CRDF Global Brings Together Top Entrepreneurial Talent in Ukraine

Between September 28th and October 7th, 2018, CRDF Global participated in three separate business and technology entrepreneurship events in Lviv and Kyiv, Ukraine.
The first, IT Arena in Lviv, was a three-day conference bringing together ideas from global changemakers in the areas of business, technology, media, and engineering, among other disciplines. The conference featured 2800 participants with representatives from 100 startups as well as 90 guest speakers. The IT Arena’s Startup Competition gave over 150 teams the  opportunity to present their revolutionary ideas and receive various prizes and awards.. Among the top finalist were four companies whom CRDF Global awarded travel and prototype development grants to via the annual Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Program (STEP).

(Taras Rodtsevych, CEO of UATAG)
$5,000 – Prototype Development Grant: UATAG – Taras Rodtsevych, CEO$2,500 – Travel Grant: Axdraft – Yuriy Zaremba, CEO$2,500 – Travel Grant: FunLight – Yaroslav Kaplan, CEO$2,500 – Travel Grant: Pix – Margaret Rimek, CEO
Margaret Rimek, CEO of Pix Inc., was one of three STEP winners who attended the event. Pix is the first digitized backpack that allows wearers to control the backpack’s appearance from their smartphone. Pix Inc. has already raised over $150,000 and is continuing to expand its innovative brand after a positive experience at IT Arena. “The event was full of useful speeches and information in different fields, so I and my team had a great opportunity to widen our knowledge in different professional fields,” said Rimek. “We’ve got a lot of useful feedback after the startup competition and we implemented some of it in our business strategy.”

(Margaret Rimek & Pix Inc.)
The second event, Sector X Accelerator in Kyiv, was a bootcamp training event for Ukrainian companies and startups seeking to enter the US and European. Under the leadership of Andrey Komarovsky, this event keenly focused on developing local startup ecosystems and CRDF Global’s team was pleased to participate in an event that will increase ties between Ukrainian entrepreneurs and Western markets.
Lastly CRDF Global, in partnership with UNIT.City Innovation park in Kyiv, hosted the “CRDF Global Bootcamp Ukraine” from October 6-7 at UNIT.City. The two-day bootcamp provided business development assistance and face-to-face consultations with leading entrepreneurship and innovation mentors from both the U.S. and Ukraine for Ukrainian companies with an already existing product. The four winning teams of the bootcamp received STEP Ukraine travel grants and will have an opportunity to attend the AI & Big Data Expo North America 2018 in Santa Clara, California.
$8,000 – Cardiomo – Roman Belkin, CTO$8,000 – LOOQME – Vitalii Sydorenko, CEO$6,000 – IntelSoft – Andriy Matviychuk, CEO$6,000 – YouScore – Eugene Dudnyk (team lead)
Vitalii Sydorenko, CEO of LOOQUE, a business analytics platform for public relations and a recent STEP winner, is looking forward to the upcoming AI & Big Data Expo. “We want to find a mentor for AI development in our project. Now we only at the beginning of forecasting and want to learn how to do it right. Also, of course networking with specialists in this field to move our development faster.”

(Vitalii Sydorenko)
CRDF Global was proud to participate in these three events and looks forward to working with business and technology entrepreneurs around the world in the future.
CRDF Global would like to express sincere gratitude and appreciation to our Ukrainian partners: Startup Depot (Ivan Dmytrasevych, CEO and Co-Founder), Sector X Accelerator Platform (Andrei Komarovski, CEO & Yuri Kozik, Head of Corporate Relations), Innovations Development Platform (Denys Gurak, Partner, Member of Supervisory Board & Dmytro Ruzhytskyi, CEO), UNIT.City (Olesya Malevanaya, PM Lead & Valentina Rakitina, Community Lead). Your generous support is very appreciated and CRDF Global looks forward to collaborating in the future.
                                
(Marty Kaszubowski)                                                                                     (Dipanjan Nag, Ph.D)
Finally CRDF Global would like to say thank you to distinguished entrepreneurship experts Martin Kaszubowski and Dipanjan Nag, Ph.D. for serving as mentors. Mr. Kaszubowski is the executive director of the Innovation Center at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. and Dr. Nag previously led Ohio State University’s startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem as the Associate Vice President of Technology Transfer.