Dealroom report 2022: CEE startups – efficient, resilient and growing fast

The third annual report on startups and venture capital in CEE by Dealroom.co in partnership with Google for Startups EU, Atomico & Credo Ventures uncovers an efficient, resilient and high-growth ecosystem.

  • 2022 is set to match the record breaking 2021 volume of early-stage VC funding, currently at €1.8B.
  • 2021 & 2022 strongest years for unicorn creation in CEE, the region has now fostered 44 $1B+ startups.
  • Among CEE countries, Croatia , Lithuania and Ukraine have grown fastest since 2017 in combined enterprise value. Since 2017, Croatia grew by 16.6x to €10B, Lithuania 15.7x to €4.7B, and Ukraine 9.3x to €23.3B.

Key findings about Ukraine, the resilient underdog:

  • Ukrainian startups are showing incredible resilience in spite of the war and recession, with enterprise value growing 3.3x since 2020.
  • The country is a breeding ground for successful startups and is home to 1.5k active startups based in the country. Another 600+ startups were founded in Ukraine, or by Ukraine-based founding teams and/or by alumnus of Ukrainian universities.
  • But Ukraine’s tech ecosystem is more than the sum of its startups. It’s shown incredible resilience and continues to provide livelihoods to Ukrainians at home and abroad, as well as innovations to the world. Ukraine is also home to 285,000+ IT professionals, 500+ foreign startups with recent job openings in Ukraine, and hundreds of service providers and software development studios.
  • Two new unicorns in the region are from Ukraine: airSlate and Unstoppable Domains.
  • Ukraine’s startups ecosystem, now globally distributed, is flying the flag for the countries ingenuity and entrepreneurialism, and it’s produced proud Ukrainian world-leaders like GitLab, Bitfury and Grammarly.
  • Selected Ukrainian startups & unicorns (slide 57 of the report): Grammarly | BetterMe: Health & Fitness | Restream | DMarket | People.ai | Revenue Grid 🇺🇦| airSlate | GitLab | Aurora Labs | Bitfury | Reface | MacPaw | Rallyware | Preply | Readdle | Jooble

Read the report

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Support TechUkraine team here.

Ukrainian entrepreneurs donate to the military-1
Support Ukraine!
  • Come Back Alive is one of the largest charitable foundations that supports Ukrainian soldiers, founded by the IT specialist Vitaliy Deynega. The organization collected more than 210 million UAH (more than $7M) in 2014. According to Na chasi, the Patreon page Come Back Alive is in the top ten projects by the number of financial donations.
  • MacPaw Development Fund
  • Army SOS, which develops drones;
  • Everybody Can, an organization that supports internally displaced people;
  • Help on the Ministry of Defense website.
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