Tech. Interviews

“More and more foreign VCs are investing in companies with Polish roots.” Interview with Robert Grygorowicz from SpeedUp Group

A week ago, SpeedUp Group made it to our 20 most active Polish VC funds in the 2023 ranking. Through its funds, SpeedUp invested in 4 news companies, which counts for a total of €1.6 million capital, with more deals

“We raised $2.5 million during the war.” Interview with Zibra AI co-founder

Last week, it was reported that the Ukrainian deep-tech company Zibra AI raised $500,000 from the Speedrun accelerator launched by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). This is the very first round for startups in the accelerator. Interestingly, Zibra AI was the only CEE company

How Ukrainian e-gov service Diia was created. Interview with Mstyslav Banik

Over the past few months, the Ukrainian service Diia has been much discussed regarding exports: several countries are considering implementing the service. Diia app was launched in Ukraine in 2022. It provides Ukrainians with ID documents, allows them to register

“It isn’t easy to open a production facility in Europe.” Releaf Paper building a €3.5M plant in France

The Ukrainian startup Releaf Paper makes paper and packaging out of fallen leaves. Its clients include L’Oreal, Samsung, and Louis Vuitton. In 2022, the startup received a grant from Google and €2.5 million from the EU. Also, it has recently

“We don’t want to be a background for Instagram photos.” What Ukrainians bring to Burning Man 2023

Last year, the iconic Burning Man festival was held without the participation of Ukrainian artists due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This year, two teams will go to the desert and present their work. Kurenivka brings The Hedgehog Temple.

“Before the war, Ukraine was our third largest market.” Interview with Sacha Michaud, Glovo

In the mid May 2023 the co-founder of Glovo delivery company Sacha Michaud visited Kyiv and spent three days in Ukrainian capital. The first purpose was to visit the Ukrainian team. A hub in Ukraine is responsible for the entire

80 startups, $35M in investments: how ICLUB works

ICLUB is a subsidiary project of TA Ventures, launched in 2018. The idea behind this project was to get more people involved in investing by freeing them from the routine work of finding and analyzing startups. The TA Ventures team took

Interview with Ukraine’s Anton Borzov: working at WhatsApp, being an angel investor, and launching a $100M investment company

The Ukrainian Anton Borzov was one of the first employees at WhatsApp. He and his colleagues from Dnipro in Ukraine were responsible for the product’s design from its earliest days, even before the messenger app gained popularity. Anton moved to

Ukrainians launch YEP search engine investing $60M. How will it compete with Google?

On March 27, 2019, the founder of Ahrefs, Ukrainian Dmytro Gerasymenko, announced an ambitious new project — the YEP search engine, which he claimed would be able to compete with Google. How could a team of 100 people compete with