Ukrainian startup Awesomic has attracted $125,000 from Y Combinator, one of the world’s best training programs for startups based in Silicon Valley. Among Y Combinator’s alumni are Airbnb, Reddit, Yahoo, Twitch, Dropbox — companies all now worth over $1 billion.
With this money, Awesomic plans to hire more tech specialists and attract new customers. The company is known for its algorithm that matches web designers with online businesses.
Over 500 businesses from the U.S. and Europe already use Awesomic, including the popular mobile app Reface, co-working space Lift99, artificial intelligence startup People.ai and education-technology startup memoryOS.
Compared to other businesses that spend weeks trying to find a designer on freelance marketplaces like Fiverr or Upwork, Awesomic’s users get their ‘perfect match’ automatically — without interviews and for a fixed price, one of the company’s founders Roman Sevastyanov, 25, told the Kyiv Post.
The platform works like this: first, users create a task in Awesomic’s mobile app, then the company’s algorithm analyzes the task and chooses one of 35 designers with the best skills to accomplish it. “It’s like an Uber for design,” said the company’s founders Stacy Pavlyshyna, 26, and Sevastyanov.
Most of the web designers that use Awesomic come from Ukraine, according to Sevastyanov. They usually create logos, websites, presentations and animations for businesses. Customers seem to be satisfied with their work.
Designers have to update their progress every day. One designer usually works with one business on several projects to better understand its goals and style. If customers are not satisfied with the final result, they can choose another specialist.
A monthly subscription for graphic design costs $499, for product design — $999. Designers’ salaries depend on the amount of work they’ve done in a month.
“With Awesomic, we always end up with a great design. Their designer knows our style and our brand really well so it feels like they’re part of our team,” said Marguerite Halley, head of the product at Berba, the Spain-based translation service for businesses.
After graduating from Y Combinator, Awesomic hopes to attract more users to its platform. When Pavlyshyna and Sevastyanov joined the program in April 2021, their profit increased and the number of employees grew from 15 to 50 people. Now Awesomic has 20 new vacancies published on its website.
Apart from Awesomic, Y Combinator invested in 3,000 other companies with an overall value of $400 billion. In exchange of $125,000 of investment, Y Combinator gets 7% of the company’s shares. These conditions apply to all startups, regardless of their size and value.
Sevastyanov and Pavlishina will participate in the program online until September 15, talking on Zoom with businesses and investors of big tech giants like Stripe, AirBnb and Coinbase. They will also receive discounts for their services.
Before joining Y Combinator, Awesomic attracted $50,000 from the Ukrainian Startup Fund and raised funding from European angel investors like Ragnar Sass, co-founder of Pipedrive and Lift99 and Mikko Silventola, one of the first investors of the Estonian taxi service Bolt. Awesomic started fundraising at the beginning of April 2020 when the pandemic hit, but still managed to attract money.
Sevastyanov told the Kyiv Post that he wants to raise even more money after graduating from Y Combinator. “So far, dozens of investors, including funds from the U.S., have personally subscribed to the startup’s newsletter and are interested in investing in Awesomic,” he said.
Sevastyanov and Pavlishina have been working together on different startups for four years. Before founding Awesomic, Pavlishina was the head of marketing at e-commerce platform MyBookmark, while Sevastyanov worked as a software engineer and helped American startups to found research and development centers in Ukraine.
The pair launched Awesomic in just 10 days and immediately found their first client.
