Ukrainian startup Awesomic has attracted $2 million of investment to grow its service, which matches web designers with online businesses, according to its co-founder Stacy Pavlyshyna.
Awesomic wants to use the money to expand its team to 50 people and attract more designers to its website.
Among the company's investors are Ukrainian Flyer One Ventures, SID Venture Partners, and U.S.-based Y Combinator, one of the world’s best business accelerators for startups. Apart from them, over 30 angel investors participated in this investment round, including big names like James Park, Ragnar Sass and Bas Godska.
Founded only a year ago, Awesomic attracted $50,000 from the Ukrainian Startup Fund and joined Y Combinator, increasing its revenue 12-fold.
"The startup grew like crazy, and proved once again that founders from Ukraine are damn good!" said Elena Mazhuha, the investment director at Flyer One Ventures.
Next year, Awesomic plans to increase its annual revenue to $10 million and attract 300 more designers to its platform. The company currently works with 60 designers. Over 500 businesses from the U.S. and Europe use Awesomic, including the popular mobile app Reface, co-working space Lift99, tech company Ciklum and artificial intelligence startup People.ai.
Users first create a task in Awesomic’s mobile app. The company’s algorithm then analyzes the task and chooses one of the designers with the best-suited skillset for it. “It’s like an Uber for design,” Pavlyshyna said.
Most of the web designers that use Awesomic come from Ukraine. They usually create logos, websites, presentations and animation for businesses. A monthly subscription to the app costs $995 for graphic design and $1495 for product design. Designers’ salaries depend on the amount of work they’ve done in a month.
Designers must update their progress every day. One designer usually works with one business on several projects to better understand its goals and style. If customers are not satisfied with the final result, they can choose a different specialist.
Pavlishina and the second co-founder Roman Sevastyanov have been working together on different startups for four years. Before founding Awesomic, Pavlishina was the head of marketing at e-commerce platform MyBookmark, while Sevastyanov worked as a software engineer and helped U.S. startups with opening research and development centers in Ukraine. It took the duo just 10 days to launch Awesomic.
