Editor’s note
4 min read
Why BYGRIDStarts WithHealthTech – andWhat It’s All For
Yulia NekhaiEditor and founder of BYGRID
The HealthTech map in numbers
Source — BYGRID HealthTech map
- active startups on the map
- 28
- of companies founded in 2023–2025
- 50%
- of founders are people with entrepreneurial experience
- 75%
- of companies use AI
- 71%
Contents
Hi! I’m Yulia Nekhai, the editor and founder of BYGRID. I was born in Minsk, trained as a journalist, and have spent the last 10 years working with startups. A couple of years ago I caught myself thinking: I know hundreds of projects with Belarusian roots, but I have little sense of what’s happening with them as a whole. Over the past few years, founders have spread out across the world quite a bit.
Some are building businesses in Warsaw, others in Lisbon, Amsterdam, London or San Francisco. Teams raise money from international funds, sell into global markets, and become part of startup ecosystems in other countries and on other continents. And that’s good news.
The bad news is that as the geography spread, so did the experience – and people started sharing it less. A startup in Denmark has figured out how local HealthTech works and who it’s easier to raise money from. A fintech in Poland has been through licensing and can tell you in vivid detail where practice diverges sharply from theory. A B2B company in San Francisco has taken plenty of knocks and learned how to sell to American enterprises today. And someone else made a failed pivot, lost six months, and now knows what not to do. You’ll agree that insights like these are far more interesting than yet another story about how “we believed in the idea and built a great team.” But most of this knowledge stays inside teams, group chats among friends, or conversations after events.
That’s why BYGRID started with a simple idea: to share not only news about funding rounds and successful scaling. But also what often stays behind the scenes: decisions, mistakes, numbers, practices that work, hypotheses that don’t. Where do you look for your first customers? At what stage did you need a local partner? Why didn’t the business model work? What opportunities opened up when the company moved to another ecosystem? The more markets Belarusian founders try, the more collective experience builds up. And it’s great when that experience circulates.
02
Why HealthTech is the first stop
But before asking companies what they’ve learned, it makes sense to understand who’s out there in the first place. So BYGRID’s first stop is a map of HealthTech startups. It includes projects in women’s and mental health, diagnostics and monitoring, neurotech, apps for tracking nutrition or improving sleep quality, and solutions for doctors. (Also: half the companies on the map appeared in the last three years, three quarters were launched by people with entrepreneurial experience, more than 70% use AI, and some are even proving that their technology works. But more on all of that later, so stay tuned!)
The map features companies with different kinds of experience. And the idea isn’t to bring them back to some geographic point or invent a shared identity. Quite the opposite: it’s interesting to see what different trajectories lead to.
03
What’s next
The HealthTech map is just a starting point. After it will come other industries, new maps, news, deals, and most importantly – people. I want BYGRID to connect those who have questions with those who have already walked part of the way. Building a fintech in Northern Europe? Here’s a founder who’ll tell you what turned out to be good about Sweden and what didn’t. Launching a HealthTech product in the US? Here’s a startup that has figured out local regulation and found its first partners. Need to hire a team, license your business or validate an AI model? Here are the people who know how to do it and can help you get there faster. Or maybe someone has already spent six months on a hypothesis you’re only about to test, and is ready to save you at least a couple of months. You don’t have to step on every rake yourself. Some you can borrow from others.
Belarusian founders today are building companies inside a dozen ecosystems. BYGRID wants to make sure the knowledge they gain there works beyond a single team.
This is only the beginning.
BYGRID
International startups with Belarusian roots. News, founder stories, data and analysis across global ecosystems.