🏔️ Ukrainian SaaS Market

Hey there,

Welcome to the SaaS Hill, a weekly newsletter that tries to predict the future of SaaS.

Let's discuss Ukrainian SaaS Market 🇺🇦.

⭐️️ Intro

It's the 32nd Independence Day of Ukraine on August 24th, and unfortunately, it has been exactly 1.5 years since Russia started its unprovoked and unjustified aggression against Ukraine.

As a Ukrainian and someone who is keen on SaaS space, I wanted to analyze this market and explore what’s happening here in more detail.

Here is what we will discuss today:

• 9 predictions about the Ukrainian SaaS market

• list of 170+ UA SaaS Companies

• 2 trend charts

• 19 experts to follow

• list of 35 agencies

• 2 marketplaces

• 7 useful links

🤔 Predictions

1. The Ukrainian SaaS market will continue to experience growth over the next few years. Accelerated growth began in 2016, when thousands of professionals started joining the tech industry. The Russian full-scale invasion also accelerated changes in the military and defense tech industry; lots of software engineers joined startups in this space.

2. We will see a rise in SaaS products focused on the Ukrainian market only. This trend is driven by the desire for tailored solutions and better localization. In order to accelerate their growth, these products will expand into international markets. For example, finmap started their journey as cash flow management tool for SMBs in Ukraine; now they serve customers from 50+ countries.

3. On the other hand, the majority of startups will go international from day 1. For example, Reply.io was focused on NA and European markets from day 1.

4. The IT sector and SaaS segment will play a huge role in the success of the Ukrainian economy in the future. The export of IT services is one of the biggest revenue/export streams for Ukraine (approximately $7.3 billion in 2022; the only one that grew despite the war.)

5. Many NA- and Europe-based SaaS and tech companies are hiring Ukrainians across all departments (engineering, sales, marketing, product, customer success). For example: many well-known NA-based SaaS startups hire Ukrainians as SDRs and AEs to close deals with small businesses. This is a competitive advantage that:

   1. Allows them to keep working with smaller businesses (you can hire an AE in Ukraine that will be closing deals with less than $5K in ACV)

   2. Helps them maintain a healthy CAC payback and CAC:LTV ratio

   3. Helps them have a local presence, as there is someone in Europe who can handle inbound chats, calls, and inquiries within European business hours (it’s almost impossible to do that from the Bay Area)

6. As more and more Ukrainians join the SaaS space and learn how sales, engineering, and product work, eventually, some of them will decide to build their own products in the future.

7. Some Ukrainian software development or marketing agencies will transform their business into a more predictable SaaS model. For example, Belkins started their business as a lead generation agency. They learned a lot about sales and marketing and now they have added two SaaS products to their portfolio: Folderly (email warmup) and Charge (mail merge for Outlook)

8. Just like other SaaS companies, Ukrainian SaaS companies will face many challenges:

   1. Talent shortage, especially in management-level roles

   2. Payment processing and financial infrastructure (it’s nearly impossible to open a Stripe or PayPal business account in Ukraine; I’ll go to a bar when Stripe launches their products)

   3. Education - unit economics, SaaS metrics, how to find your 1, 10, 100, and 1000 customers, how to find product-market fit; all kinds of stuff

   4. Motivation - it will take years to have enough talents who desire to build the next unicorn and do whatever it takes to achieve this milestone

   5. Market competition - it will be very hard to build a Ukrainian SaaS product with $10, $25, $50, or $100 million in ARR

   6. Economy - imagine this: Russia has destroyed a power station and there is no electricity or Internet for the next 6 hours. It’s almost impossible to be productive in this situation

   7. Cultural resistance - growth vs. profitability, VC vs. bootstrapping, let’s build it ourselves vs. let’s use a 3rd party; I’ll do it myself vs. I’ll delegate this; fear of making mistakes; entrepreneurship culture

   8. Limited access to local angel investors, VCs, incubators, accelerators, advisors, SaaS consultants

9. Despite these challenges, the Ukrainian SaaS industry has significant potential for growth in this decade, but it will require many institutional changes.

🏢 Products

Here are some of them:

1. Reply.io > AI-powered sales engagement platform

2. Grammarly > Grammar and writing assistance tool

3. Ahrefs > SEO tools to grow your search traffic

4. Creatio > One platfrom to automate workflows and CRM with no-code

5. Revenue Grid > Stop revenue leaks with revenue intelligence

6. airSlate > Everything you need to get your documents done

7. Spin.ai > All-in-One SaaS Security for Mission-Critical SaaS Apps

8. People.ai > Leverage the power of AI to achieve revenue success

9. Snov.io > More leads. More sales. More revenue.

10. Competera > Pricing optimization and competitive pricing intelligence solutions

11. Solidgate > Accept online payments

12. Influ2 > Person-based ads that help you sell

13. fuelfinance > Your cloud-based financial department

14. xTiles > All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks and projects

15. YouScan > Social media listening with visual insights

16. Sembly > Transcribe, take meeting notes, and generate insights for your meetings

17. Let’s Enhance > Image enhancer & upscaler

18. Hurma > Software for automation of HR & recruiting

19. Effy.ai > The fastest way of running employee reviews

20. Loopo > All-in-One Content Marketing Solution

📈 Trend Chart

There are apx. 290K IT specialists in 2023 (Source: DOU)

Number of SaaS Companies by Year Founded

👔 Services

👥 Agencies

• 35+ Ukrainian marketing agencies

• Belkins > B2B lead generation agency

• tinydata > Lead gen agency

• banda > marketing agency

• Ozero > design studio

🤝 Marketplaces

• Lemon.io > A marketplace of vetted offshore engineers

• Make it in Ukraine > Really good creative and technical talents

📖 Experts to Follow

1. Aleksandr Volodarsky > CEO at lemon.io

2. Alex Hermann > CEO at Don't Panic IT Recruiting Agency

3. Alyona Mysko > CEO & Founder at Fuelfinance

4. Anna Buldakova > CEO & Co-founder Meander | ex Facebook

5. Artem Pogosov > head of marketing @ Respect.Studio

6. Eugene Segal > Growth Product Advisor | Ex-Miro, Growth Group PM

7. Ilya Azovtsev > I help with SaaS Growth

8. Ilya Novohatskyi > Founder of micronsio 🚀

9. Irina Maltseva > Growth @ Aura | ex-Head of Marketing @ Hunter

10. Jenny Romanchuk > B2B Writer

11. Katya Kladkova > Partnering with GTM leaders @HubSpot

12. Marie Skachko > Making your B2B stand out

13. Max Makarenko > CMO at Expandi

14. Olena Bomko > Product marketer & Messaging strategist for tech startups

15. Roman Sevast > Founder & CEO at Awesomic

16. Viktoria Medvedko > Founder at GetMentioned.Today

17. Yurii Lazaruk > Community Consultant

18. Yurii Veremchuk > Head of Business Growth at Woodpecker

19. Yuriy Timen > Ex-Growth @ Grammarly | Advisor @ Airtable, Canva, Oyster

🔗 Useful Links

1. SaaS Nation Conference

2. Ukrainer > Discover Ukraine

3. United24 > President-backed platform to support Ukraine

4. Spend with Ukraine > Platform with a list of 220+ insanely cool Ukrainian-rooted businesses

5. Ukraine Now > Discover Ukraine

6. Be Brave Like Ukraine > Marketing campaign

7. Wiseboard > Get connected with an industry-leading advisor

🤝 Related SaaS Trends

1. 🏔 Micro SaaS > the future of niche software

2. 🏔 Creator Economy > raise of small businesses built by self-employed creators

3. 🏔️ Bootstrapped SaaS > building profitable SaaS, without investors

Thanks for reading. See you next time 👋
Best, Vlad

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