Why Endeavor has decided to launch in Ukraine now

As the bombs started falling on Ukraine in 2022, many entrepreneurs were faced with an agonizing choice: remain and support their country’s fight or shift some or all of their business outside of Ukraine.

Ukraine has always boasted incredible talent but, as the war continues, that talent is increasingly benefiting other countries, threatening the long-term future of Ukrainian innovation. A survey from the Ukrainian Startup Fund and the Polish-Ukrainian Startup Bridge found nearly one in three Ukrainian startup founders have relocated their company at least partially outside the country—a trend that has increased over the past two years. Despite a rise in fundraising activities since the war began in 2022, many international venture capital funds are pressuring founders to relocate outside of Ukraine to mitigate risks. For the Ukrainian ecosystem to rebuild after the war, it needs international support.

While leading expansion into many countries at Endeavor, I have witnessed that entrepreneurial ecosystems don’t adhere to natural borders. The longer the war continues, the harder it becomes for Ukrainian founders to operate from home. We believe there’s a real risk that these talented entrepreneurs will become absorbed in other tech ecosystems, and not have the opportunity to come back to reinvest their success and knowledge in the Ukrainian tech community. 

To help ensure this does not happen, we at Endeavor are proud to open our latest office in Ukraine this month. 

He previously launched Mission Possible, a startup accelerator in Ukraine. “We do have some VC seed funds, but we don’t have a single series A+ fund focused on Ukrainian startups. So if a startup, let’s say, needs to raise $10M or $15M of capital, they need to go somewhere else.”

Focusing on the next generation

Like each of our offices around the world, the new Ukrainian headquarters in Kyiv will identify, select, and support Ukraine’s high-impact entrepreneurs, whether they are based in the country or currently abroad. Our aim is to help accelerate the growth of today’s entrepreneurs while maintaining their connection to their home ecosystem. Endeavor Ukraine will empower them to mentor, invest in, and advise the next generation of Ukrainian founders. 

The Ukrainian founder diaspora is relocating to countries such as the US, Canada, Poland, Portugal, and Spain—startup hubs where Endeavor also has a presence to support their growth.

Our ultimate intention is to kick off a flywheel effect that will allow the tech ecosystem to thrive not only now, but importantly after the war ends. 

Why we’re expanding into Ukraine now 

Pouring time and resources into a country at war isn’t an obvious call. Though we started investigating Ukraine as a possible expansion target back in 2020, we struggled with the decision of when to bring the Endeavor blueprint to war-time Ukraine. But that wasn’t because the Ukrainian ecosystem didn’t boast obvious potential.

Eight companies have already reached unicorn status with roots in Ukraine, including Creatio, Grammarly, GitLab, and People.ai. Before the war, the country appeared to be on track to produce even more. And Ukraine has some incredible entrepreneur success stories – both Jan Koum who co-founded WhatsApp, and Max Levchin who co-founded Paypal are Kyiv-born. The country has consistently been known for its talented engineers. A recent Pentalog report placed Ukraine fourth in its global rankings of countries with the best developers. 

In 2023, Central and Eastern Europe startups were worth €213B, having grown 2.4 times since 2019. Ukraine is the second largest contributor after Poland with €28B. Ukraine has also added four new venture capital funds since 2023 — with growth investor Horizon Capital closing a €350M Fund IV earlier this year. 

Ukrainian founders have been backed by top firms like ICONIQ, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Lux Capital, and Insight.

These founders are ambitions — two-thirds of the country’s startups have focused on global markets. And Ukraine’s entrepreneurs have continued to build big companies and attract significant investment since the war started. 

Ukrainian-founded Preply, a human-tutor edtech, raised a $120M Series C round in July 2023. Another Ukrainian-born CEO, Katherine Kostereva, of software development company Creatio, closed a $200M round at a $1.2B valuation this June. 

Through our rules-based co-investment fund Endeavor Catalyst, we will help to fill some of the funding gaps limiting their growth, and raise the profile of promising Ukrainian entrepreneurs among international investors.  

But it’s not just lack of funding that is pushing Ukrainian startups abroad. It’s also a lack of mentorship. “Those companies that scaled already to series A/B, they start to need very tailored, particular advice,” Sviatoslav adds. “They need advice from somebody who built something similar in a similarly challenging market.” This is at the core of what we do and leads to the Endeavor Multiplier Effect, where the work we do with entrepreneurs is paid forward by inspiring, mentoring, and investing in the next generation of founders.

And we are finding that there is no shortage of successful Ukrainians willing (and already) paying it forward by investing and mentoring Ukraine startups. Endeavor Ukraine’s board of directors includes some of these aspirational Ukrainian founders, CEOs, and investors — people like Oleksandr Kosovan, who founded MacPaw and is still based in the country, and also international figures like Anton Borzov, WhatsApp’s founding designer and current partner at VC firm STRATMINDS. 

With the invasion ongoing in Ukraine and people still being displaced, it might seem early to start worrying about how to help Ukraine’s resilient entrepreneurs stay strong and bounce back after the war. It’s not. 

Ukraine is one of the most challenging launches I have done with Endeavor, but it is also one of the most rewarding. I believe that by helping anchor Ukrainian founders to home, while at the same time connecting them to a global peer community from wherever they find themselves currently, Endeavor can, together with the local and international startup community, set the stage for a post-war surge.

As Tomáš Fiala, CEO of Dragon Capital in Ukraine, told The New Voice of Ukraine, “It is more important for Ukraine to get help now than $750B after the war.”