Flyer One Ventures in 2022: Events, initiatives, and social activities

By Vital Laptenok, general partner at F1V

Supporting our team and partners was one of the key things we had to do in 2022, the year that was plagued with the war in Ukraine and financial crisis in the United States.

Even though it is already an overwhelming task, we also managed to organize other social initiatives to contribute to the development of the European startup and VC community.

So, it is a story about how we — the F1V team, its portfolio startups, and tech community — have been together in 2022.

Support of our team, partners

The biggest focus of Flyer One Ventures this year was the team’s safety. And it will remain our priority in 2023, as Russia continues to wage its war in Ukraine, where we have a big part of our and our partners’ team.

We have been constantly supporting our team and the team members of our portfolio startups who live in Ukraine, helping them to adapt to the new reality and overcome hardships.

During the first three days of the war, F1V helped relocate about 1,500 people: the fund’s and portfolio startups’ employees, as well as the people working for the Genesis ecosystem.

The fund helped them move from Kyiv to the western, safer part of Ukraine and abroad. F1V also helped with accommodation, office space, power generators, and things like Starlinks.

Events helping Ukrainian tech ecosystem

This year F1V participated in a few big tech events and organized initiatives to support the Ukrainian startup ecosystem.

Along with partners, Flyer One Ventures co-organized the Ukrainian pavilion at Web Summit 2022, one of the biggest tech conferences in the world. More than 30,000 people visited the pavilion, which also showcased the alley of 24 Ukrainian startups (the largest delegation of Ukrainian startups in the summit's history).

F1V also arranged a side event at Web Summit to help Ukrainian tech ecosystem players bond with potential investors and partners. It gathered about 200 people.

At another big-name event called SaaStock 2022 and held in Dublin, Flyer One Ventures co-organized a delegation with the Ukrainian Startup Fund, PromoRepublic, Influ2, and Vacuum Deep Tech Acceleration.

SaaStock is an international tech conference for SaaS startup founders, where, in 2022, Ukraine had been represented for the first time.

F1V selected startups to represent Ukraine at this conference and had two of its portfolio companies — PromoRepublic and Awesomic — present their projects at the event.

In 2022, F1V visited Slush for the first time. It is one of the biggest startup conferences in Europe. F1V’s Elena Mazhuha took part in a panel discussion with other funds from CEE about investing in Ukrainian startups.

Also, I was a jury member at CEE Startup Challenge, a growth program for regional startups and scaleups. The event was organized by Vestbee, a matchmaking platform for startups and investors in CEE.

In 2023, F1V plans to participate in at least five key tech conferences in Europe. See you there!

Initiatives for startups

In 2022, U.S. company Amazon Web Services offered a grant of up to $1 million-worth of its cloud-computing services to support Ukrainian startups during the war. Our fund organized this initiative and helped AWS select 20 startups among 52 applicants who each won $25,000 in AWS credits. The remaining 32 companies got $10,000 each.

To help Ukrainian startups raise funding, scale business, and improve their PR, F1V also hosted lectures with speakers from TechCrunch, Point Nine Capital, One Way Ventures, and Inovo Venture Partners.

F1V also gave a lecture about fundraising for startups as part of the three-week Google Startup Academy course.

F1V co-organized a crash course for startups with the Ukrainian Startup Fund: F1V investment director Elena Mazhuha gave a lecture about fundraising, principal Alexei Yermolenko — about unit economics, and head of marketing Alexandra Naidonova — about marketing for startups.

In 2023, we want to arrange more educational initiatives for startups and plan to build a startup community in CEE and Ukraine, in particular.

Stories in media

Trying to help the startup and VC community with advice and share our news, we talked with the top-tier media as often as possible. Some of our columns and quotes were published in Sifted, TechCrunch, Forbes, and Maddyness.

Stories featuring Flyer One Ventures

• Sifted: Founders, drop the NDAs — no one cares about your idea.
• Maddyness: I fired 200 people in my career and this is how I’d handle current layoffs.
• Sifted: Candlelight, Starlink and power generators: how to run a startup with no electricity.
• TechCrunch: Fintech Farm nabs $7.4M to launch neobanks in Nigeria and other emerging markets.
• TechCrunch: Peech is a text-to-speech app that actually sounds good.
• TechCrunch: 6 investors share where they draw the line when it comes to ethical issues, Vital Laptenok’s comment.
• Sifted: Ukrainian university launches country’s first fund for spinouts, Elena Mazhuha’s comment
• Forbes: Who are Alexei Yermolenko and Elena Mazhuha: Forbes 30 under 30 list.
• Atomico: Flyer One Ventures is one of the most active investors in the Ukrainian ecosystem.

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