Ігор Вишневський Startup 7 April 2026, 10:50

“I went to Djinni with this pitch deck with an offer of % equity and % profit.” How Ukrainian IT professionals developed a solution for automated lead generation on Upwork without investment

There are currently about 18 million registered freelancers and up to a million customer companies on Upwork. On the one hand, such figures indicate huge opportunities and an unrealistically wide choice, but on the other hand, in this «Babylonian maze», despite the growing demand for quality services, it is increasingly difficult for the customer and the performer to find each other. The problem is the mechanics of lead generation, which has turned into a tiring routine and eats up resources, leaving both parties at a loss. Ukrainian IT professionals, some of whom themselves have significant experience of interacting with Upwork, offer the product Convertix.io, which, in their words, can untie this «Gordian knot.»

Convertix.io vs Upwork problem points

Java/JavaScript Developer, CEO and Founder of Convertix.io Volodymyr Bondarchuk outlines his team’s development as a product for agencies and growing freelancers working on Upwork.

According to him, agencies that work on Upwork typically hire a Lead Generation Manager. «This is someone whose job is to spend 8 hours a day monitoring Upwork for relevant work for the agency (based on the company’s portfolio and tech stack) and writing proposals for potential clients,» he says.

However, according to Volodymyr Bondarchuk, this is where one of the main problem points lies:

such a person needs to be trained, and this takes time and money;
such a person monitors offers 8 hours a day, and they appear on Upwork 24/7. If agencies hire 2-3 lead generators in different time zones to bridge this time gap, this costs additional costs for hiring and adaptation;
Since this work itself is quite monotonous, boring and, accordingly, psychologically exhausting, the quality of written proposals decreases over time. «For me personally, this quality decreases after three written applications per day. People burn out, they quit,» the IT worker states.
On average, two hours pass from the moment a job is published on Upwork to the moment the lead generator sends the offer, and very often the client starts communicating with one of the performers in the first 30-60 minutes, which brings them closer to concluding a contract.

How does Convertix solve the above problems? Volodymyr Bondarchuk claims that the product he and his team developed:

Monitors all offers on Upwork 24/7 and selects those that are suitable for your agency using filters and keywords;
The selected proposals are further evaluated using AI for a more accurate match to the company’s tech stack and/or portfolio;
uses AI to write a custom proposal for each selected job;
automatically sends an offer to the client within 5-15 minutes from the moment the job is published;
keeps statistics on submitted applications and monitors application statuses: viewed, replied, hired, and counts conversions.

«Convertix conversions are the same or higher than Human Lead Gen (due to the speed of sending proposals and AI customization). Also due to the fact that with Converix you can send a larger number of proposals, and, accordingly, according to conversions, you will receive more responses and win more contracts,» explains the CEO and founder.

The product team made this comparison chart to show the difference:

How Convertix is different from other solutions in this field

dev.ua asked Volodymyr Bondarchuk to highlight the differences that distinguish their product from others. The first thing the founder focused on was the security of automation.

«This is priority No. 1 in our product, on which we have spent a lot of time and effort. We do not call any private Upwork APIs, do not work with reverse engineering, etc. We have a real browser, a verified profile that the agency adds to itself, and the mouse in the browser clicks Send proposal,» says Bondarchuk.

Another factor that, according to Bondarchuk, «makes a difference» is the portfolio-centric approach. «The agency can add its projects to the platform and based on this, the system can select jobs to apply for and write proposals. With this approach, we modeled how a freelancer or lead generator who applies for a job thinks. He knows what the company can do and what it can’t, what the previous projects were, and can show and tell the client about it in the proposal, custom-made to his request. I don’t understand why competitors haven’t done this yet,» the IT specialist notes.

He also mentioned a number of functional differences that allow their product to customize proposal boosting, custom questions, and fixed price bidding, which competitors cannot offer.

We also asked Volodymyr Bondarchuk how «critical» Upwork itself is about the «tools» that try to automate work with it.

«Upwork has an official API from which you can receive real-time updates on jobs posted by clients, and Upwork allows you to write proposals to clients using AI — it even has a button in its interface when submitting an application. The only thing Upwork doesn’t like is the automatic pressing of the Send proposal button,» explained the Convertix founder.

According to him, there are competitors who call the private Upwork API — «the same one that the browser calls when you click the Send proposal button or when displaying statistics.» «We don’t do that. For us, it’s risky. With us, the mouse clicks on the Send proposal button in a real browser, from under the profile of a verified person,» he claims.

«I don’t have the patience or inspiration to ask people for money»

When asked how Volodymyr Bondarchuk found a team for a project without any investment, he called it an «interesting story.» «At the time I had the idea to create Convertix, I had already worked at Upwork for several years. And during that time I had several clients with whom I was on good terms. I wrote to three of them and offered to invest in Convertix. One replied that it made no sense, because I could do the project myself. The second was interested, but we did not agree further. The third „thought“ for a very long time and ultimately did not come up with anything,» he shared.

According to the IT worker, he tried to «do outreach» on LinkedIn for a while, but realized that «it won’t work.» «I don’t have that much patience and inspiration to ask people for money,» Bondarchuk joked.

According to him, after this not very successful stage, when he was trying to find investment for the team and product development, he simply went to Djinni and started looking for people who would be willing to join for a percentage of the project.

«After all these activities, I was left with market volume calculations, competitor analysis, potential promotion channels… in short, a pitch deck. And I went with this pitch deck to the developers at djinni, with an offer of % equity and % profit for the development of an MVP project,» he noted.

Thus, the team was not paid a salary — everyone worked and is working for % equity and % profit. Volodymyr Bondarchuk estimated his personal financial expenses for product development quite modestly.

«PoC — $300, this includes server rental, domain purchase, and some other related expenses. MVP — $2,000, here I hired another developer to help me speed up the development of automation features. Because our automation development speed was constantly slowing down,» he noted.

However, according to the founder, if you convert the team’s time into money, developing such a system would cost about $100,000.

First clients and future plans

Currently, the solution developed by the team is distributed via a paid subscription, which costs from $299/month, but at the same time, a 14-day free trial period is available to anyone who wishes.

According to Volodymyr Bondarchuk, the first clients are small Ukrainian companies in the field of marketing, QA, software development, etc. «By the way, there is one client from India,» he added.

As for the first steps in promoting the product to the market, as well as expanding/improving its functionality, according to the CEO and founder, there are plans to add additional proposal boosting settings and simplify the onboarding process for users who are first introduced to Upwork automation.

Regarding promotion, Bondarchuk claims that Demand Generation Marketing is currently working well for them. «We are optimizing content strategy, SEO, and paid channels for customer acquisition. We are testing different GEOs and new approaches to customer acquisition,» he explained.