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Fleeing war and chasing new opportunities, more than a dozen Ukrainian entrepreneurs have landed in Los Angeles, finding an unexpected community in the city of dreams. These entrepreneurs have started companies that are collectively worth more than $300 million, in industries ranging from electric vehicle charging stations to audience monetization platforms to social networks.
Dot.LA spent an evening with this group of Ukrainian citizens, learning what it was like to build startups in Ukraine, to cope with the unimaginable fear of fleeing war, and to garner the resilience to rebuild.
Andrew Skrypnyk, CEO of learning platform Promova, decided to enter tech after being awed by 3D graphics on a computer. He went on to spend time in a variety of software development roles, learning more than 20 programming languages in the process. Artem Kudymovskyy, co-founder and CCO of software development firm ITRex Group, similarly became inspired when he saw his first personal computer and met a former programmer who taught him to code.
Others took more winding paths. Vlad Klimchuk studied biomedical engineering and then became one of Ukraine’s highest-grossing filmmaker before switching into tech and co-founding image-based social network TLPRT. Dana Sydorenko spent time as a military paramedic and created Ukraine’s best army supply company before co-founding GameTree with John Uke.
Despite taking different paths, what these founders share is a passion and ingenuity for solving their own problems and developing creative solutions.
For instance, when Oleksiy Malytskyy first moved to Los Angeles, had a difficult time finding an apartment which led him to co-found co-living startup Sota. When Alexey Menshikov, a former sound designer, became frustrated that the gaming company he worked for wouldn’t accept his ideas, he decided to start Beatshapers, his own company in immersive gaming.
Alexey Menshikov -Beatshapers, Oleksandr Gamaniuk -tarta.aiJoey Mota
The sense of resilience and adaptability these entrepreneurs share is exactly what investors look for in startup founders.
“Startup life is really hard. And it's a grind to go from a zero to a one and to have something that's just a concept, or an idea and bootstrap that and build it and get to a place where you're actually making money,” said Brandon Gerson, a former entrepreneur turned venture partner at Expert Dojo and angel investor in Primeclass.
Starting a tech company isn’t easy being with, but in Ukraine it’s especially hard. Ukraine’s challenging history includes the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, numerous financial crises, and of course the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine amongst other events.
Each of these events caused the economy to sink, businesses to collapse and access to capital to dry up. Over the years Ukraine’s annual GDP has swung wildly as result, from highs of 10%+ annual GDP growth to lows of -20% growth. Ukrainian founders not only face the normal challenges of managing a startup, but have the added pressures of navigating rapidly shifting economic conditions.
The limited number of venture capital firms in the country also means access to capital is hard to come by, and thus harder to scale.
This wasn’t always the case: Ukraine was broadly known for having a thriving tech scene before the war. Between 2015 and 2016 for instance, investors pumped more than $200 million into startups and Ukraine’s IT outsourcing sector was worth billions.
Pavlo Shlapak - Phygit, Alexey Menshikov -Beatshapers, Vlad Klimchuk TLPRT Joey Mota
But as Sydorenko, the paramedic turned GameTree co-founder, put it, “at some point Ukraine has limits.” Not only is it difficult to raise money in Ukraine, but “you will never be able to build a publicly traded company over there because this market does not exist,” she said.
Although Sydorenko and her team were able to build a social network in Ukraine that now has over 500,000 users, fundraising was difficult. It wasn’t until moving to Los Angeles that they were able to raise a significant amount of money: $650,000 in their most recent round.
By virtue of being from Ukraine then, these entrepreneurs naturally have resilience and adaptability in spades. “Someone who comes from Ukraine and having gone through what those folks have gone through, I don't even mean just in the war, just in history, they're prepared in a way that most of the folks are not,” said Brian MacMahon, whose accelerator Expert Dojo has invested in more than 200 startups across Africa, Latin America, and India among other regions.
Now the Russia-Ukraine war has threatened to dismantle the country’s tech industry as infrastructure is destroyed, internet access and electricity are cut off, and tech companies and their workers flee.
Even still, Ukrainian tech workers are carrying on in astounding fashion.
One Ukranian man, who was locked in his dimly lit basement for weeks, carried on programming and coding even while bombs were going off overhead, said Kudymovskyy, as an illustration of Ukrainian resolve.
By some estimates nearly 90 to 95% of all startups fail, but in the experience of Pavlo Shlapak, founder of Phygit, which creates digital experiences for physical products, the survival rate for Ukrainian startups is significantly higher. “And that's because we can adapt, we have a positive mind, great sense of humor, and it's a super valuable source actually in crisis situations,” he said.
For Ukrainian founders then, relocating and building a startup in sunny Los Angeles, is almost easy by comparison. Access to capital is plentiful, networking opportunities abound and the Los Angeles tech community is thriving.
Despite being separated by more than six thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean, several Ukrainians saw parallels between Odessa, Ukraine and Los Angeles for example.
“Odessa is the most diverse city in Ukraine,” said Primeclass founder Ivan Kovpak, who noted the connection between his hometown and Los Angeles. Kovpak, Skrypnyk and Kudymovskyy agreed that both cities possess comparable climates, proximity to water and similar levels of openness and diversity.
Ivan Kovpak, Primeclass founderJoey Mota
“In California, everybody kind of likes Silicon Valley, but there's something very special about this place,” said Kudymovskyy, a former consultant who moved to Los Angeles in 2012 before starting his own firm ITRex Group. Kudymovskyy also said that diversity and access to different ideas can actually make startups more successful.
The culture of creativity and storytelling was one of the main appeals of relocating to Los Angeles, according to several founders. More than one joked that Ukrainians are not the best salesmen or marketing gurus. But living in the filmmaking and content creation capital of the world, they now had the perfect combination of storytelling and tech.
The combination of a U.S. founder with sales experience and “a founder from Ukraine who will develop a product is the killer combination,” said Malytskyy, co-founder of Sota.
Other founders agreed. “I think the combination of Ukraine and LA is our key of success,” said Sydorenko. “If you take almost any company, you have developers in Ukraine, you test your product in Ukraine, and you have people who create networking and promote your product in LA, any sort of company will be successful,” she said.
Although it may seem more obvious to build a startup in Silicon Valley rather than Los Angeles, several founders thought otherwise.
“It makes perfect sense that if you want to build a startup, you think that San Francisco is the spot,” Sydorenko added. “But actually it's the worst place to build because the cost per developer is extremely high [and] you need to compete with the biggest companies in the market,” she said.
Omar Zhandarbekuly, Yevgen Arutyunyan - AEV charging, Oleksyy Malytskyy - Go SotaJoey Mota
Plus as more Silicon Valley investors open offices in the city and startups relocate their headquarters, Los Angeles is quickly becoming a new tech capital in its own right, said Menshikov.
In many ways Los Angeles was the perfect landing spot for this group of entrepreneurs. But as the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, many of the founders can’t help but feel the tug of home.
They each grappled with the dual responsibility and tension of building successful startups in the U.S., while still supporting their country and taking care of friends, family and employees back home.
Founders often find themselves helping colleagues find shelter and safe places to work back in Ukraine or working to relocate family members. At times this can mean ceasing startup operations to assist with the war.
“Every Ukrainian is in one way or the other contributing to the war,” whether they are on the front lines or not, said Malytskyy, who organized a resistance group inside of Russia at the start of the war.
For the founders, this often means using money as a form of resistance.
“We also fight on the economical front,” said Skrypnyk. In his mind they are financial soldiers, helping to wage war by beefing up the Ukrainian economy, sending monetary support to the military and propping up families and businesses.
Although these founders have physically left Ukraine, they brought with them their country’s sense of resilience, humor, purpose and passion. For now, Los Angeles is home, but the spirit of Ukraine lives on.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
According to a Forbes report last April, both the viewership and dollars behind women’s sports at a collegiate and professional level are growing.
In 2022, the first 32 games of the NCAA tournament had record attendance levels, breaking records set back in 2004, and largely driven by the new and rapidly growing women’s NCAA tournament. WNBA openers this year saw a 21% spike in attendance, with some teams including the LA Sparks reporting triple-digit ticket sales growth, about 121% over 2022’s total. In 2023, the average size of an LA Sparks crowd swelled to 10,396 people, up from 4,701 people.
Women make up half the population, but “also 50% of the folks that are walking into the stadium at Dodger Stadium, or your NFL fans are just about 50% women,” noted Erin Storck, a panelist and senior analyst at Los Angeles-based Elysian Park Ventures.
Storck added that in heterosexual households, women generally manage most of the family’s money, giving them huge purchasing power, a potential advantage for female-run leagues. “There's an untapped revenue opportunity,” she noted.
In the soccer world, Los Angeles-based women’s soccer team Angel City FC has put in the work to become a household name, not just in LA County but across the nation. At an LA Tech Week panel hosted by Athlete Strategies about investing in sports, Angel City head of strategy and chief of staff Kari Fleischauer said that years before launching the women’s National Women’s Soccer League team, Angel City FC was pounding the pavement letting people know about the excitement ladies soccer can bring. She noted community is key, and that fostering a sense of engagement and safety at the team’s home venue, BMO stadium (formerly Banc of California Stadium), is one reason fans keep coming back.
Adding free metro rides to BMO stadium and private rooms for nursing fans to breastfeed or fans on the spectrum to avoid sensory overload, were just some of the ways ACFC tried to include its community in the concept of its stadium, Fleischauer said. She noted, though, that roughly 46% of Angel City fans are “straight white dudes hanging out with their bros.”
“Particularly [on] the woman's side, I'd like to think we do a better job of making sure that there's spaces for everyone,” Fleischauer told the audience. “One thing we realize is accessibility is a huge thing.”
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.
Here's what people are saying about the fifth day of L.A. Tech Week on social:
#LATechWeek has been on 🔥🔥🔥. Yes the events are super cool at amazing venues. But, I’m blown away by the people. I’ve met so many founders building generative AI companies from the ground up. I’m so bullish on LA right now🥳. LA is for builders #longLA
Thanks @rpnickson 📸 pic.twitter.com/B6rT2jJYIs
— Dr. Kelly O'Brien (@Kvo2013) June 8, 2023
Successful LatinxVC Avanza Summit 2023 in LA! It’s been an amazing few days near the beach w great company. Thank you to our panelists & participants.
Huge thanks to our incredible sponsors SVB, Chavez Family Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, PledgeLA, Fenwick & West, Countsy! pic.twitter.com/oVuGIgFurk
— LatinxVC (@LatinxVCs) June 9, 2023
30+ gaming startups presented at the A16z Speedrun Demo Day in LA yesterday. Great thanks to the @a16zGames team for an awesome day of events! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/DKq8IFo5QZ
— Grace Zhou (@graceminzhou) June 9, 2023
📣🤩 What’s the buzz? It’s #LATechWeek from @TechstarsLA & @TechstarsHealth joint demo day with the #Techstar HC team where our @fyelabs founder/CEO Suvojit Ghosh mentored both cohorts! #TechStars demo day highlighted 12 amazing emerging #startups in #healthtech #innovation. 🩺 pic.twitter.com/0RXClCtfDQ
— FYELABS (@fyelabs) June 9, 2023
Another successful Coffee On Slauson in the books for #LATechWeek.
Special thanks to the good people at Pledge LA, SVB and @GundersonLaw for the ongoing support and the @findyourhilltop staff for providing the space, eats & vibes. ♻️ pic.twitter.com/51cMDoEn30
— Slauson & Co. (@SlausonAndCo) June 9, 2023
The perfect combo to start #LATechWeek Day 5: pastries, coffee, and great convos with industry founders ✨
Fireside chats with @enriquealle, @wp, and @robynpark pic.twitter.com/booYPdekVV
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Of course @designerfund has the most amazing pastries at their event. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/PjyWlGTQI4
— Jesse Pickard (@jessepickard) June 9, 2023
My favorite event from @Techweek_ has to be "Modern Storytelling & Business Building." Hosted by @STHoward #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/SV1eexMJ4k
— JonnyZeller (@JonnyZeller) June 9, 2023
And the finale of the night was courtesy of the one and only @zedd for an unforgettable end to the "City of Games" party! Hosted by @a16zGames and @100Thieves #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hliI9yLKse
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Excited to be at the @a16zGames Speedrun Demo Day! Loved the energy and excitement from the companies that pitched there. It was also great to see @Tocelot and @ndrewlee at this amazing #LATechWeek event pic.twitter.com/NfLQO5lR27
— Andy Lee | andypwlee.bit (@andypwlee) June 9, 2023
Thank you to everyone who joined the Sony Venture Fund US team at #LATechWeek for our screening of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Last summer, we started building a presence in LA. Today, it's exciting to host such an event with the @Sony family and the LA VC community. pic.twitter.com/wdDm6qtHdL
— Sony Innovation Fund (@Sony_Innov_Fund) June 9, 2023
Time to eat, connect and build while @remi_rodney provided the vibes. 🙏🏽#LATechWeek @BuildOnBase @developer_dao @WeAreRazorfish pic.twitter.com/QIPh1gjvoA
— Hola Metaverso-Blockchain & New Web Tech Events 🎪 (@holametaverso) June 9, 2023
@Lux_Capital at #LATechWeek advancing the impossible to inevitable, from..
..defense primes partnering with cutting edge defense tech startups, to..
..hardware x LLMs improving mental health.
From the rich and diverse LA ecosystem stems generational companies: pic.twitter.com/v5S5r8JtbU
— Shahin Farshchi (@Farshchi) June 9, 2023
LA Tech Week has been a blast! Met some amazing creators, founders and investors from all over the world! #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/AAh9JFELhe
— Chris Germano (@netslayer) June 9, 2023
Had such a blast at LA Tech Week and hosting events for @brexHQ
Top highlights were collabing with @pulley on an Emerging Managers / Founder mixer at the @poplco House, rooftop event in Venice, creator panel with @thechangj & proper Korean food with in KTown.
Exhausted is an… pic.twitter.com/mGQnSYGPdg
— Τyler Robinson (@TyyRob3) June 9, 2023
Did you have fun at @sophiaamoruso’s launch party for @trustfundvc? #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/gbrbXRQ9Xx
— Kay (@KaySnels) June 9, 2023
y00tilty in every city with @KaylaLor3n & @cryptochrisg813.
Welcome to the LA @y00tsNFT fam! #LATechWeek #3XP week. pic.twitter.com/6wWKlsTacx
— VanG0xH (@CryptoVanGoghs) June 9, 2023
Really enjoyed #LATechWeek. Here are some observations I made 👇
— s.personal.ai (Suman Kanuganti) (@SumanPersonalAI) June 9, 2023
Thank you @TheKofiAmpadu for including me in #demoday with the latest @a16ztxo cohort! It was a real full circle moment to witness the brilliance of both @ChrisLyons & @ZMuse_ & #PledgeLA very own. She’s why we’re #LongLA 🚀💕 #LAtechweek pic.twitter.com/itkKXMxQRb
— Qiana Qiana! (@Q_i_a_n_a) June 9, 2023
@upfrontvc Gaming Founders Podcast #iLOVELA #LATechWeek @Techweek_ @KatiaAmeri @mucker @fikavc @bonfire_vc @TenOne10 @WatertowerGroup @ganasvc @IAmRobRyan @john_at_stonks @eva_ho @dereknorton pic.twitter.com/LCbaGXCoW7
— Sean Goldfaden (@seangoldfaden) June 9, 2023
Hosts Kevin Zhang, Partner at @upfrontvc, and Eden Chen, CEO of @pragmaplatform, interviewed two special guests from @raidbaseinc Stephen Lim, Co-Founder & Product Director, and Trevor Romleski, Co-Founder & Game Director. 🎙 #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/hxHEAoELZ6
— Tech Week (@Techweek_) June 9, 2023
Kicking off @a16zGames @100Thieves City of Games party at #LATechWeek 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/zQcZedG15f
— Jon Lai (@Tocelot) June 9, 2023
Yesterday at @socinnovation I got to have this AWESOME conversation with @iamwill — musician, producer, technology entrepreneur, and Founder & CEO of https://t.co/D60y1e2JOu #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/KBxK6rXyTG
— Anna Barber (@annawbarber) June 9, 2023
I absolutely love this game. Proud moment for the team @investwithatlas. #LATechWeek pic.twitter.com/fPZvKXU7TC
— Tobias Francis (@TobiasFrancis) June 9, 2023
Had a blast at LA Tech Week this year with @brexHQ
From hosting & moderating my first creator panel featuring @BlakeMichael14, to a fun rooftop night in Venice, and to attending some amazing events such as Watertower’s emerging manager panel and a VC/founder tennis tournament pic.twitter.com/udjfmLHE0L
— Jonathan Chang (@thechangj) June 8, 2023
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
At Lowercarbon Capital’s LA Tech Week event Thursday, the synergy between the region’s aerospace industry and greentech startups was clear.
The event sponsored by Lowercarbon, Climate Draft (and the defunct Silicon Valley Bank’s Climate Technology & Sustainability team) brought together a handful of local startups in Hawthorne not far from LAX, and many of the companies shared DNA with arguably the region’s most famous tech resident: SpaceX.
Here’s a look at the greentech startups that pitched during the Tech Week event, and how they think what they’re building could help solve the climate crisis.
Arbor: Based in El Segundo, this year-old startup is working to convert organic waste into energy and fresh water. At the same time, it also uses biomass carbon removal and storage to remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in an attempt to avoid further damaging the earth’s ozone layer. At the Tech Week event Thursday, Arbor CEO Brad Hartwig told a stunned crowd that Arbor aims to remove about five billion tons of organic waste from landfills and turn that into about 6 PWh, or a quarter of the global electricity need, each year. Hartwig is an alumni of SpaceX; he was a manufacturing engineer on the Crew Dragon engines from 2016-2018 and later a flight test engineer at Kitty Hawk.
Antora: Sunnyvale-based Antora Energy was founded in 2017, making it one of the oldest companies on the pitching block during the event. Backed by investors including the National Science Foundation and Los Angeles-based Overture VC, Antora has raised roughly $57 million to date, most recently a $50 million round last February. Chief operating officer Justin Briggs said Antora’s goal is to modernize and popularize thermal energy storage using ultra-hot carbon. Massive heated carbon blocks can give off thermal energy, which Antora’s proprietary batteries then absorb and store as energy. It’s an ambitious goal, but one the world needs at scale to green its energy footprint. According to Briggs, “the biggest challenge is how can we turn back variable intermittent renewable electricity into something that's reliable and on demand, so we can use it to provide energy to everything we need.”
Arc: Hosting the panel was Arc, an electric boating company that’s gained surprising momentum, moving from design to delivering its first e-boats in just two years of existence. Founded in 2021, the company’s already 70 employees strong and has already sold some of its first e-boats to customers willing to pay the luxury price tag, CTO Ryan Cook said Thursday. Cook said that to meet the power needs of a battery-powered speedboat, the Arc team designed the vehicle around the battery pack with the goal of it being competitive with gas boats when compared to range and cost of gas. But on the pricing side, it’s not cheap. Arc’s flagship vessel, the Arc One is expected to cost roughly $300,000. During the panel, Cook compared the boat to being “like an early Tesla Roadster.” To date Arc Boats has raised just over $35 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Kevin Durant, Will Smith and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Clarity Technology: Carbon removal startup Clarity is based in LA and was founded by Yale graduate and CEO Glen Meyerowitz last year. Clarity is working to make “gigaton solutions for gigaton problems.” Their aim? To remove up to 2,000 billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere through direct air capture, a process which uses massive fans to move chemicals that capture CO2. But the challenge, Meyerowitz noted in his speech, is doing this at scale in a way that makes an actual dent in the planet’s emissions while also efficiently using the electricity needed to do so. Meyerowitz spent nearly five years working as an engineer for SpaceX in Texas, and added he’s looking to transfer those learnings into Clarity.
Parallel Systems: Based in Downtown LA’s Arts District, this startup is building zero-emission rail vehicles that are capable of long-haul journeys otherwise done by a trucking company. The estimated $700 billion trucking industry, Parallel Systems CEO Matt Soule said, is ripe for an overhaul and could benefit from moving some of its goods off-road to electric railcars. According to Soule, Parallel’s electric battery-powered rail vehicles use 25% of the energy a semi truck uses, and at a competitive cost. Funded in part by a February 2022 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Parallel Systems has raised about $57 million to date. Its most recent venture funding round was a $49 million Series A led by Santa Monica-based VC Anthos Capital. Local VCs including Riot Ventures and Santa Monica-based Embark Ventures are also backers of Parallel.
Terra Talent: Unlike the rest of the startups pitching at the Tech Week event, Terra Talent was focused on building teams rather than technology. Founder Dolly Singh worked at SpaceX, Oculus and Citadel as a headhunter, and now runs Terra, a talent and advisory firm that helps companies recruit top talent in the greentech space. But, she said, she’s concerned that all the work these startups are doing won’t matter unless we very quickly turn around the current trendlines. “Earth will shake us off like and she will do just fine in 10,000 years,” she said. “It’s our way of living, everything we love is actually here on earth… there’s nothing I love on Mars,” adding that she’s hopeful the startups that pitched during the event will be instrumental in making sure the planet stays habitable for a little while longer.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.