Kyiv-based Belarusian startup Bahram Ismailov and Pavel Rudkovsky Salo raised $ 2 million in the bridge round. Horizon Capital, one of the largest investors in Central and Eastern Europe, was the lead investor, Forbes Ukraine reports.
What happened
Salo mobile app under the new name Yope has received $ 2 million in investment from a number of top funds. The funds were raised in a bridge round to launch a social network where you can communicate and discuss content via video messages. Its release is scheduled for June 2022. The funds raised will be used to fully launch the social network and hire new developers for the team.
He led the Horizon Capital investment fund through a separate fund u.ventures. TA Ventures with the ICLUB club, Geek Ventures by Igor Makhanko and Vadym Rogovsky also joined the portfolio. In addition, two investment newcomers also invested – the new fund of former Adventutes Lab partner Andriy Kryvorchuk hi5 Ventures and the venture fund of Andriy Fedorov and co-owners of Nova Poshta Vyacheslav Klimov and Volodymyr Popereshnyuk Vesna Capital.
What is known about the project
First of all, Salo was launched as an application that records real-time video of the user and his interaction with the smartphone screen. Then the record could be sent to any messenger or social network. Now in Yope (new name) users will be able to exchange video messages directly on the social network. The company currently has 21 employees. They are all from Viber, Flo, Epam, EY, iTechArt and more.
In September 2021, the project raised the pre-seed round by $ 600,000. Then the round was led by the Adventures Lab. Six months ago, Forbes estimated that Salo could cost $ 4-5 million. Now, according to the co-founders, the estimate has increased sixfold.