Kyrylo Hrinchak operates at the intersection of enterprise product strategy, partner ecosystems, and B2B go-to-market. Leading the Product Portfolio at Sigma Software Labs, he connects deep-tech innovations with real enterprise demand. A former CEO and founder of Revol Technology Group, an Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT integrator, and a leader in major financial institutions, Kyrylo brings firsthand experience from both startup and corporate environments, along with a passion for helping both succeed.
Kyrylo shared how Sigma Software Labs evaluates new products, helps startups scale through its ecosystem, and uses AI to unlock synergies across a growing portfolio of venture-backed, partner, and internally developed products.
What does it take for a product to become part of the Sigma Software Labs portfolio?
When deciding which products will be included in our portfolio, I always look at the same things, regardless of whether a product comes through our investment, partner, or internal track.
First, it has to solve a real business problem, not just showcase impressive technology. If the product targets a pain someone is already paying for — with money or with headcount – this is a good sign for me. Technical elegance without pain doesn’t pass.
I also assess the product’s enterprise fitness. Will the product survive a corporate cycle: security, compliance, integrations, SLA? Many strong products die exactly here — and in many cases, this is exactly where Sigma Software Labs can create the greatest impact. We help promising products navigate an environment that often feels complex and difficult for emerging companies.
Another important factor is whether Sigma Software Labs can create a meaningful advantage for the product through our client network, industry expertise, and engineering capabilities. If we can’t open doors the founder couldn’t open alone, we aren’t needed — and it’s more honest not to enter.
And, of course, the people behind the product matter. We are looking for founders who listen to the market and are willing to adapt. Enterprise customers rarely fit into an idealized product vision, and successful companies are usually those that can balance their long-term strategy with real customer needs.
The exact decision-making process varies across the investment, partner, and internal tracks, but the underlying principle remains the same. We are not trying to build the largest portfolio possible. We are looking for products where our ecosystem can create a measurable difference. Capital is increasingly available for good products; what remains scarce is trusted access to customers, industry expertise, and the ability to move quickly. That is the gap we are focused on closing.
What advice would you give to founders looking to become part of such an ecosystem?
Here are a few things that can help startup founders prepare for the conversation with potential investors, venture funds, and accelerators:
- Come with a problem and a client, not a feature deck. The first question we’ll ask: who is already paying, and why now?
- Be ready for the fact that enterprise is a product process, not a sales process. Good products don’t die from bad code — they die from missing framing, missing urgency, and missing a person inside the client who fights for you.
- Quantify value in the client’s business language — money, risk, time — not in your features.
- Assess your partner with the same filter we use on you: what do they give that money can’t buy? If the answer is “capital only,” you can find capital cheaper.
- Be ready for an honest conversation about weak spots. The best founders we’ve worked with named them first, themselves.
Can you share a success story that illustrates how startups benefit from Sigma Software Labs?
The benefits vary depending on the company’s stage and the collaboration model. Some startups receive investment and hands-on growth support, while others engage with us as strategic product partners.
Clean.io is one of the strongest validations of our approach. The company was co-founded by Sigma Software founders, and we did much more than provide capital. Our team contributed to the core technology, helped strengthen the go-to-market strategy, and supported enterprise adoption. The result was a $5 million Series A round, recognition as Baltimore’s top startup, and eventually an acquisition by HUMAN Security, a unicorn-scale cybersecurity company. It’s a great example of how capital, engineering expertise, and market access can create far more value than funding alone.
One of our long-standing partners, Corezoid, is a good illustration. It is a tech company that creates an operating system and application software for business digitalization. Sigma Software didn’t take part in the development of their platform, and we hold no equity in the company. Yet over the last few years we’ve delivered several enterprise projects together. One of them is public: we helped a large Ukrainian electronics retailer rebuild their contact center on a modern digital platform, replacing a fragmented setup with a system their operations team could actually run.
That’s the partner model in practice. The partner brings the product; we bring the client relationship, the industry context, and the engineering capacity to make it work inside a real enterprise environment. Neither side could have achieved the same outcome alone.
Another example is DanAds, a global AdTech company providing self-service advertising platforms for publishers. We weren’t just building software for them. We worked together on product development, architecture, enterprise sales, and even customer engagements. When DanAds started working with major clients such as Shazam, eBay, and Bloomberg Media, Sigma Software participated in workshops, documentation preparation, and defining business models for enterprise customers. That’s the kind of support a startup rarely receives from a traditional investor.
Together, these examples reflect the three ways we work with products: as investors, strategic partners, and growth enablers.
The portfolio spans dozens of products across several industries. How do you keep track of it?
As the portfolio expanded, we realized that institutional knowledge was becoming difficult to scale across commercial teams. We’ve built and deployed a Synergy AI Assistant across the Sigma Software Group. The problem it solves is simple — our commercial teams work with dozens of products across different industries, and no one can hold all of that in their head. The assistant puts the entire portfolio in the hands of every commercial team without product training: it takes a client context and returns relevant products, a rationale, and comparable cases in minutes.
What matters most is what it’s built on — a closed, verified knowledge base with source prioritization and hard product guardrails, so recommendations are traceable rather than plausible-sounding. It turns synergy from something that depends on specific people into a process the whole organization can run.
What excites you most about the future of the portfolio?
What excites me most is how the ecosystem works across multiple horizons. Today’s founders are already part of our portfolio. Tomorrow’s founders are emerging through our internal entrepreneurship programs, hackathons, and startup community initiatives.
At the same time, AI has dramatically reduced the cost of testing ideas. Building a prototype is no longer the hardest part. What matters now is identifying real market demand, gaining access to customers, and building trust. That plays directly to the strengths of our ecosystem.
Our goal is not simply to accumulate more products. It is to create an environment where great ideas can move from concept to enterprise adoption faster, supported by engineering expertise, industry knowledge, and a network that helps founders reach opportunities they would struggle to access on their own.
