Being findable: a checklist for Ukrainian founders who want investors to reach them

The order investors actually do this in

A fund looking at your market does not start with your deck. It starts with a list, narrows the list, and only then asks anyone for a call. If you are not legible at the narrowing stage, the deck never gets opened.

Everything below is aimed at that stage. None of it is about pitching better. It is about existing in a readable form before anyone is pitching at all.

The checklist

1. Write the problem down

Two sentences saying what is broken and for whom. Four in five founders on our catalogue have not done this, which makes it the cheapest way to be in the top fifth of anything. Write it for someone who has never heard of your sector.

2. Put one number in public

Users, revenue, retention, pilots — one, with a unit and a date. "1,400 paying users as of 4 August" beats every adjective you could reach for. Nobody on our catalogue has filed a traction metric yet. The first ones who do will stand out disproportionately.

3. Make the entity findable

Investors check the state register. Make sure the legal entity behind the brand is current, that the founders listed are the actual founders, and that you know what it says before someone else reads it to you on a call.

4. Have a website that predates the raise

It does not need to be good. It needs to exist, say what the product does, and not have been registered three weeks ago. Fifty-seven of 66 companies on our catalogue have one; the nine without are materially harder to research and it shows.

5. Name the team, with links

Full names, real roles, LinkedIn. At pre-seed the team is most of the decision, and an anonymous team page reads as a reason to stop rather than a reason to ask.

6. State an ask with a milestone attached

Not "raising $500k" but "raising $500k for 18 months to reach X". The median ask in our catalogue is $175,000 — if yours is far above that, the milestone is what makes it defensible instead of ambitious.

7. Be reachable in one click

A real email address on a real page. Contact forms lose messages, and an investor who has to hunt for a way to reach you will simply go to the next name on the list.

8. Write in English, keep the Ukrainian

English for the foreign reader, Ukrainian for the local one and for search. Transliterate your company name consistently everywhere — inconsistent spelling is one of the most common reasons a company that is perfectly well documented cannot be found.

9. File the company somewhere it will be read

A deck sitting in your drive is not discoverable. A file on a catalogue investors browse is. That is what we built, and it is free to file.

What this does not fix

Being findable is not the same as being fundable. If the business does not work, a well-written file gets you a faster no — which is genuinely worth something, but it is a no.

What it does fix is the failure mode we see most often on this market: a company that would clear the bar, invisible to everyone who would have said yes. That one is solvable in an afternoon and most founders never get round to it.