Budding American technology companies with Ukrainian research and development teams are becoming the norm, rather than the exception. Newly launched Galactic Exchange, a big data platform development firm co-founded by Kharkiv native Konstantin Kladko, recently raised an undisclosed investment from two well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalists .
Although the
startup isn’t revealing details about its product until the technology is
perfected while preventing competitors from catching on, Kladko said the data platform
is for biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Typically, Big Data platforms
manage large datasets that are so complex they can’t be processed with
traditional database tools or methods.
The
two venture capitalists who do know more about the technology – Floodgate
Capital’s Mike Maples and Signia Ventures’ Rick Thompson – took about a week to
give the firm its first round of funding to continue writing code.
“To
one of our VCs we didn’t even show the slide deck,” Kladko said.
Since
the technology behind Galaxy Exchange is quite complex, the team couldn’t
create a convincing prototype too. “We just showed them how it’s going to
work, and they believed in us,” he added.
The
story of the company and its co-founder shows that the “startup virus” has been
contagious in the Silicon Valley for more than 20 years. Kladko, a theoretical
physicist who left Ukraine in the 1990s for America’s premier high-technology
cluster via Germany, has not only created dozens of jobs in his home city but
is also trying to “infect” the young generation with the entrepreneurial itch.
Inevitable startup
His
own entrepreneurial history began in the late 1990s, when he left Stanford
University and theoretical physics to join a startup that focused on
cryptography.
“At
that time, everyone joined a startup,” Kladko said. “These guys [I worked with]
received about $50 million in total funding. The startup consisted of a
Stanford professor and a few with doctorate degrees. Later on, most of them
launched startups of their own, some now work in venture firms.”
After
the startup got sold, Kladko decided to start his own company. Together with a
friend, he launched a cyber-security lab that analyzed software used by
governmental agencies, including the army, police, and even FBI.
Then
came another startup, Cloudessa, a platform that manages large Wi-Fi networks
with hundreds and thousands of hotspots.
“I
decided to launch another startup because analyzing someone else’s code was
boring,” Kladko said. “Cloudessa also has an office in Kharkiv.”
In
October 2014, British Global Reach Technology purchased Cloudessa, leaving
Kladko to search for new challenges together with his American co-founders.
“We
spent half a year analyzing what we could do next,” Kladko said. “We had many
ideas, and we tried to choose the least risky one.”
Biotech and science fiction
Asked
about the other co-founders of Galactic Exchange, Kladko said that he prefers
not to name them only to say that they are not the same founding team that ran
Cloudessa.
In
Kladko’s opinion, having Americans on board is important for a startup that wants
to grow on the global market and in the U.S.
“It
often happens in Ukraine that when a local startup expands to the U.S., their
investors – also Ukrainians – find an American CEO for them. […] Because VCs
don’t believe that Ukrainians can manage sales in the U.S. The startups often
get upset about this. That’s why it’s better to have a mixed team from the
beginning,” he told the Kyiv Post.
The
name of the startup – Galactic Exchange – is supposed to conjure associations
with classic science fiction, and will be incorporated in the product’s
marketing by the end of 2015.
New generation
Kladko
is back in Kharkiv after raising money for the company.
“The
main thing [for me] now is to stay with the team. After all, I’m a tech person,
not a sales one,” Kladko said. “Now I need to split the project into small
pieces to show progress to the VCs. Investor relations is very important for a
startup.”
In
addition to managing a team of 10 Ruby programming language developers in Kharkiv, Kladko is
engaged in a few projects with local universities. At his alma mater, Karazin
Kharkiv National University, Kladko participates in a startup program that
teaches students entrepreneurship and offers them experience with running a
startup team. This year, the program will include the Kharkiv National
University of Radioelectronics.
Another
project is designed to open doors to Silicon Valley for students interested in
Big Data solutions.
“These
students will be engaged in working on open source Big Data solutions, and we
want those solutions to be relevant to the needs of real businesses,” Kladko
said. “As someone who’s lived in Silicon Valley for many years, I can
facilitate contacts between the parties. I hope we’ll spark interest there.”
Freelance writer
Andrii Degeler can be reached at [email protected].The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.
