Bridge

There were blackouts, and nobody could reach anybody. We decided to solve that. Four of us, mostly friends from school.

My part was the business model, the brand and the concept. The logo is a bridge: a bridge between people, which is what a messenger is.

The 7,700 users and 2 million reach came through social media. We made the news, and we brought in a key partner who promoted us in Telegram channels.

At IdeasLab we went from the top 20 to the top 10 by winning the first pitch competition. Then Race to Revenue at Notre Dame, the youngest team ever to pitch there.

We competed with students from the best universities in Ukraine while we were still in school. We built products during the war and the blackouts, and competed with people whose experience in IT is as long as we have been alive.

While we built Bridge and went through IdeasLab, the best accelerator for students in Ukraine, I was still in school and preparing for the NMT, with 27 hours of tutors a week.

Right before the IdeasLab pitch day we had a 5-day hackathon. Not only did we prepare our pitch, we also rolled out a fresh update for Bridge. During my pitch the presentation suddenly jumped to slide 7: Figma Slides might not be the best idea when you’re presenting live. Lesson learned: always test your setup.

Everyone liked the idea of a national messenger. It didn’t work out because we were kids: little experience, and not enough money to grow it.

About six months before we closed, I could see the team falling apart: too many conflicts. Keeping the product running, mostly development and hosting, cost more than we could carry.

What I learned: how to build a startup, how to make a pitch deck, how to manage a team, and how to build a product that a lot of people actually use.