In our recurring Who Are These People segment, Vector offers founders an opportunity to discuss their projects, covering aspects such as their products, marketing strategies, monetisation, investments, and plans. The focus this time is on Sensez, a Ukrainian startup. This is a B2B SaaS platform for online retailers, designed to help them build interactive quizzes for personalized product matching.
Vector’s editor-in-chief Yuliia Tkach interviewed Denys Dmytriiev, CEO and founder, about the product’s features, promotion, investments, and plans.
Conception
Sensez’s solo founder, Denys Dmytriiev, has over 15 years of experience in entrepreneurship and product development. He started out in agricultural trade, exporting sunflower oil from Ukraine to countries in multiple regions of the world. He founded Oleos in 2012. «In just three years, the company hit the $200 million sales mark and established a presence in Singapore and Geneva. Our company supplied 20% of all soybean exports from Ukraine in 2019».
His first startup, Tradomatic, came into being in 2017. Vector media featured their story in 2021. The platform was an online marketplace that allowed farmers to view real-time prices across all Ukrainian grain elevators and sell their goods with a single click.
«After securing numerous grants, I left the project in 2021, having sold the company to a market leader. Tradomatic had captured 75% of the total market and had over 35,000 active users at the time of its sale», — recalls Denys. While he did not reveal the sale price, he specified that the company’s valuation at the time exceeded $3 million.
Dmytriiev lost nearly all his assets in 2022 as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. «I was forced to begin again from scratch and think about what to do next. At that time, we made a short quiz on sexuality, and I realised it had a greater potential. I saw that quizzes could be used for customer segmentation, leading to highly personalised product recommendations».
The company released its first MVP for Sensez in 2023, which was then turned into a fully functional product just a year later. There are eight specialists in the team.
«Today’s e-commerce customers expect a high degree of personalization. Consumers are accustomed to receiving tailored content from services like Netflix and Spotify, and they now demand the same experience from their shopping. Sensez meets this demand by providing a customized selection process in product categories where choices are especially complex or sensitive. The problems we address:
- Overwhelming choice. With hundreds of products available, a user is often unsure where to begin. This leads to decision fatigue and shopping cart abandonment.
- Lack of expert guidance. When it comes to sensitive topics like intimate products or dietary supplements, people are often reluctant to consult a seller and are left to struggle with their uncertainties alone.
- Low conversion rates in e-commerce. Many stores have an average conversion rate of just 2–3%. Interactive quizzes have been shown to boost this conversion rate by at least 30–35%.
Lack of insight into customer needs. The quiz gives unique information on a customer’s motivations, goals, and purchasing barriers.
Product and audience
Sensez is a B2B SaaS platform for online retailers, designed to help them create interactive quizzes to provide personalized product recommendations in two or three niches.
By bringing in experts from specific industries, the team develops individual quizzes for each sector. The key focus areas are:
- Adult industry, online retailers of adult products. «This is where the challenge of choice is most intense: customers are often too embarrassed to ask for advice, the selection is overwhelming, and the process itself presents significant barriers to a purchase. For this very reason, this industry became our initial focus for integrations», — the entrepreneur explains.
- Food supplements & wellness, the dietary supplements market. «Consumers are often confused by complicated descriptions and are unsure of what products are right for them. Quizzes help users to get personalized product recommendations based on their needs, age, gender, and lifestyle».
- Beauty & self-care. «Personalisation is just as essential here, whether you’re dealing with skincare products or cosmetic recommendations. Looking ahead, we see a lot of potential for the next phase of our growth».
Sensez can be installed on a client’s website as a plugin or widget. Users take a quiz with 12 to 28 adaptive questions. Each subsequent answer helps the logic provide more tailored recommendations.
According to Denys, the quiz takes on average only two to four minutes to complete. The algorithm generates a personalized product feed, enabling the user to add items to their cart and finalise the purchase in one seamless process. Beyond the sale, the retailer gains valuable customer insights (age, gender, interests, and needs) and emails for retargeting.
The product was in development for more than two years. «To develop the most effective structure, we tested dozens of different logical approaches and scenarios. Over 12,000 people have completed the quiz in this period.
Key results from our initial experiments:
- +35% boost to conversion rates (compared to the standard product catalogue);
- +70% increase in average order value;
- the quiz had a 76% completion rate, demonstrating that users were highly engaged and made it to the end.
The global sexual wellness market is estimated to be worth more than $40 billion. Online sales of intimate products represent a serviceable addressable market valued at over $12 billion. The supplements market is worth over $170 billion».
The startup is now pursuing its first commercial partnerships with retailers in the EU and Canada. The B2C segment in Ukraine was shut down in May 2025 to allow the company to completely shift its focus to a B2B model. Their next step is to expand into the US and Asian markets — specifically Japan and South Korea — due to the strong demand for personalisation technology in the wellness sector.
Sensez’s Key Customers:
- Mid-sized e-commerce retailers. Retailers with a wide range of products (hundreds of SKUs) and limited resources for assisting customers. Since they cannot offer a personalized consultation to every customer, the quiz steps in to act as a «smart 24/7 salesperson».
- Agencies in the health, lifestyle, and sexual wellness niche. They are seeking cutting-edge tools to provide to their clients. Sensez can serve as both a fresh lead generation channel and a tool for increasing conversions in their clients’ campaigns.
- End users (consumers). While they do not work with them directly, they can reach them through quizzes integrated into their clients’ websites. This demographic mostly consists of women aged 25–45 from major cities who are more inclined to take quizzes and submit their contact information. According to Denys, this was the group that demonstrated the highest completion rate in Ukrainian tests.
Business model and marketing strategy
Sensez operates on a B2B SaaS model. Online retailers can access the startup’s quiz platform through a subscription and pay a commission on sales generated by the tool.
Key revenue streams:
- A monthly fee ranging from $99 to $699, which includes access to the platform, technical support, and ongoing updates.
- The startup also takes a 7–10% commission on sales facilitated by its quiz. If a customer buys a quiz-recommended product, the store shares a small percentage of that revenue.
Upcoming monetisation opportunities:
- Data analytics and customer insights. Our quiz gathers unique insights into customers, including their needs, age, gender, preferences, experience level, and even emotional triggers. This information is unavailable to most online retailers, as it cannot be obtained through conventional filters or search queries. We are planning to monetise user data by offering a SaaS module that provides dashboards for user behaviour, segmented conversions, and response heatmaps. This data will help retailers strategically plan their product assortment, create more targeted advertising campaigns, and grow customer lifetime value».
- White-label solutions. Major brands can seamlessly integrate the Sensez platform into their existing ecosystem under their own branding.
- Enterprise features. Custom integrations and add-on modules will also be available for major clients, such as automated subscription boxes powered by quiz results.
«We’re evolving the product to be more than a sales tool; it’s a data collection and analytics centre for customer behaviour in sensitive categories like adult, supplements, and wellness. In the long run, this unique analytics has the potential to become our core asset and a distinct revenue stream.
Our strategy has been to concentrate on product development and MVP testing, using very little traditional marketing or PR. We are now shifting our efforts toward building a structured B2B marketing strategy.
In the past, we tested traffic within the B2C segment via Meta and PornHub Ads. We also established a presence on LinkedIn and used cold outreach, which has already led to our first potential partnerships. The current focus is on developing our B2B marketing strategy. We are also preparing PR campaigns for international media and creating tailored presentations for retailers and agencies to address the unique needs of each segment».
Investments
Total investment in Sensez currently stands at around $280,000:
- with $80,000 contributed by the founder;
- and $200,000 secured from private investors.
The next seed funding round is set for early 2026, after the initial confirmed case studies with EU and US retailers. This seed round is aimed at scaling the business through market expansion, team growth, product feature development, and a systematic marketing approach.
Plans
Denys summarises by saying, «Our long-term vision is for Sensez to evolve from an adult-segment platform into a solution for supplements, beauty, and other adjacent categories. Our key performance indicator is to secure 10 integrations with mid-sized retailers outside Ukraine by November 15, 2025/ Over the next few months, our focus will be on several key priorities.
- The first is to finalise the initial five international integrations with mid-sized retailers before the end of 2025.
- A $600,000 funding round is planned for early 2026 to support continued development and expansion into the EU and US markets.
- Evolving from the MVP into a full-scale product. Enhanced administrative dashboard, convenient client content management, and rapid quiz customisation.
- Product localisation for English-speaking markets and getting ready for international expansion.
- AI Copilot development. Creating a smart assistant to guide users through the quiz and enhance their personalised experience.
- Improving insights. We will improve our data collection and processing system to ensure clients get valuable insights on user behaviour, which they can use to make informed business decisions».