Ivan Petrenko is Executive Director of the Ideas Center at UCU, Managing Partner at the Angel One Fund and a UCU alumnus.

The Ideas Center at UCU was created to shape Ukrainian business culture and its place in the global startup ecosystem. Through its programs, it nurtures students and entrepreneurs, helping to incubate the ideas and innovations that will propel Ukrainian prosperity.

Ivan Petrenko, himself a successful entrepreneur, serves as the Center’s Executive Director and has helped shepherd it from inception to its current incarnation. The Idea Center began as a startup accelerator, but after Russia’s full-scale invasion, many Ukrainian startups left the country because their investors demanded that their investments be secure. The center shifted its focus and now has three active projects running.

Ideas Lab

The Ideas Lab is a student accelerator program. Run twice per year, this three-month program is exclusively designed for students, including UCU students and Ukrainian students from other universities in Ukraine, as well as those living in other countries. The program is a hybrid program, combining both online and offline components, allowing it to accommodate Ukrainian students scattered around the world. It is taught primarily in Ukrainian, with some portions in English.

In the latest round, the lab received 152 applications from 71 universities across 11 countries worldwide, and 20 teams were selected. “We have over 80 active mentors and lecturers in this program, all experts in their fields,” explained Ivan. “They lead the teams: lecture them, mentor them. The program gives students a chance to try to launch a company, develop a product and try to get their first sales, their first customers. We basically introduce them to the tools of the startup industry and help them learn about entrepreneurship innovations.”

The student teams can also receive up to $5,000 in grant money to support product development.

Two current, promising startups include Proptek, a software for landlords, which helps property owners manage multiple apartment buildings, even if they are across the country or the world. Another team is developing a subscription-based service for contact lenses. The service would facilitate the easy replacement of lenses through the mail, eliminating the need to visit a store or medical office.

Stanford Ignite Ukraine

Stanford Ignite Ukraine selects 42 Ukrainian entrepreneurs of small to medium-scale businesses and provides them with a six-week program in conjunction with Stanford University in California. The program includes an intensive immersive week at UCU as well as a 3-week visit and classes at the Stanford Gabelli School of Business campus under the guidance and mentorship of leading instructors.

Now in its second year, the program was the brainchild of Natalia Anon, a member of the UCU Foundation board, friend, and partner of UCU, who, after graduating from Stanford GSB, dreamed of sharing a similar experience with Ukrainians.

“We want to help them get their hands on the expertise that they might need to help them grow their businesses, scale to foreign markets or the U.S. market,” said Ivan. “And we have some very good examples and cases already of the companies that started their sales in the U.S. market.”

Angel One Fund

The Angel One Fund is a venture fund started by Ivan. “The idea was to reach out to investors in UCU’s network who are willing to invest in Ukrainian startups. We invest globally regardless of location or industry. We seek out industries or companies that create value; currently, we have six teams in our portfolio.”

Seed funding for Angel One was provided by devoted UCU supporter Adrian Slywotzky, who also recently established the Metropolitan Borys Gudziak Endowed Faculty Fund at UCU Foundation, the largest endowed gift ever to the Foundation. As Angel One has grown, Ivan has raised funds from several U.S. investors, as well as Canadian and Ukrainian investors, and is very excited about the projects it is funding.

“The level of investment in new companies usually ranges from 100K to 250K. It is typically the first round of funding for these businesses, often referred to as late pre-seed or early seed. We don’t have any institutional investors, only individual limited partners. We look for startups that have some initial traction, some sales and customers so that we can see how well the company’s doing. We source the deals, we prepare the startups, and we do all the negotiations. We have an investment committee and an advisory board that oversee the investments.”

“Angel One operates like a typical venture fund: it attracts money from limited partners or investors. It invests this money and then, at the end of the investment period, perhaps 10 years, it returns the initial investment to its investors. The remaining profit is split 80/20. So 80% goes to the investors, that is their profit. In a typical venture fund, 20% stays with the team of the fund.”

“In our Angel One model, that 20% will stay at UCU. This is the main goal of Angel One: invest in Ukrainian startups, help them grow, but also make money for the future to help grow the university, its programs, and develop them.”

An Entrepreneur That Leads by Example

Ivan began his career in the oil trading business at one of the largest Ukrainian companies and subsequently moved on to start businesses in construction development and consulting, both of which he had sold by 2018.

“I had received my MBA at UCU and kept in touch with the university, attending the graduation and leadership days they had each year. In 2019, Sophia Opatska proposed that we start a center for entrepreneurship to help startups. I decided to take a year off from business to launch that center, and here I am five years later. We have rebranded the center into the Ideas Center, and then I started the venture fund as well.”

Ivan emphasizes that the Ideas Center is a strong reflection of the mission and ethics of UCU. “We want startups that create value in terms of developing a new generation of leaders of Ukraine. When we work with students outside of UCU, we always bring the values of UCU to our mentoring. We introduce them to UCU. We even have some students who were part of other universities and then transferred here or came to get their master’s at UCU after working with our Ideas Lab. It all correlates directly with the value that UCU is creating by helping to grow and develop Ukrainian leaders of tomorrow.”