One of the world’s biggest tech conferences will host 15 Ukrainian information technology startups this year in San Francisco, granting them a chance to shine worldwide.
TechCrunch Disrupt – a three-day conference with annual attendance of over 5,000 people – is an opportunity for IT startups to test themselves, present their ideas to other techies, the press, and investors.
Two Ukrainian-born entrepreneurs from the United States – Zhenya Rozinskiy and Nick Bilogorskiy – think it’s their duty to grant Ukrainian startups this opportunity.
For this purpose, both of them have picked startups for the Ukrainian Startup Pavilion at the event for the second year in a row. And this time they’ve selected 15, providing each with tickets that cost $2,000 per startup, flights to America, business guidance, and admission to networking events at Disrupt, which will take place on Sept. 18-20.
The selected teams include Fantasy, Influ2, Legal Alarm, Morbax, Myhelix, NoPlаg, PassivDom, Photolemur, Setapp, SmartCloudConnect, Smartsport, SoftSeq, Crowdin, Cruisebe, and One Man Band.
Some of them are already quite popular on the global tech scene.
Setapp, for instance, was all over foreign tech on the day of its January launch.
One Ukrainian company, MacPaw, provides a service by which Mac users receive a kit of popular paid-for macOS apps for a monthly fee. This is how it works: Setapp creates a folder that’s available via the Finder app on a Mac. Inside the folder, a directory-like library of apps appears, including descriptions and screenshots. Users can click each to install and use as long as their subscription is valid.
Another popular Ukrainian startup that will go to San Francisco this year is PassivDom, a startup that builds off-grid smart homes, which generate their own power from roof-placed solar panels, come with in-built, off-the-grid sewage and plumbing, have their own climate control system that keeps it at just the right temperature year-round.
The startup have plans to manufacture and already deliver the first houses to their owners in the United States in October this year. Overall, the startup has already had 7,000 pre-orders.
Ukrainian legal firm Juscutum, which combines tech and law in its approach, developed a service it called Legal Alarm, which it will bring on its trip to TechCrunch Disrupt.
Legal Alarm is a smartphone application that summons a lawyer at the click of a button. It first charges 150 euros and then dispatches a lawyer for those in need of emergency legal assistance.
In an interview with the Kyiv Post, one of its authors said the idea had hit after the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, when there were searches and raider attacks on business.
Ukrainians started to participate in the TechCrunch Disrupt conference among firsts nations located in Eastern Europe.
In 2008, Ukrainian IT startup Viewdle was presenting from the stage of TechCrunch Disrupt while taking part in Startup Battlefield, a competition for startups, in which companies like Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, Getaround, and Soluto had had their debut there.
In 2012, Ukrainian Viewdle was bought by Google for reportedly $45 million.
Ukrainians continued to participate, not competing but presenting themselves at the Startup Alley, an area at the conference where early-stage companies showcase their technology to attendeeds, potential investors, and journalists.
Last year, however, Ukrainian e-sports startup Mobalitics competed in Startup Battlefield and won the grand prize.
It successfully attracted $2.6 million in early investment after the contest.
The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by Ciklum. The content is independent of the donors.
