Ukrainian tech entrepreneur Vadym Rogovsky has raised $2 million in the US for his AI startup EVE, which finds «lost» leads in small business mail.
Ukrainian tech entrepreneur Vadym Rogovsky has raised $2 million in the US for his AI startup EVE, which finds «lost» leads in small business mail.
After a year of working in silence, Rogovsky, who now lives in the US, announced the launch of his new startup EVE — Inbox Revenue Engine for small businesses.
The company has closed a $2 million pre-seed round, backed by leading investors from the world of agentic AI and SMB solutions, including Firsthand VC, Founders Future, Andreessen Horowitz Scout Fund, Acquisition.com Ventures (Alex and Leila Hormozi), as well as the founders of Slack, Hugging Face, G2, and Oura.
Six months ago, Rogowski talked about the creation of Rebel Capital and its first acquisition, a 17-year-old event software company. «When we took control of the business, it turned out that all the key information — leads, commercial proposals, invoices, conversations with clients — was stored in the previous owner’s email,» the entrepreneur recalls .
The team was looking for a tool that could automate this process, but nothing like it existed. So they decided to create one themselves.
Using an early AI prototype, the team connected it to email — and the system found over 400 lost leads, helping close two deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This turns out to be a common scenario: most B2B companies sell in Gmail or Outlook, not in a CRM. Leads get lost, reminders get missed, and small business owners don’t have the time to set up complex AI systems or structure data for them.
EVE is an artificial intelligence that connects to a user’s email, finds missed or forgotten leads, tracks active opportunities in real time, and provides context so businesses can close deals faster. The service helps small B2B companies automate 80% of repetitive tasks.
«No settings. No CRM. No prompts. Just the result,» Rogovsky notes.
In just a few months of testing, EVE has already helped small businesses recover millions of dollars in lost revenue. The service is now open to all users.
The startup is named after the founder’s 4-year-old daughter, but as he points out, that’s not the whole story. «Small businesses don’t need more leads. They need help closing the ones they already have. And that’s exactly what EVE does,» says Rogowski. The founder adds that the company is just getting started, but already has the support of powerful investors and positive user feedback.
As Rogovsky told Forbes, he met the current STO project at the end of the summer of 2024. This is Vadim Axelrod. He has lived in Silicon Valley all his life, emigrated as a child, is of Ukrainian origin. He was engaged in research on Knowledge Graphs. This, in fact, provides the basis for what we do.
The startup has about ten full-time employees. «There are several part-timers and freelancers around the world: some work from Ukraine, Europe, India, and the United States. The leadership team is based in the States,» Rogovsky said .
Initially, the development was financed by the founders, and they had been working on the idea since the summer of last year, says the entrepreneur. «Then investors started coming on their own — even before we announced the round,» says Vadim.
According to him, pilot clients bring the company several thousand dollars a month. «But now what is more important for us is not the income, but the fact that these are the paying clients on which we train the model. Over the past 3–4 months, we have been working closely with about 30 companies from different industries. It was on them that we calibrated our AI,» says Rogovsky.
The service’s plan is to reach $1 million in revenue by July next year. «The average check is $250–500 per month, so we need about 200 customers for that,» he states.
