The Ukraine Tech Summit took place in London on June 12, 2024. The international event brought together representatives of top tech companies, government officials, and investors from Ukraine and the UK. Sergey Tokarev, a tech investor and co-founder of the investment group Roosh, shared the summit’s outcomes.
The summit was orchestrated to stimulate the recovery of Ukraine’s technology sector, facilitate its entry into international markets, and encourage international cooperation. The participants took part in various panel discussions on Ukraine’s tech ecosystem development and management and investments in Ukrainian innovations.
Among the program participants are:
- Ailand Systems, a developer of smart autonomous drones that detect mines;
- BazaIT, an IT recruiting platform;
- Carbominer, a startup that has developed a technology for capturing carbon dioxide from the air;
- Clearly, a platform for finding psychotherapists;
- Eddy, a digital space for educational institutions;
- Eventmate, a multiservice for organizing events;
- Narratively, a service that allows one to turn a website into an application;
- Spendbase, a one-stop shop for optimizing costs for software and cloud services;
- Uspacy, is a platform for internal communications between employees.
According to Sergey Tokarev, Google for Startups and Roosh, an investment group that develops and scales technology businesses, sponsored the summit. The $10 million fund was created in partnership with 1991, Ukraine’s largest accelerator. This way, Ukrainian technology companies can receive grants of $100,000 and expert assistance from Google.
Sergey Tokarev added that Ukraine has long been an important player in the UK tech market. More and more Ukrainian specialists are working in British tech companies.
“It is very important to focus on investing in Ukraine now to ensure economic stability and growth of the tech sector during the full-scale invasion,” said Vladyslav Bazikalov, founder of Ukraine Tech Summit.
The event speakers commented that the total value of Ukraine’s startup ecosystem has grown to €28 billion. Mike Butcher, editor-at-large of TechCrunch, was impressed by the quality of Ukrainian startups. At the same time, the speaker noted that Ukraine lacks one thing: a product vision and the ability to enter the market with it.
“For a very long time, UK entrepreneurs have collaborated with Ukraine’s amazing tech talent. Now, the UK is benefitting from Ukraine’s startup ecosystem, from SaaS to climate tech to defense tech. Ukraine’s resilience at both personal and startup levels is a key reason to partner with Ukraine’s tech ecosystem,” Butcher noted.
However, Sergey Tokarev noticed one challenge that should be revised. The international tech businesses have policies that do not allow them to cooperate with companies in the war zone.
“For more than two years, Ukrainian specialists have been adapting to working in a big war. Our specialists are giving 100%, creating startups and developing them despite the shelling and blackouts. After all, Ukrainians have no margin for error: if we make a mistake, investors and partners will simply leave our market. We need to spread the stories of successful cooperation with Ukraine,” commented Tokarev.