This is stated by the founder of sportbank, former managing partner and shareholder of Parimatch Nykyta Izmaylov in a comment for The Wall Street Journal.
It is hard for western venture capital funds to accept the risks of war, yet it is potentially very rewarding. The hardest thing for a startup is to find the right people, and in many cases, there are such in Ukraine. We just need this war to end," says Nykyta Izmaylov.
As The Wall Street Journal notes, under war conditions, Nykyta Izmaylov's fintech Fund N1, which includes the neo-bank sportbank, was able to make extremely successful investments in powerful and promising Ukrainian startups.
"In June, Fund N1 invested $500,000 in a fin-tech startup which, according to Mr. Izmaylov, would have been at least five times more expensive before the war began. Another company he could have invested in was estimated at $7 million before the war, but the price had dropped to about $1 million," says The WSJ.
The owner of sportbank and shareholder of Parimatch also note that Ukrainian entrepreneurs are interested in cooperation with foreign investors. It is mutually beneficial and carries huge advantages for both sides.
For some startups, attracting foreign investment has advantages, including often a relatively higher valuation than they would get from a national fund, a more careful examination and partners who can be a bridge to potential investors later, this being a problem for many Ukrainian startups," said Parimatch shareholder Nykyta Izmaylov.
Synopsis: Nykyta Izmaylov is a Ukrainian investor, banker, and founder of the fin-tech Fund N1. The portfolio of Fund N1 includes the neobank sportbank, the payment system Asquad, a startup with the Tap to Phone technology Transenix and other fin-tech projects. From 2012 to 2016, he was the CFO of PMBL (Parimatch) and later became a shareholder of Parimatch.