Two co-founders became billionaires thanks to an app that helps correct grammar errors

Raising $200 million in a recent funding round not only helped raise the valuation of the popular grammar-checking app developer Grammarly to $13 billion, but also helped the two founders of Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko entered the ranks of the world’s billionaires. According to Forbes estimates, two Ukrainian-born entrepreneurs, who started their business in 2009 with a grammar checker with the help of programmer Dmytro Lider, now have a net worth of little. at least $4 billion per person.

According to data from Pitchbook, investors participating in two funding rounds of Grammarly in 2019 and early 2021 own about 22% of the shares. The third co-founder holds only 1% of the shares. Thus, Lytvyn and Shevchenko currently own about 35% of the shares each. After deducting discounts for private companies, the shares are worth about $4 billion. A source close to the business confirmed these numbers.

Grammarly herself disagrees with Forbes’ estimates

Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko – 2 co-founders of Grammarly. Photo: Grammarly

The San Francisco-based company was founded more than a decade ago under the registered name Sentenceworks (later changed to Grammarly), providing a tool to help students correct spelling and grammar mistakes. From its first goal of supporting learning, Grammarly has gradually developed an artificial intelligence-based grammar checker that can be easily used to eliminate errors in emails, documents and more. . The company has also released side products like Grammarly for Business, a version of its grammar checker for business use, with big-name customers like Zoom, Cisco, Dell, and Expedia.

Grammary’s flagship product is growing in popularity since its freemium model (which combines both free and paid services) since 2015, with the option to purchase upgraded versions starting at $12. up to 30 USD a month.

” It’s been a significant shift for us ,” Grammarly CEO Brad Hoover said in a 2019 interview, adding that word-of-mouth growth has really brought success. Grammarly claims to have set its sights on reaching 30 million users a day across more than 500,000 apps and websites, including email clients, web browsers, social media, and Microsoft Word.

This is not the only company that Lytvyn and Shevchenko started together. They both said that Grammarly was founded on a business idea they both developed together while in college at the International Christian University in Ukraine, MyDropBox.

“ We built a product to prevent student plagiarism,” Lyvtyn wrote in a blog post in March. “ This led us to ask a serious question: why does everyone do it? people choose to steal ideas in the first place? Could it be that they find it difficult to convey ideas in their own words? ”

Their mission sounds lofty, but there are some questions raised about Lyvtyn and Shevchenko’s early business motivations. It has been found that two online services they have launched to help professors check student essays for plagiarism appear to be related to websites that sell final essays. for students.

At the time, Lyvtyn and Shevchenko insisted they had been hired to program a website that provided the reference, but denied any connection between the two. In a public statement, Shevchenko said: ” We have never sold any kind of material uploaded to our service “.

The scandal gradually became an almost forgotten mark on Lytvyn and Shevchenko’s records as they both moved to the US and Canada respectively to earn MBAs at Vanderbilt University and the University of Toronto. They then realized their vision of MyDropBox, which was later acquired by educational technology company Blackboard. Grammarly currently has offices in San Francisco, Vancouver and Kyiv, Ukraine.

Prior to its most recent funding round, Grammarly had received $90 million from investors, led by General Catalyst, IVP and several others, in October 2019, increasing its valuation. company to $1 billion in October 2019. In a blog post, the CEO of Grammarly revealed that Grammarly has received funding from new investors including Baillie Gifford and BlackRock in its latest funding round.