Publish date: 19 June, 2023Last year will be remembered not only for the birth of the first Bulgarian unicorn, but also for the significant investments of $244 million in Bulgarian startups, most of which can be found in the job board of H512.com. Although this amount is double the record $475m in 2021, a study by the Bulgarian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association shows that the startup ecosystem in Southeast Europe is the fastest growing on the continent, and Bulgaria’s role is leading the way.
According to the same study, in 2022 the total number of startups in the country will exceed 1,600. The valuation of these companies has grown more than sixfold in five years, reaching $5.6 billion, and by this measure Bulgaria again ranks third, this time behind Romania ($9.4 billion) and Greece ($8.2 billion). Last but not least, Bulgaria is the country with the most domestic venture capital investment funds, and in October last year it introduced the so-called startup visa for entrepreneurs to facilitate immigration procedures, the creation of high-tech products and access to IT talent.
But which start-ups based in the country or with Bulgarian participation have managed to attract more than €10 million in the last ten years? According to the international platform Crunchbase and publicly available information, some of which was confirmed by investment funds Eleven Ventures, Impetus Capital, BrightCap Ventures and LAUNCHub, they are as follows:
Top 20 Bulgarian tech startups that attracted the largest investments
| Company | Attracted investments (million EUR) | Year founded | Listings | Employees in IT teams |
| Hyperscience | 267 | 2014 | 1 | 60 |
| Payhawk | 221 | 2018 | 4 | 85 |
| CleverTap (post-merger with LeanPlum) | 212.7 | 2012 | 5 | 50 |
| Quantive (before Gtmhub) | 148 | 2015 | – | 110 |
| DRONAMICS | 57.6 | 2014 | – | – |
| Alcatraz AI | 41.5 | 2016 | – | 27 |
| LucidLink | 36.6 | 2016 | 3 | 50 |
| Tapline | 31.7 | 2021 | – | – |
| EnduroSat | 26 | 2015 | 7 | 45 |
| Software Group | 24 | 2009 | 4 | 120 |
| Documaster | 22 | 2014 | – | 52 |
| Iris.ai | 19 | 2015 | 3 | 9 |
| Enview | 19 | 2015 | – | – |
| Props | 17 | 2014 | 2 | 8 |
| Excitel | 16.2 | 2015 | 5 | 25 |
| AMPECO | 15.2 | 2018 | 2 | 35 |
| Pliant | 14 | 2018 | – | 25 |
| OfficeRnD | 12 | 2015 | 5 | 40 |
| Charlie Finance | 11.2 | 2016 | – | – |
| FITE | 10 | 2016 | – | 18 |
Hybrid
Ruse
It is noteworthy that the majority of Bulgarian startups that have raised at least €10 million in funding over the last ten years were founded in 2014 and 2015 – ten out of 20 organisations. the “veteran” among them is the global technology company Software Group, which was born in 2009, and the youngest is the financial startup Tapline. According to the information provided by the companies listed in the table with profiles on H512.COM’s job board, they employ more than 1,200 specialists, 750 of whom work in tech departments, and the companies with the largest IT teams to date are Software Group (more than 120 experts) and Quantive (more than 110 engineers).
Bulgarian-American Hyperscience, specializing in artificial intelligence and automation, tops the ranking with the most investments attracted – €267 million. The company was founded in 2014 by Krasimir Marinov, Vladimir Tsankov and Peter Brodsky and its main R&D activity is based in Sofia. The office document automation platform is funded by leading investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Stripes, FirstMark, Battery and Tiger Global, and in early March the company announced it would surpass one billion documents processed for the US government by the end of the year.
Bulgaria’s first unicorn Payhawk, founded in 2018 by Hristo Borisov and Boyko Karadzhov, ranks second with €221m raised in five years. In 2020, the fintech, which is part of the Eleven Ventures portfolio, launched a new generation of corporate cards and an employee expense management system, and a few days ago it unveiled its new business customer plan developed in partnership with Microsoft. Payhawk has seven offices worldwide, with its product and engineering team locked in Bulgaria.
Payhawk is followed by product start-up Leanplum (now CleverTap) with €212.7m raised in investment. It is part of the LAUNCHub Ventures portfolio and was acquired by cloud-based customer engagement marketing solutions company CleverTap in 2022 (the amount was not disclosed). Leanplum was founded in 2012 in San Francisco by Bulgarian Momchil Kurkchiev and has offices in San Francisco, New York, Denver, Amsterdam and Singapore, the largest of which is located in Sofia, where the company’s leading product and engineering team is based. It employs 65 people, fifty of whom are IT specialists.
OKR (Objectives and Key Results) systems company Gtmhub, which rebranded to Quantive at the end of last year after a series of acquisitions, took the fourth spot with €148m in funding raised. The startup, founded in 2015 by Ivan Osmak, Yordan Angelov, Radoslav Georgiev and Bo Pedersen, has seven offices, with its headquarters in Sofia, and over 350 employees, most of whom work in the country. The company, with major investor LAUNCHub Ventures and also part of Eleven Ventures‘ portfolio, last year ranked 14th in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Central Europe thanks to its rapid growth of 1,911%.
Next up is another startup from the Eleven Ventures portfolio. The world’s first cargo drone company DRONAMICS, founded in 2014 by brothers Svilen and Konstantin Rangelov (now beardless), has raised €57.6m in funding. It includes the startup’s stock market debut two years ago, which raised the maximum capital of nearly €6m through venture capital and business angel funds, as well as funding from the European Innovation Council (EIC). The company has more than 150 employees in 4 offices around the world, and on 25 May this year the unmanned Black Swan made its first successful flight at Balchik airport.
The American startup Alcatraz AI has raised €41.5 million in seven years. It is developing an AI-based access control system for buildings using facial recognition and is used by Fortune 2000 companies and government institutions in the US. The organisation was founded in 2016 by Bulgarian Ventseslav (Vince) Gaidardzhiev and employs over 50 people, with the majority of the engineering team (around 30 specialists) based in Bulgaria.
Next is another American company with Bulgarian roots – LucidLink. The cloud file services provider, which is part of the BrightCap Ventures investment fund portfolio, was founded in 2016 by Georgi Dochev and Peter Thompson and has so far raised €36.6 million. The startup has over 100 employees, half of them are part of the R&D department in Sofia. In April this year, the company’s flagship product LucidLink Filespaces was named Product of the Year at the NAB Show for 2023.
The eighth company in the list with over €30m raised in investment over the last ten years is digital finance platform Tapline, which gives young SaaS companies seed capital against their upcoming sales. The Germany-based startup was founded by Peter Gruev and Dean Heastie in 2021 and raised €31.7m from UK fund Fasanara Capital (€30m debt funding) and €1.7m in equity, with Bulgarian fund Impetus Capital also participating in the round.
The remaining twelve Bulgarian tech startups raised between €10m and €26m, with two of them, Enview and FITE, also making successful exits. The companies are part of the BrightCap Ventures portfolio, with Enview being acquired by NASDAQ-listed US company Matterport for over $70m at the beginning of last year and streaming platform FITE being acquired by mobile video sharing app Triller for over $50m in April 2021.
And while we wait for more good news from the domestic startup ecosystem, in the job board of H512.com you can find detailed information about nearly 1,300 IT companies that move Bulgaria forward.
