Ukrainian founders rarely struggle for ideas or technical skill — the real chokepoint is what happens after the prototype. Once the first lines of code are written, most teams hit the «valley of death», where capital is scarce, mentors are few, and global competitors move faster. Traditional accelerators offer brief programs and small checks. However, they often lack the hands-on muscle needed to build product-market fit, recruit talent, and navigate legal red tape.
That’s the gap venture builder CLUST aims to fill: it embeds cross-functional specialists inside each startup, funds validation sprints with follow-on capital, and stays until data proves the model can scale. With a dozen portfolio successes behind it, the venture builder is now pushing its companies beyond Ukraine into Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Founder Ruslan Tymofieiev explained CLUST’s origins, operating model, target sectors, business structure, and plans.
Where the Idea of CLUST Began
CLUST emerged from the vision of Ruslan Tymofieiev — serial entrepreneur, managing partner at Adventures Lab, and backer of over fifteen tech companies, including Reface, DeckRobot, Salo, OneNotary, and NarrativeB. He argues that Europe’s and America’s dense networks of venture builders explain their steady pipeline of disruptive products. By establishing a comparable ecosystem in Ukraine, Ruslan Tymofieiev expects to lower startup mortality rates and shepherd a greater share of promising teams through the perilous «valley of death».
Ruslan Tymofieiev observes: if he had early-stage mentors or a venture builder equipped with ready-made tools for hypothesis testing, his businesses would likely have scaled faster and yielded more completed projects. He notes that Ukraine’s IT sector is booming — startups are going global and local talent is landing top roles — yet many promising ideas still stall because first-time founders lack clear paths to funding, validation, and product development.
For many first-time founders, the missing piece isn’t ambition — it’s infrastructure. A venture builder fills that void, lending capital and cross-functional support from legal to ops. The result: shorter runways to launch and a greater chance the startup crosses the dreaded early-stage chasm. CLUST employs a 30-person, cross-functional team that includes due diligence advisors, tech and growth specialists, legal and finance experts, HR recruiters, and marketing professionals.
How the Venture Builder Turns Concepts into Companies
CLUST scales ventures in two ways. For in-house projects, it prototypes and installs a mission-driven CEO, who has an entrepreneurial mindset and a product-oriented approach. For external opportunities, it invites founders to submit ideas — those that pass validation earn a seat at the CLUST table as equity partners. Venture builder is interested in high-potential niches such as Health & Beauty, Digital Health & MedTech, Education, Logistics & Technology, Crypto, Media Buying & Traffic, Internet Marketing, and D2C.
Although CLUST doesn’t stop at green-field startups. Business owners already operating in the venture builder’s focus sectors can tap the venture builder for practical support — everything from crafting a go-to-market strategy and building local teams to designing scalable processes. CLUST’s target areas are:
- Early-stage Ukrainian founders with fresh IT ideas.
- Corporate executives who have outgrown their roles and are ready to build a tech venture of their own.
- Existing founders aiming to expand into Europe, Asia, Latin America, or the United States.
CLUST generally deploys an initial check of $30,000–50,000 to test a concept. If the early data are positive, follow-on funding can rise to roughly $200 000. Ruslan stresses that capital is only part of the offer — founders also gain access to shared resources and hands-on support. Terms vary by scenario: if CLUST conceives the idea and then brings in a co-founder, it uses a different equity split to reflect its larger contribution. When an external founder brings a validated MVP or unit-economics model, a different one does. The venture builder’s equity share rises when it contributes more resources and shrinks when the founder supplies most of the groundwork.
From Pitch to Partnership: CLUST’s Cooperation Roadmap
Collaboration is evaluated against several criteria:
Thematic alignment
During screening, analysts map the product’s value chain against CLUST’s existing knowledge, partner network, and regulatory playbooks. If the fit is weak, the venture builder quickly declines, so founders do not lose time.
Solution efficacy
Beyond thematic fit, the team asks: Does this product relieve a painful, demonstrable problem, and can we prove it? Evidence can include user interviews, willingness-to-pay surveys, industry benchmarks, or even shadow-metric proxies such as high churn or manual workarounds among target users.
Development stage
When founders bring only a rough hypothesis, CLUST runs validation sprints, creates initial wireframes, and drafts a basic unit-economics model. Because it shoulders most of the work at this stage, CLUST also takes the majority equity stake. At validating the concept, where early surveys and rudimentary CAC/LTV maths are already in place, the venture builder layers on UX, technical scoping, and small-ticket seed capital. An MVP with live users tips the balance further: CLUST’s focus shifts to growth engineering, fundraising prep, and compliance infrastructure.
Founding-team composition
A balanced core team — typically a product owner or CEO figure, a technical lead, and a commercial lead—signals speed and resilience. If a founder applies alone, CLUST first assesses the founder’s skills, then decides whether to help fill any gaps by recruiting additional team members. CLUST also checks cultural fit: founders must be data-driven, coachable, and open to the venture builder’s sprint-based operating cadence.
Scaling potential
Once the MVP hits its traction benchmarks, CLUST shifts from validation to acceleration. The team doubles down on the channels already bringing customers at the lowest cost, streamlines onboarding, and fine-tunes pricing. CLUST and its co-founder build straightforward dashboards that track key metrics — LTV/CAC, cash flow, churn, and more — so every decision is grounded in data. Finally, the venture builder helps hire key senior talent to handle the bigger workload and prepare the company for its next funding round.
Ukraine’s tech sector is moving from occasional wins to a steady pipeline of successful startups, and venture builders like CLUST are driving that shift. By combining capital with hands-on support, CLUST keeps promising ideas from stalling in stealth mode or getting trapped in the local market. If this model continues to scale, Ukraine could move from merely exporting tech talent to generating and keeping innovation at home.
Photo by Charles Forerunner; Unsplash
