The most downloaded book summary app is from Ukraine, and it wants to change how you read

Editor’s note: This article is part of a series of profiles highlighting successful Ukrainian startups and businesses. The series is funded by the regional investment fund Ukraine-Moldova American Enterprise Fund (UMAEF) and created in partnership with Spend With Ukraine, a non-profit organization that launched a platform to showcase businesses with Ukrainian roots and provide one more meaningful way to support Ukraine – by choosing to spend with Ukraine. The series’ sponsors are not involved in the editorial process of the writing of these profiles.
Anton Pavlovsky loved reading growing up, but going through the last turbulent 30 or so years of Ukraine’s independent history — the difficult 90s, the 2004 Orange Revolution then the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, war, and economic difficulties — he virtually stopped reading.
But after going through a divorce, he found books to be a source of solace. “My divorce propelled me into this mode of reflection over what went wrong, what happened and why, and I started reading a lot,” founde and CEO Pavlovsky told the Kyiv Independent.
While reading he stumbled across a question that particularly affected him — “What would you do with your life if you were guaranteed success and happiness?”
Pavlovsky answered the question to himself in the notes app on his computer that he still has from the day he wrote it on Dec. 17, 2018: “I would work on a platform that allowed individuals to educate themselves, educate others, be a role model. A platform that will spread enlightenment.”
Three weeks later, the Headway book summary app was born. The app now has a collection of over 1,500 books in English, condensed and summarized with key points that take anywhere from a few minutes to 15 minutes to read or listen to. The company is already working on including Spanish and French books to its repertoire.
Since its inception, the app has gone on to become the most downloaded book summary apps in application stores, with around 40 million downloads.
The company has also developed four other micro-learning products with a fifth in development, including its “brain training” app, Impulse, which has been downloaded around 70 million times since 2018. It has also been featured on several ratings and lists as a future unicorn in Ukraine.  
Headway was founded and to this day operates out of its Kyiv office located in the historic, industrial Podil neighborhood, home to both IT companies and techno clubs. The company relocated many employees out of Kyiv at the onset of the full-scale invasion, but most have since returned.
The company has grown 100 times since it was founded, and now counts over 300 employees, a large part of which works in Ukraine.
Pavlovsky told the Kyiv Independent that concentrating books into shorter versions of themselves and offering their highlights isn’t about getting people to read less, but more.
If people aren’t reading anyway  — in 2023, 46% of adults in the U.S., Headway’s largest market, surveyed said they had finished zero books — might as well give them some way of interacting with the written word, the thinking goes.
“Books are great, I love books, but other people may not love them and that’s fine, we will provide them with other means to learn in this age of distraction, on the go, gamified, whenever they have like two, five, 10 minutes to spare.”
The Headway app tries to get people to learn with a variety of options for the busiest of us who can’t find more than a few minutes to spare to those who have at least 15 minutes to get away from all of life’s daily distractions. One may also want to brush up on a book they read 10 years ago, or see if a book is interesting enough to actually buy it.
The app’s homepage offers “daily microlearning sessions,” that allows to “tap through 10 bits of knowledge in three minutes.” Each bit of knowledge is one line from books ranging in topics from spirituality to how to transform your business and become a seven-figure entrepreneur.
If while scrolling through the 10 insights, say the quote “Money is an amplifier, not a change agent; it doesn’t turn bad ideas into good,” from the book “12 Months to $1 million” peaks your interest, you can click on its title to get to a summary that offers you the book’s key points, a short summary and key quotes.
The app also gamifies the experience — a part of making interacting with it goal-oriented that seeks to make engaging with the content more fun and, ultimately, wanting you coming back for more. The app tracks your progress and sends you notifications to remind you to keep up the good work.
Getting the attention of a population that according to one study has an average attention span of eight seconds — one second less than that of a goldfish — is one of the goals of companies like Headway.  
“All this distraction and not enough time — you have to keep up with so much, the need is there,” Pavlovksy said.
So is the potential. The global education market is currently valued at $6 trillion and is expected to hit $8 trillion by 2030, according to Morgan Stanley Research from 2023. The sector is notorious for being under-digitalized, and according to Pavlovsky, especially when it comes to our phones.
Constantly in our hands, Headway and others like it want us to “better utilize the capabilities of that kind of device that’s always with you,” Pavlovsky said. It’s also about democratizing access to information — many people around the world don’t have access to top-level education, but most of them have phones.
The market opportunities may mostly be outside of Ukraine, but Headway, being founded and located in Ukraine, the country, and its struggles are never too far away.
For one, the app’s icon features the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag. After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, it launched its “Essence of Ukraine” series which offers free-of-charge summaries of books about Ukraine and its history.
But simply by being such a successful example of a Ukrainian-born and based company, Headway is also changing the persisting negative stereotypes of Ukrainian business as behind or corrupt.
“I’m sure that Ukraine will prove to the world and it has already proven that it can create number one products, winning products, winning businesses at some point even new business models,” Pavlovsky said.
Headway redefines learning with bite-sized book summaries, making self-improvement more accessible than ever. Explore more businesses dedicated to progress and education at Spend With Ukraine — your support paves the way to a brighter, more resilient future for Ukraine.