Олег Онопрієнко Startup 8 January 2026, 09:00

Ukrainian EdTech in London. How the founders of chessed.me turned chess into an interactive tool for children's development

Ukrainian startup chessed.me has transformed individual online chess lessons into a guided service for developing concentration and cognitive skills in children. The platform already works with hundreds of families in the UK, conducts thousands of classes and retains about 90% of customers in the first months. Now the team is preparing to scale the product in the US and EU and introduce AI into the educational process. Read our article to find out who is behind the startup and why it is growing rapidly.

About the startup creators and team

The startup was founded by two Ukrainians whose professional paths crossed to create an innovative educational product.

Yulia Pashkova is originally from Kharkiv. She built her career in management consulting and strategic roles in IT companies. Later, she moved to London, where she worked as a designer and product manager in the Greentech and Fintech sectors before founding her own project.

Oleg Sirenko is originally from Nizhyn, a graduate of the Kyiv School of Economics. He built a career in venture capital and is a partner at Diligent Capital Partners, which at one time became one of the first investors in the famous startup Preply. In addition to his professional background, Oleg has over 10 years of personal experience playing chess. Currently, the team is expanding: specialists in sales, customer support, and marketing have joined the founders.

The first employee joined the project quite early on and began building the product with the founders at an early stage.

After receiving grant funding, the team hired key roles — Sales & Customer Success Manager and Marketing Manager. A separate direction was to more closely involve the platform's strongest tutors in working with the quality and development of the offer.

How the startup idea was born

The idea for chessed.me came from the intersection of the two co-founders' experiences. For Yulia, it was a desire to create a tech-for-good product after she had acquired all the key skills — product, design, and operations. For Oleg, it was a combination of many years of personal chess playing experience (over 10 years) and an understanding of the EdTech market through work in venture capital.

The team initially started with user interviews. At first, they were adults who were interested in chess, but very quickly the focus shifted to parents of children. It was during these conversations that it became clear that many families were experiencing concentration and focus problems in their children and were already trying to solve them with the help of chess.

At the same time, the market lacked a systemic solution: mobile apps did not provide structured learning, and individual coaches were difficult to find and organize regular classes. This gap between parents' requests and available tools became the basis for the creation of chessed.me .

What is chessed.me?

Chessed.me operates as a managed marketplace for one-on-one online chess lessons for children. The team takes full responsibility for the search, selection, and training of tutors. All teachers undergo a thorough screening process and additional training in the methodology of working with children. The emphasis is not only on chess skills, but also on the development of cognitive abilities - concentration, strategic thinking, problem-solving skills, and self-confidence.

The platform is responsible for matching a tutor to a specific family, as well as for the entire customer experience for parents — from organizing regular classes to managing schedules, shifts, and payments.

At the current stage, the product has an automated backend lesson planning system and a personal client account, which together provide a self-service model adapted specifically for regular individual lessons with children.

On the one hand, the platform is aimed at chess tutors who want to make teaching a stable profession. On the other hand, it is aimed at busy parents who are looking for quality education for their children and the development of life skills.

Chessed.me began operations in March 2024. The project became a full-fledged startup at the end of 2024, when Yulia Pashkova began working on it full-time.

As Yulia told dev.ua, today the platform serves hundreds of active clients and conducts thousands of classes every month. The customer retention rate during the first three months is about 90%, which is a high figure for an educational product.

First customers

The first and key market for chessed.me was the UK. It was a market the team knew well culturally and operationally, and it was here that the first user interviews were conducted and the first customers were onboarded.

The platform's main audience is children aged 6 to 12. The youngest student was three years old. Sometimes the platform also works with teenagers under 18, but these are rather exceptions.

The decision to purchase is made by parents, and the product was developed with their expectations in mind — simplicity, regularity, and minimal organizational effort.

Due to the versatility of chess and the online format, the platform does not have strict geographical restrictions and plans to gradually scale globally.

The startup was created by two co-founders.

Funding, monetization and future plans

Chessed.me operates on a subscription model. The cost of the product starts at £59 for 4 weeks and can reach £359 depending on the number of lessons and their duration (30, 45 or 60 minutes).

The project is being developed as a bootstrapped startup. Before the active scaling stage, it was operating at almost breakeven. The team also received grant funding from Google for Startups and Seeds of Bravery.

At this stage, the company is consciously investing in scaling and not focusing on profitability. At the same time, unit economics are already strong, and the LTV to CAC ratio is around 3.6.

Over the next 12 months, the team plans to scale the product and develop new capabilities for clients and tutors. Priorities include using AI to enhance the learning process, adding new channels of engagement, and further simplifying the user experience.

In parallel, the team is working on optimizing business metrics, including ROAS and CAC, and strengthening control over forecasting.

There are also plans to test new markets outside the UK, including the USA and European Union countries.

In the longer term, the team aims to become the leader in the category of quality chess education and the No. 1 brand in the world, helping children develop focus and key academic skills.

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