What do young startups need at the beginning stage? Expert assessments, fresh eyes, and a crash test in a friendly environment. Hey, Pitches! initiative was founded by Ruslan Tymofieiev and Andrew Kryvorchuk together with the fund Flyer One Ventures in order to help entrepreneurs who have brilliant ideas.
The “anti-pitching” project is held in Kyiv, the first meeting with entrepreneurs was organized in August 2021, and more than 60 businesses applied to participate in it. The event gathered investors willing to share their expertise with startups founders.
The initiators—Ruslan Tymofieiev, the founder of Adventures Lab, and Andrew Kryvorchuk, the Managing Partner of the fund—speak about the first applicants that had already received significant feedbacks and a roadmap for future work.
Participants of Hey, Pitches! are able once per month to attend a one-hour meeting with investors that are ready to discuss a bottleneck of the startups and ways to deal with it, give critical feedback on the presentation, and provide advice on developing and improving the product. According to the initiators of the project, such meetings contribute to boosting startup growth.
Andrew Kryvorchuk appreciates face-to-face communication with the startup owners because it enables Adventures Lab “to be useful not only to their portfolio companies they invest in but to the entire ecosystem.”
To participate in this social initiative, businessmen should apply via a special form, the Hey, Pitches! team brings up the 10 best startups out and invites them for a friendly meeting. What differs the project, is that the entrepreneurs do not have to pitch their ideas, they can ask for advice and feedback.
Ruslan Tymofieiev says that the typical mistake that most founders make is that they are heavily involved in their projects “ignoring other development options, cases, mistakes, competitors, and vulnerabilities.”
He explains that the investors` task is to encourage the founders to view their projects from a different perspective and uncover potential problems and shortcomings. Not to “provide ready-made solutions to a problem but to ask questions that can lead the founder to the necessary conclusions,” adds the founder of Adventures Lab.
As for participants of the Hey, Pitches!, they are mostly representatives of startups at the MVP stage (about 70% of all applicants). A lot of applications are submitted by developers of applications and different types of software. They are interested in such questions, as: how to properly test the product, how to bring it to the market, how to obtain funding, configure monetization, and scale up their startup, Ruslan Tymofieiev tells.
Among the projects that attended the first Hey, Pitches! meeting, there were promising Ukrainian startups. One of them, the online platform Pavooq, is focused on researching and analyzing human interactions in messengers and emails. Its CEO Yevhen Bereza appreciates that the investors helped his team to see weaknesses and critical gaps in their project.
Another startup called Zeely is working on a mobile application for building commercial websites that can be useful for people living in poorly developed countries. The application will allow them to develop a business without a computer, using only a smartphone. Yaroslav Samoiliuk, CEO of the project, commended the informal setting of the meeting: a conversation in a friendly way leads to important conclusions that can lead the startup to a fruitful development.
A lot of thanks received the Hey, Pitches! concept from Vitalii Sydorenko, CEO at Jiffsy, an application for fashion e-commerce. An opportunity to talk to investors and business experts who attended the meeting was valuable for the future development of Jiffsy. Moreover, his startup was selected by a representative of Startup Wise Guys accelerator who was present at the meeting.
Hey, Pitches! is a platform that opens a window into the world of a successful business for Ukrainian startups by arming the entrepreneurs with a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their projects.