In late June Digital Future, which has asserted itself over the past two years as one of the most active venture investors in Ukraine, announced investment deals with two US-Ukrainian startups.
The first one, KitApps, Inc. (known as Attendify), received $1.9 million in total from Digital Future and TMT Investments, an LSE-listed fund with Russian backers.
With its online self-service platform, Attendify helps event planners create “apps that engage and delight.”
Every Attendify app includes private social networking features to increase attendee participation while simultaneously capturing data around social interactions. Another feature allows event organizers to drive leads for sponsors and “monetize the app the social way.”
Among Attendify’s clients are Google, AstraZeneca, Chrysler, Tableau, and AOL.
Based in San Francisco, Attendify has its two co-founder Michael Balyasny (CEO) and Artem Iaremchuk (COO) coming from Ukraine and one of its offices located in Kyiv. The company is now opening a new office in Phoenix, Arizona.
“The company targets the multi-billion event tech market, which remains extremely fragmented and offers a promising vision for an integrated, customer success driven solution,” stated Oleksii Vitchenko, the founder of Digital Future, which contributed $1.7 million to the round.
TMT Investments had already invested $400,000 in the company in 2013 and 2014.
Game-like social user experience
Almost simultaneously, Digital Future led a $675,000 seed-extension investment round for Rallyware, another US startup with Ukrainian connections.
Also participating in the round were Ukrainian seed fund Wannabiz, Seattle-based Lighter Capital, and Sillicon Valley business angel Nick Bilogorskiy. The amount of their respective contributions have not been disclosed.
Rallyware empowers its customers to coach, train and motivate their people through personalized scalable engagement programs — what the company calls “a game-like social user experience.”
Rallyware thus claims to bring “higher sales, faster employee onboarding, increased participation in corporate initiatives, and other business objectives.”
Rallyware first began at the MIT with the core idea of automating and scaling engagement through technology. Initially designed to engage and motivate groups of people in non-profit social and political projects, the platform is now being used for a variety of commercial applications.
The company has 28 employees across offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Salt Lake City, Amsterdam and Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. Its COO is Evgeniy Rozinskiy, a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur.
The article was first published at Ukraine Digital News.
