War and economic crisis have scared away many foreign business people but for Ukraine’s technology industry the future looks bright.
Lior Tal, a 45-year-old serial entrepreneur from Israel, arrived in Ukraine for the first time in late May to participate in the Tech Bridge Israel-Ukraine networking event. He talked to young tech entrepreneurs and Kyiv university students about the effect that social media can make on people’s professional lives.
Shortly after the event Tal hired a Ukrainian software developer to work on theRep’Nup startup, of which he is a co-founder. Based in Israel, Rep’Nup offers to clean up users’ social networks of posts that might create a negative social media reputation. The startup was founded a year ago and received $1 million of investment from the Israeli JVP venture capital fund.
The service already has 4,000 monthly users, mostly U.S. job seekers. Tal is eying rapid global expansion and is searching for tech specialists in Ukraine. Ukrainian tech experts fully warrant their rising global reputation, according to Tal, drawing on his personal experience that they are always “very hard-working people.”
“I was impressed with the professionalism of the first Ukrainian developer who I hired to work distantly on Rep’Nup shortly after my first visit,” says Tal. “That’s why I decided to open an office in Kyiv.”
Tal did not have many contacts among Ukrainian tech professionals but he started distributing job announcements to Ukrainian outsourcing companies. Tal has worked with Indian tech specialists on an outsourcing basis but he wants to work with Ukrainians full-time.
He hopes to find five developers by the end of summer. The plan for autumn is to form a team of 10-20 people that will also include sales and marketing specialists.
“I know that the cost of hiring developers and opening an office is higher in Ukraine than it is in India” he says. “But the culture is closer to Israel, it is also much cheaper to fly to Ukraine when needed for business purposes, and we have the same time zone, which makes organizing work so much easier.”
Tal also says that the average $1,500-$3,000 monthly salary of a Ukrainian developer is about three times less than that of an Israeli developer with the same skillset.
Even though this value for money is not a secret to many Israeli tech entrepreneurs, Tal says, many just prefer not to work with foreigners.
Tal previously co-founded Guardium in Israel and sold it for $225 million to IBM and sold another startup, Insightix, to the global computer security software developer McAfee for an undisclosed amount. He has big plans for Rep’Nup too, so he wants to find new ways to optimize costs and raise the quality of his new startup’s services.
“My experience in Ukraine has been great. I see that it is a European country,” he says. “I have not yet encountered severe problems with bureaucracy or corruption and I hope not to.”
Kyiv Post staff writer BozhenaSheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.
