Alex Kosik became the mentor of the InvariMatch team after it won the CRDF contest

A good idea is not enough for a startup to succeed. It is necessary to have a good understanding of your goals for the business as well as the methods by which they can be in order to get onto the market.

In 2016, our team participated in the STEP Ukraine 2016 start-up contest which was organized by CRDF Global – a non-profit organization that supports new technologies as well as IT, healthcare, biological and chemical start-ups. One of the main goals of CRDF is to maintain and strengthen connections between scientific communities in countries which are involved in certain political tensions. The main CRDF Global office is located in Arlington, VA., with branches located all over the world.

On May 18, 2016, we applied to participate in the CRDF contest with our video and image recognition project, which later resulted in the development of InvariMatch. The contest lasted for several months, with about 200 start-ups from all over the country taking part in it. The jury gave the teams different tasks related to the development of their projects – to present the goals of your startup, prepare a pitch, an executive summary for investors, etc. Working on these tasks allowed us to develop our business model and our brand. We learned how to present our project to users, investors and customers.

At the end of the contest, the jury selected three best start-ups, which got the opportunity to receive the mentoring of business angels. Our team won third place in the STEP Ukraine 2016 start-up contest and received five tutorial sessions with Alex Kosik.

Alex Kosik is a  business angel, investor and a business consultant. He helped more than one dozen successful technology start-ups get onto the market. He is a technical expert, evaluating startups at the Gerson Lehrman Group, CRDF and Skolkovo. As a mentor, he helps young entrepreneurs find funding and gives advice on how to promote their product to customers and investors.

Our participation in the CRDF Global competition and the expert advice and recommendations from Alex Kosik, were a huge boost to the development of our project. This allowed us to later build a working business model, attract customers and promote our product.