their solutions in front of a jury consisting of partners from Zas Ventures, Angel One, Green Flag Ventures, Startup Wise Guys, and Liquido.VC, etc.

The list of participating startups included, with the last one taking the winning place during the competition:

  • Selpme, an AI-powered Resale as a Service startup.

  • Hard Cat Drones, a high speed marine interceptor drone developer.

  • Misolla Music, an application for learning how to play piano.

  • Wild.Codes, a pre-vetted developers’ marketplace.

  • tTravel, an application catered to tourists.

  • HowCow, a cow relationship management startup.

  • Getpin, a SaaS tool for boosting sales.

  • Wantent, a targeted content diagnostics platform.

  • Knopka, an advanced call system for hospitals and care homes.

  • LifesaverSIM, a game-based simulator to train tactical medicine and lifesaving skills.

  • eXtra Vision, a holographic 3D visualization solution to help medical workers perform surgeries.

The event was co-organized and headed by prominent Finnish investor Jussi Muurikainen, who has nearly 20 years of experience working with startups. Head of the English Office of AIN interviewed Jussi, talking about the event and the current state of the Ukrainian startup ecosystem. Read the full interview below:

Can you share with our readers who you are, what do you do, and what is your expertise in the field?

The first most relevant thing is that I am a father of two lovely daughters that I miss a lot when I'm having this trip. I've been working with startups for 18 years. Having founded my own startup, I've been CFO, CTO, CMO, head of marketing and PR, all of the roles that you can imagine. And many times I was asked, hey, we need funding, you handle it. 

So, as a side role, I was running funding rounds for pre-seed, seed-based startups, mostly in Finland. I have raised around €20 million in total before I founded Liquido.VC. Now, Liquido is helping startups with architecture, design, and funding, etc. We have 30 companies in our portfolio at the moment. To describe it short, I'm a funding guy for startups. 

After Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine started, I became an advocate for the country, founding a 100-person voluntary organization to support Ukraine. I was negotiating all the deals with the companies giving support for Ukrainians entering Finland. Gradually, the startup ecosystem in Ukraine started following me. And then I was asked to be a jury member in a startup competition, which was won by Knopka [who was a participant in a September 27, 2024 event — ed.]

Later I had a call with Mikko-Pekka Hanski, who invited me to join the IT Arena in Lviv. That’s when I started collecting people from my investor network from the Baltics and Nordics to visit Ukraine. We then formed this group bridging trust between the Ukrainian startup ecosystem and investors who want to support Ukraine.

How did you manage, for the second year in a row, to get so many partners supporting the event?

The core of it is in the word ‘trust’. In Finland, I had four weeks before my summer vacation to collect all those partners. First week was business angel networks: European, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, and Finnish. Second week was for guardians [institutional support — ed.], like the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Technology Industries of Finland, as well as Serhii Pritula Foundation from Ukraine, and so on.

Later, we focused on investors which wanted to support Ukrainian startups, like Zas Ventures, Green Flag Ventures, Angel One, etc. Lastly, we had meetings with organizing partners like Startup Wise Guys, Liquido.VC, Lexia Attorneys, and Avidly Marketing, many of them joined as sponsors like Telesoftas and Vaens.

Can you describe to our readers the Bridge of Trust in one or two sentences?

Ukrainian startup ecosystem and global investors interested in investing in Ukrainian startups.

And how would you describe the importance of such an initiative?

Okay, this will take longer terms. When people ask how much money we bring this year, we don't care. We are preaching trust so we can have those investments later. We are just opening the doors between investors and startups.

And my long-term goal is that this would become something business neutral, a voluntary-like thing, growing and growing with each year, escalating. This is more about rebuilding and helping Ukraine to become the growth center for startups in Europe, because we have all the elements it needs. We have such a good educational system for software developers here. We have an entrepreneurial spirit that I really admire in Ukraine. We have this high level of unicorn founders. 

My personal goal is to have such a big impact on the Ukrainian startup ecosystem development that people remember it after I die.

Coming back to the competition that was held on September 27, 11 startups were introduced and managed to pitch their ideas. Do you have any comments or, in general, what is your impression of the teams? 

Yeah, there's two sides. We had plenty, plenty to choose from. To be honest, pitching is a sort of advertisement opportunity to find relevant investors to discuss more after the event. I consider the event as a door-opening for the startups. 

The overall quality is high, but to be honest, we have to find the opportunity to teach some of them about pitch deck development and pitching. But that's so normal, I've been a startup founder. I was maybe the worst pitcher in the world, but I was somehow able to collect the money. It's not easy. You have a big international audience. You're a startup founder. You have two minutes of time. And what if the audience is horrible. It's about learning how to get the attention from the people who are not always ready to listen.

In general, there was a sense of importance among the startups. Some of them were heavily leaning into defense tech or health tech aspects, for example, eXtra Vision. 

In your years of experience with Liquido.VC, what makes Finnish and Ukrainian startups unique in their differences, or what qualities do they share?

I would say the uniqueness is in overall culture. The biggest surprise for me, to be honest, is how good the culture match between Finland and Ukraine is. I have been able to build very, very good connections and trust between Ukrainians. I didn't think this would be so easy, because we Finns, we think we have more links with the Nordic countries. But after this experience, these three years, we have more brotherly feelings with the Baltics, Polish, and Ukrainians.

And then, resilience is also a key factor, especially in challenging environments. You have the war, you have the difficulties to find money, you have these electricity problems, problems with the network, problems with finding people when they're recruited to join the army, and so on. So it really gives this kind of pressure, and people say “diamonds are made under pressure”. And we cannot really compare the environment in Finland and Ukraine.

On the similarities, I would say, you are as humble as we are. You are hardworking and very trustworthy. From my point of view, the culture of trust is one of the key similarities between the two. I don't have one single signed agreement about this event, not with sponsors, not with guardians, not with organizers, not with anyone. We're just doing this based on trust.