This is an amazing story and great concept/startup. I’d love to know more about the economics around the company, given that you raised 2.5M USD last year- what kind of capital costs do you incur that make the VC route a good path here? How do you plan to scale up to returns that are comparable with other YC companies?
In other words, geopolitical situation aside, why not bootstrap this business or rely on debt?
Thank you! It's a fair question given though unit economics in businesses like ours are usually pretty healthy. As we had a bootstrap experience before and were (still are!) very lean, we considered the options you mentioned too.
The point for us was not capital costs or smth, but opportunities to grow at a different scale. We see VC not as primarily funding, but as partners for the journey — source of learnings, support and network. We were mostly focused on raising from angel entrepreneurs, even current customers joined. Hopefully this answers your question.
I had the good fortune to be working with a Ukrainian dev team when things broke out. The first week was chaotic, but all of them were doing their best to move out of the cities and settle in villages to continue working. If my city was being bombed and I was having to relocate for safety the last thing on my mind would be writing software. I said as much to the devs, especially when they were apologetic about availability. Their response was basically "This is how we're supporting the defense efforts. Some people are picking up weapons, but we're helping by keeping money flowing into the country." That gave me a new perspective on the work they were doing and their work ethic during such crazy times.
Awesome story.
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A simple link to subscribe will let me do it without interrupting me.
We get to build the internet we want to experience. Don’t create a shitty experience for your readers.
Very timely, I was just wondering the other day how you guys are doing. Can't wait to be able to justify signing up with my badly designed side project!
Thanks man. I feel so privileged to be in a safe country. How many of your 168 team-mates were in Ukraine?
That a pretty big size .... Any specific experiences you/they can share on how they coped with the struggles and things that worked for them? (maybe topics for a series on survival and growth when things perhaps changed overnight)
Great! These are wonderful initiatives on behalf of the company.
Also, would be great to hear of the coping mechanisms the individuals and families involved ... that were beneficial for them in their own personal capacity and situation.
Really glad to hear that you guys are safe and continuing to operate. I remembered you were in Ukraine and was wondering how that affected everything! I've still got you in the back of my mind for when I need some design!
This is crazy. Getting goosebumps from reading that blog post. It's extremely hard to imagine how you managed to pull that off. All the best & I hope you all stay safe <3
It's a great post with realities of war. Being focused on work is a great distraction as well. My issue is how do we respond to businesses who are clearly exploiting the crisis for monetary gain?
It's one thing to ask for support for humanitarian aid purposes (such as fundraising to distribute food, helping someone's family get out, etc.), it's another to exploit the war to grow your business.
When the war started, I had numerous cold emails from Ukrainian businesses offering services (primarily outsourced marketing, design, software engineering) with the first paragraph containing emotionally charged, guilt-tripping statements. Those emails started to cause me to have some resentment and I marked them as junk. I will not be pushed to support a business that's trying to guilt trip me, regardless of what's happening.
War is bad, majority of world supports the Ukrainian side. I pray for the conflict to be over soon.
hi! Thank you for the reply and what a great point. I can relate and yes, a lot of business in Ukraine are urged to switch to other markets to survive. I assume their cold outreach attempts might look naive and exploiting. I still believe that begging for help and offering some services are different, and sorry that disturbed you, really.
I assume they still need to make payouts, keep workplaces and support the economy. From my perspective, begging for charity is not okay when you can bring value. Maybe I am just too optimistic about examples you mentioned.
Keep up the good work and thanks for providing a sense of normalcy to your employees in the midst of this crisis, I'm glad something like that is going on at this time.
this is not how the west works nowadays. we are anti-survival because we do not feel threatened(big mistake), we are all about appearances and passing judgments.
I understand why you might not like getting these emails, but is there any reason you think they're bad in some general sense (at least worse than any other email advertising). I'm sure there are some customers out there who would like to buy from Ukrainian companies given what's going on.
I strongly suspect many are not actually Ukrainian; I recently got Facebook ads for a "Ukrainian educational toy maker" selling puzzles I'd seen on AliExpress.
>>My issue is how do we respond to businesses who are clearly exploiting the crisis for monetary gain?
Yep, and not only that, what I see in those pictures are many young, military age healthy males that are hiding out in 'safe places' while other men and women are literally putting their lives at stake to save the country and the lives of the residents - while this group is pimping their business. Doesn't feel right to me.
Putting those young healthy males without significant training and enough effective military hardware right into the trenches being shelled/bombed would be a typical Russian approach which produces a lot of dead and wounded without any positive result. As it has become obvious over the last 3 months Ukraine had learnt to fight differently, smarter.
>while this group is pimping their business.
From the macro scale POV, the large wars are won by economies. USSR and USA won over Germany and Japan by running larger economies (USSR starting 1942/43).
One of the significant part of the war being waged by Russia is to decimate Ukrainian economy. These guys are successfully fighting it back. Them continuing to exist and even thrive and grow is one more piece of war lost by Russia. It is a long game/war. It is very possible that the conflict would go into ceasefire smoldering mode for years during which the survival of Ukraine as independent nation would be decided not by occasional artillery exchanges across ceasefire lines, it will be decided by whose economy would continue to develop successfully.
>hiding out in 'safe places'
They aren't hiding from the draft. Most of them could easily be reached and drafted by army when/if needed. Ukraine drafting offices are overwhelmed with people ready to sign up.
Perhaps you could arrange a conference with them and give give a master class on how to get out of the comfort zone and become the real men? You could share your experience, give a few useful tips on survival in warzones, teach them a lesson on managing emotions under pressure and have a Q&A session. I suggest to upload the recording to youtube, so we could learn too.
And what makes you think so? Ukraine is neither a rich country, nor a militaristic regime, it doesn't have enough top-notch equipment. Also, the idea that someone fights "for military" is just plain stupid, sorry
I am grateful you found stability in work but this reads like a satire. There are plenty of reasons to not grow. War is a valid one.
The clearest framing of this for me is that the religion of Silicon Valley is primarily founded in avoidant behaviors and artificial restrictions on healthy behavior.
This is obviously not an article about startup growth at all costs; it's the story of what's been happening to a startup in a war zone. I don't think it's in very good taste to lecture people who are going through that, let alone toss cliché internet swipes like "this reads like a satire", which are against the site guidelines anyhow.
Disagree. I find it very helpful to be busy during stressful times. Otherwise you are just endlessly thinking about the war and incessantly checking news sources.
I can't even imagine the mental pressure these folks are under.
Thank you! We also see it this way from what we hear from folks. Eg I limited newsfeed to 2 times a day and try to be busy all other times otherwise it gets all energy away for being worried.
hi, thank you for the reply! Safe and yes, therapy helps with healing. I might understand your concern around toxic culture of "growth at all cost" as SV religion. After bootstrapping my 3 companies before, I am not a fan of it too.
Hopefully, this is not the case. We were not pushing people during such heart-breaking times, on the opposite, they needed work as a distraction and spent at least 30% of work time lately on volunteering projects, eg. designing for non-profits. This gave an additional sense of purpose to being productive and stay strong.
> Exploiting Ukraine in any way for business reasons like this
Where are you getting this take from? The founder calling the shots seems to be Ukrainian. The entire article is about them doing everything they can to take care of their team and their country.
And as for why they keep working, his account of the opinion of his female employees hiding in bunkers to reduce the chance of rape:
> I asked them to rest and take care of themselves & their relatives, but they told me that work kept them mentally stable.
> Where are you getting this take from? The founder calling the shots seems to be Ukrainian.
That's where this "take" comes from. The fact that the founder is Ukrainian, and instead of addressing the immense geopolitical complexities of the turmoil in which he & his countrymen find themselves, they exploit the pain to give benefit and PR to their technology startup.
Either the situation in Ukraine is not quite as dire as the post suggests, or the founder is insane. Either way, he's a liar and a manipulative person who has their priorities backwards.
Actual wars do not allow for venture capital based software firms to take hold. For fuck's sake, when the US bombed Iraq senselessly for two straight years, they managed to blow up an entire Al Jazeera location along with the hopes and dreams of all the citizenry there. There are hardly any young men anymore in that country thanks to us.
Technology has not improved that much over the last two decades to make the theater of war any different today.
I assume poor country refers to Ukraine. We have designers connected to the app from almost all continents though, including Canada, Germany, Portugal.
In other words, geopolitical situation aside, why not bootstrap this business or rely on debt?