The image regularly freezes on a tense face, the sound comes back in snatches… it took several attempts to interview via WhatsApp Ivan Dmytrasevytch, co-founder of the Incubator Startup Depot, a start-up accelerator in Lviv, in western Ukraine, and CEO of an investor network, United Angel Network. Recently enlisted in the army, it is from his training center that this pillar of the Lviv ecosystem takes stock of local start-ups, two years after what the Ukrainians call “the large-scale invasion.”
“We created the Business Angel Network in 2023 to test whether there was a demand and noted a very strong interest from foreign investors and the IT industry, especially for deftechs”, these start-ups that specialize in defense. Since its creation, this investor club dedicated to seed funding has invested, among others, $225,000 of the $525,000 raised by Himera, which develops communication systems for the army, or $110,000 in Buntar Aeroposace, a specialist in aerial reconnaissance systems.
