Digital Future has launched an initiative that offers opportunity for startups at the 2016 Collision Conference to benefit from $50,000 investments and expertise to develop sophisticated software solutions. Tech Excellence program aims to attract new tech startups with high growth potential that intend to develop advanced software solutions for their customers to help them with technical support in software development for the various stages of growth.
Tech Excellence Program offers $50k investments and provides the winners with a ground to inspire and facilitate software development through access to the extensive expertise and mentorship. The finalists will be able to benefit from series of online and offline events workshops and face-to-face consultations in tech skills, coding and opportunity to learn from experienced tech leaders.
Oleksii Vitchenko, CEO of Digital Future: “We are looking for talented fast-growing startup teams to help them boost their confidence in developing advanced software and help them enhance their presence on global arena. While keeping ourselves committed to helping Eastern European startups, we are always ready to consider new highly ambitious teams from around the world that want to implement exciting ideas in digital space. We hope that the selected teams would boost their tech skills during the program to focus on developing and scaling their products. By launching this program we also want to create active startup community, connect entrepreneurs from different geography and backgrounds to strengthen entrepreneurial diversity.”
Tech Excellence Program benefits include:
- Unlimited number of investments of $50,000 each into the most promising technology products (the number of winners will be defined by the international jury committee).
- Six-month mentoring program beginning in Q3 2016.
- Regular mentoring sessions by seasoned technology mentors.
- Unlimited access to tech resources.
Through this new program, Digital Future’s tech mentors will work with startup teams up to six months — offering expertise, guidance and resources to help them build their software solutions. Applicants should be founders of startups that are connected to the tech fields, which are in line with the Digital Future’s specialization.
The minimum qualifications to participate in Digital Future Tech Excellence Program:
- To be a startup team of 2-5 members with an innovative idea related to Digital Future’s expertise and a clear business model.
- To have a idea that solves a problem related to the following area: AI, digital, mobile e-commerce, AdTech, relevant to be scaled to international market.
- To be willing for the mixed mentorship: remote as well as live sessions in Kiev on a regular basis.
At the beginning of the six-month program the selected startups and mentors will mutually define what is needed to fully develop their products or services and reach broader audience.
To submit application for the program, please visit our booth #B1 at Collision Conference that takes place in New Orleans, USA, April 26-28.
During April 15-17 Digital Future held the first AI Hackathon in Ukraine. The first place was taken by Botvertiser — an advertising platform for publishing ads in chat-bots. Over 100 people participated in the event and 18 teams reached the final. Here are some of the very first impressions and feedback about AI Hackaton we received durung the event from the jury members and organizers.
Denys Dovgopolyi, GrowthUp, Jury member of AI Hackathon: «My overall impression about the first Ukrainian AI Hackathon is strongly above expectations».
Michael Nestor, Founder of LifeTracker, AI Hackathon mentor: «Hackathon looks so exciting in the beginning so we can expect that it will result in very prominent AI projects by the end of the second day»
Oleksii Vitchenko, CEO of Digital Future, ideologist of AI Hackathon: «AI Hackathon results exceeded our expectations three times. We thought that the Hackethon would result in 5, well, a maximum 6 projects, but received 22 ones, and 18 projects – at the final stage of Hackathon», commented .
Victor Kompaneyets, Lead of Investments, Digital Future, Mentor of AI Hackathon: «Amazing teams, competent mentors, fantastic discussions! Philosophical reflections and shocking, unusual ideas, smart jokes and bright seriousness, dynamic ups and downs, good and bad times for every team».
During the preparation stage, we could not believe that AI theme is so highly regarded among the participants. And even more – that will get together so many teams: initially we expected at least 10 teams and finally, we managed to host 22 teams. The majority of the teams focused on chat bots and assistants technolosiest, the most trending topics as a part of AI teme now.
«It is clear that most of the projects are very raw at the moment, but if they continue to work, they would reach good results pretty soon. We are very serious about investing in up to five projects we consider the most promising», — comments Oleksii Vitchenko, CEO of Digital Future.
Botvertiser was named the winner of the AI Hackathon. «With help of Botvertiser service, the bot owners can easily connect to advertising networks in order to monetize their products. At the same time, the publisher gets the most persolalized contact with the audience, and the user sees only the relevant advertisements», — explained the founders of the project.
The second place went to Botgun designed to create and promote the chat bots with ready-to-use templates for small and medium businesses.
The third place winner is — Friend In Need — a mobile app that can recognize the fall of a person, and call for help or send an alarm message with geo location, if the app owner can not get up.
As planned earlier, Digital Future will introduce all the final pitches videos of the projects participating AI Hackathon to Amazon Web Services Venture Capital and Startup Bootcamp Barcelona giving the opportunity for the projects to develop their ideas, using the network of Digital Future and confirming its reputation as smart-investor that facilitates the growth of startups focused on western markets.
Jury of AI Hackathon consisted of the most prominent representatives of Ukrainian tech space: Oleksii Vitchenko (Digital future), Eugene Sysoev (Aventures), Denys Dovgopolyi (GrowthUp), Dmitry Maydanyuk (Noosphere), Michael Kharenko (UVCA), Ruslan Savchyshyn (MagneticOne) and Nicholay Palienko (Prom.Ua).
The mentor panel included Georgi Giorgadze (Inity), Andriy Dashkov (Dataerion), Maksym Dyachenko (Sapiens), Kiril Zakharov (Together Networks), Victor Kompaneets (Digital Future), Olexander Mykhailenko (Mobify), Yuri Mykolyshyn (Intel), Michael Nestor (LifeTracker), Olexiy Sivokon (DataRobot), Sergiy Shelpuk (QRhythm).
The idea of AI Hackathon belongs to Oleksii Vitchenko, CEO of Digital Future. The event was included in the program of Kyiv Startup Week.
SoftCube closed a round of $400k from notable investors, including Digital Future
Digital Future has made its latest $200k investment in SoftCube, an e-commerce solution that gathers customer data across multiple communication channels to improve shopping experience. The round includes a $200k investment from Digital Future, a venture capital company, and $200k from undisclosed private investors. Under the terms of the new deal, the investment will be used for the marketing and business development activities on the US market.
SoftCube has several years of experience in the European market, servicing the leading companies including Metro Cash&Carry. Working with more than 25 customers from many European countries, Softcube targets the USA, where more than 40% of online retailers are already using personalization services.
Oleksii Vitchenko, СЕО of Digital Future: “I have been observing SoftCube throughout the past year and almost came up with the decision to invest last summer. But back then I considered that the risk is too high and decided to put the decision on for some time. However, the level of SoftCube’s team involvement and effectiveness left its competitors far behind and I am very glad to work with SoftCube, as we both are dedicated to develop the emerging e-commerce ecosystems. I believe SoftCube will be enabling tremendous customer personalization to empower the next generation e-commerce world.”
SoftCube, founded by Oleg Lesov in 2012, provides tailored product recommendations based on customer’s interests. Softcube helps increase sales for your e-commerce shops by 15-20% allow cross-selling and up-selling. SoftCube technology is based on the unique mathematical model that can effectively use even small amount of customer data, generating recommendations for different products, including the niche products.
“I believe that our innovative e-commerce service will become the platform of choice for many North American companies to accurately gather customer data and track customer behavior. This investment will help us implement innovations to many new markets, including USA. Digital Future is one of the few companies that provide extensive expertise and visionary perspective on the development of e-commerce. That is why we very much looking forward to our cooperation, as we expect it will bring us the better understanding of the whole range of possibilities for our further development,” says Oleg Lesov, CEO of SoftCube.
Investors emphasize that the main reason to participate in the round is because SoftCube offers several outstanding innovations to the e-commerce ecosystem. The startup team is enough mature to implements all its ideas in the most efficient way to hit the leader position on the global market.
The private investors, who joined the round, are now at the stage of closing the deal and will announce their participation when the deal is closed.
AI Hackathon is the first, global groundbreaking event in Ukraine focused on AI software development to take place on April 15-17 in Kyiv.
Digital Future, a global, multi-stage investment company and The App Solutions, a leading software development company with offices in USA, Germany and Ukraine, announce the first AI Hackathon in Ukraine. Several AI-integrated apps and solutions will be created during 15-17 April in Kiev, as a part of Kyiv Startup Week program.
The goal of AI Hackathon is to leverage a startup approach to innovations and provide entrepreneurs and tech specialists with strategic look into the future of disruptive technologies. AI Hackathon will bring together tech-entrepreneurs to develop AI-based solutions and validate their idea efficiency in 48 hours. Building on the strong foundation created by the previous startup events, the first Ukrainian Hackathon, dedicated to AI theme will be challenging to the teams to use the innovative technologies to quickly craft AI-based software solutions.
Oleksii Vitchenko, CEO of Digital Future: “The main idea of focusing on the AI and pattern matching is because we are now at the beginning of this technology development that will have a big impact on how people interact with each other in the nearest future. A lot of young tech entrepreneurs don’t even know what they can do exactly with AI. So, this event is to let people play with the technology, involving them to think about AI and how they can apply it in everyday life. During AI Hackathon we want to see how quickly and efficiently teams can cooperate to develop different products with the possibility of further investment in the most promising ones.”
Throughout the 48 hours teams will have to develop their products, think up strategies, and find the best ways to pitch their ideas to the international judge committee. At the end of the day the teams-finalists will challenge each other in a tournament.
During the event, Digital Future together with The App Solutions will promote and advocate the need for new innovations across the startup community by presenting industry challenges, market trends and opportunties for tech enterpreneurs. AI-Hackaton is designed to enhance knowledge and enable the vital connections across the local entrepreneurial landscape.