“The first tests of Deep Strike drones will take place in July 2025.” How Trypillian, a startup that raised $5 million, works. Interview with co-founder Ivan Matveichenko

In May 2025, the British-Ukrainian startup Trypillian announced that it had received a new $5 million investment from Brooks Newmark, a former member of the British Parliament and businessman who is also a co-founder of the company.

Trypillian’s other co-founder, Ukrainian veteran Ivan Matveichenko, met his future business partner while undergoing rehabilitation in a Lviv hospital after being wounded. A year and a half later, the story of their joint startup, which is based on the development of long-range drones, bombers, and FPV, began.

Soon after, Trypillian became a sponsor of the Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa. Its organizer is MP Oleksiy Goncharenko, known for his loud statements and extensive PR activity. According to social media, he is a good friend of Newmark.

In an interview with Trypillian co-founder Ivan Matveichenko, AIN asked how these events are related to the startup’s development and what was the real purpose of Newmark’s investment.

Ivan Matveichenko, co-founder of Trypillian. Photo from Matveichenko’s LinkedIn

– Tell us how the story of Trypillian began.

It all started when I was in a hospital in Lviv rehabilitating after another shell shock. I met Brooks Newmark through LinkedIn. I saw that he was very active in charity work in Ukraine. Does he have an organization that helped evacuate people from the frontline area (and continues to do so)? ?The foundation in question is Angels for Ukraine, whose legal address is registered in Lieberman’s estate on Bankova Street in Kyiv. According to public reports, in 2024, the company claims to provide assistance to about 30,000 Ukrainians. 

We started talking about what he was doing and what I was doing in the army. We have a similar background: we both come from the private equity industry. Furthermore, we also discussed business topics and thought about how we could help Ukraine rebuild.

And through this communication, which lasted for a year and a half, we gradually gravitated to the Defense Tech sector, because we saw it as the biggest need that we could fill. We came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to establish something in the field of military defense technology. This “something” was initially the idea of creating a classic venture fund to invest in talented teams.

But during the market screening, we discovered that there are already a lot of talents with great technical expertise, but for some reason it is very difficult for them to raise capital and turn it into a business that will have good capitalization and long-term planning.

That’s why we have moved from the classic venture capital fund model to creating our own company to hire these talented guys and gals and help them, as they say, roll up their sleeves.

– As far as I understand, you started with the production of drones?

Yes, we are currently engaged in development, not mass production, because we do not yet have a product ready for the market.

Our long-range UAV is currently at the prototype stage. We plan the first tests for mid-July 2025.

– What are your production capacities?

We don’t have any production capacity – we only have contract manufacturing agreements with other Ukrainian manufacturers. We provide them with design documentation, and they can produce these drones for us.

– Why did you decide to focus on developing drones rather than other types of weapons?

We are working very closely with some units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, and we are essentially fulfilling their “orders,” so to speak. I use the word “order” in quotes because we do not have a formal contract, it is simply communication with experts among the military, who are quite good at long-range strikes.

We found a certain niche where we think we could be very useful and create an interesting product. That’s why we rely on feedback from the Defense Forces.

– What are the challenges of producing and developing long-range drones?

The main difficulty lies in the much higher cost of military targets that are located far from the combat line. In other words, on the combat line, the target is usually infantry, a tank or some kind of radar station.

When we go beyond 600 kilometers and beyond, there are other rather interesting targets: military or paramilitary infrastructure, oil storage facilities, etc. Since such targets are much more important to the enemy, they are guarded much more heavily. There is an extremely high level of electronic interference and an extremely complex defense system. Therefore, overcoming it is a very difficult technical task.

– How will you test such drones?

We are currently at the prototype stage, so testing is taking place in Ukraine. And these are, let’s say, basic tests. Real testing is always a combat flight. We haven’t had any, and when we do, we won’t tell you about it.

– But I hope we will see the result?

I hope so, too.

Team

– Trypillian has three co-founders. Tell us about them.

Our main founder and author of the idea is Brooks Newmark. He is a former investment banker and British politician. For more than 10 years, he was a member of the British Parliament and Minister of Civil Society. Brooks has a very serious business background. He was the head of Apollo’s London office and has extensive expertise in finance and business strategy.

Brooks Newmark, co-founder of Trypillian. Photo from social networks

There have been some misunderstandings in the media, and so I would like to emphasize that he is not a passive investor, but the head of our company and is involved in the day-to-day operations.

The second co-founder is Bob Seely. He joined Brooks and I a little later, but he has become a very important part of our team. Bob is an expert in modern warfare. He is currently writing a book about it, which will be published soon. And he’s a veteran himself, having served in combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as in Syria and Libya as a member of the British Army. Bob is a former journalist and was also a member of the British Parliament.

His expertise lies in the doctrine of using unmanned aerial vehicles and other means of destruction. I personally work very closely with him on the development of the product line.

Bob Seely. Photo by Chris McAndrew / Wikimedia

We make decisions collectively. Responsibilities are distributed in the following way: Brooks is in charge of financing and business development, Bob is in charge of product strategy: what direction to look in and what systems to work on. And I am directly involved in the implementation of our common vision and the realization of ideas, i.e. the management of the company. I hire people, work with contractors, etc.

– In an interview, Newmark said that he has “the mentality of an owner, not a minority investor.” Do you have any conflicts?

No, of course not. I don’t want to comment for him, but I’m pretty sure that when he says this, he’s not talking about our three-person company [among the executives], but about third-party investors that we could potentially attract.

That is, we could have gone the classic venture capitalist route, where, relatively speaking, we own 100% of the company, and we make the first, second, and third rounds of investments, and in each round our ownership stake is diluted. We as founders own less and less, and we have additional investors. In the Defense Tech industry, this is an absolutely normal model of behavior for a company, but it doesn’t work for us for some reason.

Reason No. 1 is that we have our own capital, so we don’t need to attract additional investors at the moment.

Reason No. 2 is that when you have additional investors, they bring additional reporting obligations. You can’t make key decisions alone and have to consult with them on a regular basis.

This means additional time and labor costs, which negatively affects the deadlines. And we have deadlines like the military because we work with the Defense Forces. That’s why we are still moving on our own. We are not ruling out any opportunities in the future, but for now we are moving on our own.

– Do you mean you are planning to attract external investments?

If there is a need, we are not against this idea. 

– Tell us about Brooks Newmark’s latest investment in Trypillian, which amounted to $5 million. 

Again, when we work with contractors, we become one of the clients, of which there are many. We are not always in the first place among them. We need people to be involved almost 24/7 so that we can work very quickly. Therefore, the number one goal is to deploy our own infrastructure, which, of course, consists of people.

But, in addition to people, it is a legal and financial infrastructure. This means creating our own workshops where we can quickly prototype new products. I don’t want to say “production capacity” because we don’t plan to build a factory. It means building our own internal infrastructure.

– What is the current staff at Trypillian?

We currently have 12 people in Ukraine and three in the UK. We are actively expanding our team right now. We use the so-called asset-light business model, developing in-house R&D capabilities, while developing our own production capabilities is not yet part of our plans.

Therefore, our general plan is to keep the staff within 30 to 50 people, which means that we will always be a small company in terms of staff.

And for mass production tasks, we plan to engage highly professional contractors. That is, we will have the R&D process within the company, and production will be carried out through partnership agreements in Ukraine.

We have open vacancies and primarily consider veterans for them. And even if you don’t see a specific vacancy that suits you, please contact us. We are actively developing, so we will simply remember you. And when we have a need, and it may arise very soon, we will definitely get in touch.

– What vacancies are open?

We currently have four vacancies open. These are Hardware Engineer, QA, DevOps, PR, and Marketing positions. But if you have any interesting ideas, please contact me, I personally promise to answer everyone.

Investments in Trypillian

– After receiving the investment, Trypillian became a sponsor of the Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa, organized by MP Oleksiy Honcharenko. What share of your investment did you allocate to sponsor this forum?

None at all. Organizing this forum is a long process. Negotiations about our participation in it as partners have been going on for a long time. It just so happened that the news about the investment came out almost at the same time as the forum.

But our involvement in this forum is only that we paid a certain amount for information support, for example, for our logo to be placed on all the forum banners. ?Although Trypillian did not disclose the cost of the sponsorship package, an analysis of media kits from similar conferences shows a sponsorship range of $10,000 to $40,000, depending on the level of sponsorship. 

And since a fairly high-level community was present there, including the Defense Tech community, such as former CIA chief and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, several former defense ministers from the UK and other countries, we saw this as a good opportunity to make ourselves known. But this is a parallel track, meaning that it is not related to the announced investments.

– I saw on social media that Goncharenko is a good friend of Brooks Newmark. Did you know Oleksiy Goncharenko before this forum?

No, we didn’t. We talked to him about administrative issues, i.e. where we move in, where we move out, who gets there and how. I don’t know him personally.

Context: AIN drew attention to the fact of sponsorship of the Black Sea Security Forum event solely because of public statements by MP and chairman of the forum Oleksiy Goncharenko, in particular about the Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support, the executive director of the Technological Forces of Ukraine Kateryna Mykhalko, and volunteer Serhii Sternenko. And also through the analysis of colleagues from CHESNO regarding the network of “Goncharenko  Centers”, one of which, as in the case of the Black Sea Security Forum, is patronized by British businessman and former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, Lord Michael Ashcroft.

The editorial board also asked Brooks Newmark, co-founder of Trypillian, for a comment. He replied that he had allocated his own money for the sponsorship, and no company funds were involved. Newmark also said that he had supported last year’s forum, and that Honcharenko was a “good friend” of his.

– Please tell us about your project’s future plans.

Our strategy is multi-domain. Speaking about the development of the product line, we plan to deepen what we are already working on. On the one hand, it is the Deep Strike technology that solves quite complex engineering problems.

On the other hand, it is frontline payloads that mostly solve not so much engineering problems as business problems: how to make an FPV drone fly a little further at the front, be more resistant to electronic interference, carry a little more payload, and at the same time be cheaper and more affordable for the Defense Forces.

So, on the one hand, we are solving complex engineering problems, and on the other hand, we are solving simpler business problems.

We consider both ideas and certified products. That is why we are now actively planning to develop our product portfolio by developing an internal product within the company and buying products from other teams.