[HN Gopher] Scaling a startup from a bunker: founders' story fro... ___________________________________________________________________ Scaling a startup from a bunker: founders' story from Ukraine Author : Pavlyshyna Score : 194 points Date : 2022-06-01 15:57 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.awesomic.io) (TXT) w3m dump (www.awesomic.io) | [deleted] | r6ku wrote: | OleksK wrote: | CosmicShadow wrote: | 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 wrote: | Thank you, I honestly appreciate! | svnt wrote: | 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. | starik36 wrote: | > 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 wrote: | 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. | Pavlyshyna wrote: | 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. | dang wrote: | 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 cliche | internet swipes like "this reads like a satire", which are | against the site guidelines anyhow. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | AndrewUnmuted wrote: | arcticfox wrote: | > 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. | albertgoeswoof wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | hemloc_io wrote: | 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 wrote: | yeap, that was us :) thank you! | CedarMills wrote: | 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. | passivate wrote: | If you still have them, can you share those emails with names | redacted? | [deleted] | Pavlyshyna wrote: | 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. | AzzieElbab wrote: | 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. | jamal-kumar wrote: | 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. | jen20 wrote: | > 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. | ejb999 wrote: | >>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. | trhway wrote: | 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 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. | qaq wrote: | 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... | zucker42 wrote: | 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. | ceejayoz wrote: | 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. | dhoe wrote: | 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 wrote: | thank you! You're always welcome to try us out | dollyworld wrote: | wow, thanks for sharing this | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: | Long time ago, I also worked for an outsourcing company in a poor | country. They didn't call it a startup though. | Pavlyshyna wrote: | I assume poor country refers to Ukraine. We have designers | connected to the app from almost all continents though, | including Canada, Germany, Portugal. | shashanoid wrote: | 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 | DariaRud wrote: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-02 23:01 UTC)