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Scaling a startup from a bunker: founders' story from Ukraine

277 points| Pavlyshyna | 3 years ago |awesomic.io

42 comments

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albertgoeswoof|3 years ago

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?

Pavlyshyna|3 years ago

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.

tstrimple|3 years ago

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.

A+ would work with again.

more_corn|3 years ago

Awesome story. Please note. If you pop up a window while I’m reading to invite me to subscribe I will immediately close the window and ignore you forever.

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.

Pavlyshyna|3 years ago

thank you for sharing, noted ;)

hemloc_io|3 years ago

Hey! I remember reading your previous article on HN about being bootstrapped, and I liked the fun aesthetic of your company :)

Glad to hear everyone is safe, best of luck.

Pavlyshyna|3 years ago

yeap, that was us :) thank you!

dhoe|3 years ago

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!

Pavlyshyna|3 years ago

thank you! You're always welcome to try us out

santa_boy|3 years ago

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)

romasevastyanov|3 years ago

> How many of your 168 team-mates were in Ukraine?

Around ~100 right now.

> Any specific experiences you/they can share on how they coped with the struggles and things that worked for them?

Yes! We are planning to cover another article just on this topic.

Main things which we used:

1) Free 1to1 with therapists

2) Group sessions with therapists

3) Unlimited PTO

4) Financial support

5) In case a teammate is in the danger area, proactive support for evacuation

6) Real-time monitoring of the situation + updates to the team

7) "Believe in better times, and what we'll do there"

CosmicShadow|3 years ago

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!

Pavlyshyna|3 years ago

Thank you, I honestly appreciate!

shashanoid|3 years ago

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

ramesh31|3 years ago

Absolutely love the site. Clean modern design, but with a throwback to the personal web era. Wish there was more of this.

dollyworld|3 years ago

wow, thanks for sharing this

OleksK|3 years ago

[deleted]

CedarMills|3 years ago

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.

Pavlyshyna|3 years ago

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.

zucker42|3 years ago

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.

jen20|3 years ago

> majority of world supports the Ukrainian side

And one way you can support it is to support the Ukrainian economy by doing business with companies there.

qaq|3 years ago

So helping people to have a job bad but once they loose the job and have to rely on handouts helping them is good hm...

passivate|3 years ago

If you still have them, can you share those emails with names redacted?

ejb999|3 years ago

>>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.

r6ku|3 years ago

[deleted]

cynicthe1st|3 years ago

[deleted]

brokenkebab2|3 years ago

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

svnt|3 years ago

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.

I hope you all stay safe and find healing.

dang|3 years ago

That's a generic flamewar tangent and those do not make for good HN threads at the best of times:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

starik36|3 years ago

> avoidant behaviors

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.

Pavlyshyna|3 years ago

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.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK|3 years ago

Long time ago, I also worked for an outsourcing company in a poor country. They didn't call it a startup though.

Pavlyshyna|3 years ago

I assume poor country refers to Ukraine. We have designers connected to the app from almost all continents though, including Canada, Germany, Portugal.