Sixa, an American startup with Ukrainian founders, has disappeared from all radars, raising suspicious about the reality of its business. After injecting millions of US dollars in the venture, investors now doubt that any team or products have remained of this startup.
As reported by Telegram channel Russian Venture, Sixa founders stopped contacting its investors, citing German Kaplun of TMT Investments. In mid-2016, this London-based fund with Russian connections invested $300,000 in Sixa at the seed stage. According to Kaplun, the fund hired lawyers to investigate the issue and potentially file a complaint.
Sixa claimed to store your entire computer in the cloud, allowing you to access your software and applications from anywhere — and without requiring any hardware upgrades.
The company was founded in 2015 by Mikola Minchenko and Yevgeny Nechaev. Its largest round, amounting to $3.5 million took place in late 2016. As reported by Ukraine Digital News, this round was led by Californian fund Tandem Capital with participation from TMT Investments, Ukrainian funds Digital Future and Horizon Capital, Gagarin Capital, a fund with Russian roots, as well as Social Capital, Presence Capital, Rising Tide Fund, and other unnamed investors.
Sixa also took part in acceleration programs at Startupbootcamp in Istambul and Y Combinator in California, securing $140,000 and $120,000, respectively, from these startup accelerators.
But Minchenko did not stop there. In late 2019, according to Ukrainian tech blog AIN.UA, he ultimately received a “secret million” from the UK’s Innes Wordwide Holdings. This late investor filed a complaint against Sixa and Minchenko personally just months later.
- Read AIN.UA’s detailed investigation in English language on Minchenko’s fraud
