Ukrainian startup Zeely.app - helps promote business online with simple marketing tools. Three young Ukrainians founded this builder application less than 2 years ago, and it has already helped more than 8,000 micro-businesses create their own sites and increase profits.
The co-founder and CEO of Zeely told us about the beginning of the startup's history, hundreds of negotiations with investors, the importance of participating in all possible programs and why now is the best time to start a women's business Alina Bondarenko.
With this material, we begin a series of interviews with female founders of successful startups in support of the new educational project AmareloAzul from Ukrainian Hub.
Before founding Zeely.app, our team already had experience working with young businesses. We helped entrepreneurs from Ukraine and all over the world to start an online presence, create a website, integrate with CRM systems, launch advertising, that is, start developing their business and attract customers from the Internet. When the COVID-19 epidemic began, the understanding began to come that many people could not afford the services of digital agencies.
At that time, we had 80 people in the team who worked with 3,000 entrepreneurs in 5 years. Today, our mobile application, which has been in existence for a little over a year, already has 6,000 users, but our team is 8 times smaller - only 10 people. We realized that we can scale our SaaS solution very easily and help people from all over the world get an online presence and grow their business using just a smartphone.
“80% of micro-entrepreneurs use a smartphone as the only working device"
Ukraine is a fairly digitized country, as are European countries, the States, but at the same time there are countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Chile, India, and African countries, where everything is completely different. They have a big problem with setting up an online business. The main problem we are solving is that 80% micro-entrepreneurs use a smartphone as their only work device. They do not have the opportunity to create a website or webstore from a computer or laptop. That is, they have at least no knowledge, and at most they do not have a gadget for this. And this topic applies even to the States. Most of our customers today are from Brazil, Mexico, Chile and the USA. Yes, we have a certain percentage of Ukrainian users. We were not engaged in promotion on the territory of Ukraine, but thanks to participation in contests and programs, boys and girls (mainly from the IT sphere) still learn about us and start making their sites using Zeely.app.
During the year that we have been building the startup, we have developed several main roles and mine is the Chief Communication Officer (CCO). Before launching Zeely.app, I worked with content, in the field of PR. At Zeely, I took over all communication: I do fundraising, I communicate with clients, funds, partners, I am responsible for events, etc. Dima, our CEO, deals more with the product and working with developers, and Yaroslav – mainly with documentation. We have very good teamwork, we delegate tasks effectively.
We have a policy that we want a small team. We want a team of cool enthusiasts who will be with us from start to finish. And we were able to collect one. We have automated all processes so much that we don't need many people.
"Contact with users and understanding the benefits of the project give strength not to give up"
The turning point for our startup happened at the beginning of the war. Moreover, it has nothing to do with the war. We just finally found our product/market fit, as they say. Our sales went very well, that is, we started testing our advertising in April and already in August we started to really sell in large volumes. We realized that the product is bought, that they are willing to pay for it, that the market in which we scale is relevant. This is an important moment that strengthens not only the startup, but also the founders. When we look at the sites of our users and see that our startup is really helping people make money, we want to cry with happiness. It is this contact with users and understanding of the benefits of the project that gives strength not to give up and move forward.
The basis of a successful startup lies first of all in product/market fit. It is very important to find your audience and be able to monetize them from the very beginning with the minimum number of features in your product. It is very difficult to convert your free users to paid users when there are already many of them and they are used to using everything for free.
In order to grow quickly, a startup needs money. We already have a great operating margin and we can grow on our own funds, but it will be slower. We started our journey by raising equity free money. These are grant programs, various competitions, etc. And my biggest recommendation at the early stage and pre-seed stages is to collect all the equity free money and apply to all the acceleration programs you can find.
For the founder, victories are very important. It happens that you may have several failures in a row, but every victory, even a small one, is very supportive. For us, these were victories in competitions, programs, receiving external support. For example, before the war, we got the opportunity to get on Startup Grind from Ukrainian Hub. Because of the war, we didn't go, but even this opportunity supported us a lot. These confidence-inspiring moments of victory are another reason to participate in every possible program.
Networking is very important at the start. Such programs as, for example, VIP in Ukrainian Hub are simply a masthead at the beginning of building a startup. And to learn about them, you need to be in the community, to be in contact with the same guys and girls. We didn't start our journey from a bootcamp, we ended up in Unit.City. At that time, we did not understand or know anything at all, but we held hundreds of meetings with investors. Hundreds! And now I understand that the period when we gained our understanding of this communication was crucial.
It's harder to fundraise now than it was a year ago. Therefore, if there is an opportunity to postpone fundraising at least to the spring, I think it will save time and effort of the team. Now the investment market has fallen, according to my calculations, in order to attract a million, it is necessary to be in touch with more than 120 funds.
I would say that the women's startup community is developing very actively. For example, we participated in Slash this year thanks to Google for Startups and gathered about 20 female founders at our booth to speak for a few minutes. What cool girls these are, what cool teams created only from girls! I was there with my co-founder and he felt uncomfortable there: so many women, all so talented, so ambitious - just a super feminine atmosphere. I see that every month more and more Ukrainian female founders launch startups and attract investments, I see positive dynamics.
Today is the time for women to build startups and start technological activities, because right now it is women's businesses that are receiving an unrealistically large amount of support. I even think that it might be difficult for men too, because there are a lot of training and acceleration programs aimed exclusively at female startups, funds that invest only in women's businesses. Such opportunities did not exist literally 3 years ago. So if not now, then when?
"I'm even glad that some of my hopes never came true"
What would I like to know at the start of Zeely.app? This applies mainly to operational activities - about working with user cohorts, with retention, with banking systems. But all this comes with experience. Regarding some global moments, I'm even glad that some of my hopes never came true: someone didn't invest, someone didn't join the team... Everything happened exactly as it should, and we went on a very interesting and exciting path!
Follow our updates. The next interview with the co-founder of a unique startup will be released next week Mosqitter Anastasia Romanova.
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