Ukraine Tech Startups Pivot From Software program Code to Rescue Plans

“We understood that we’re just about on our personal to avoid wasting the enterprise and to avoid wasting our individuals and save human lives,” stated Mr. Kolomyeytsev, the 44-year-old chief govt officer of StarWind Software program Inc., a data-storage firm.

In an escalating struggle, enterprise leaders answerable for giant Ukrainian workforces have turn out to be evacuation coordinators, navy strategists, suppliers of humanitarian help and, in some circumstances, financiers of the Ukrainian military. Startups like StarWind are utilizing their tech savvy, dispersed workforces and relative agility as smaller and privately held firms to assist mitigate the enterprise trauma and human disaster of struggle.

For the CEOs working these startups and their deputies, the traditional duties of delivery code and ramping up gross sales have been changed with mapping escape routes and paying colleagues preventing with the military.

Their preparations for the struggle began months in the past. The startups secured passports and Covid-19 vaccines for workers and their households, transformed cash into U.S. {dollars} and transferred employees to safer locales. Now, from perches in Poland, Germany, Israel, Silicon Valley and elsewhere, these startup leaders proceed to run their companies whereas including one other process—serving to to defend Ukraine.

StarWind doubled the salaries of staff who enlisted within the Ukrainian military, Mr. Kolomyeytsev stated.

Ukrainian startup Lemon.io, a web-based market for software program engineers to search out jobs, is giving the entire firm’s income to the military on the finish of every month—round $124,000 thus far—and donating to organizations buying drones for the military, stated CEO

Aleksandr Volodarsky.

When staff at software program firm Folks.ai Inc. determined to enlist, their co-workers raised greater than $30,000 to purchase the military sleeping luggage and mats, ham radios and different communications {hardware}, stated CEO

Oleg Rogynskyy,

a Ukrainian native who has lived in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade.

These startup leaders and their staff say such efforts ease the helplessness of watching the destruction of their residence from afar.

“Our plan is successful this struggle and doing no matter we will to assist the struggle effort, and guarantee that our nation can return to a peaceable life,” stated

Andrew Tuzov,

director of enterprise improvement for StarWind.

Mr. Volodarsky of Lemon.io is one in every of round 10 individuals from his firm that made it out of Ukraine; he fled to Jerusalem along with his spouse and two kids, ages 6 and three years previous. To flee, they broke curfew and drove out of Kyiv within the early morning to the border with Hungary, the place they crossed on foot after which flew to Israel. He stated he talks every day with the 33 staff in Ukraine, three in Russian-occupied cities, providing to assist them relocate.

They really feel it’s too late, Mr. Volodarsky stated. Males match for navy service aren’t allowed in a foreign country, others have deemed the journey too dangerous.

“Persons are simply too scared to enter the road to go away,” stated Mr. Volodarsky, age 35.

Mr. Volodarsky stated he had a plan for the struggle. He paid out two months of salaries upfront to his staff and elevated funds to the freelancers who use Lemon.io to search out work, in case banks went offline. He advised his staff, if struggle begins, seize your emergency bag and first-aid equipment and meet at his co-founder’s home in western Ukraine.

“We’ll assist you except you resolve to maneuver to Russia,” Mr. Volodarsky wrote to his staff earlier than the invasion.

Issues didn’t go as deliberate, and staff remained put, some retreating to bomb shelters. “The sensation of guilt is caught in my throat,” Mr. Volodarsky stated.

Mr. Volodarsky stated he has dismissed the corporate’s targets for the 12 months; his goal now’s to come up with the money for to pay his staff and assist fund the Ukrainian military, and “simply reside via this.”

Lemon.io, Folks.ai and StarWind say their companies proceed to function, helped partially by early preparations and being accustomed to working with a globally dispersed workforce.

StarWind is predicated in Massachusetts however was based by Ukrainians, and three-quarters of its employees was primarily based in Kyiv. It moved some knowledge servers in a foreign country in private automobiles; the remainder of its knowledge was transferred to different servers that the corporate purchased or rented.

Folks.ai, a Silicon Valley-based firm that makes use of synthetic intelligence to assist firms enhance gross sales and operations, transferred some work that was sometimes accomplished in Ukraine to San Francisco and Toronto.

Mr. Rogynskyy of Folks.ai created a process power and in mid-December started holding secret conferences to sport out dozens of situations of a Russia invasion, with assist from a former U.S. Military platoon chief, who had joined as Mr. Rogynskyy’s chief of employees. Near a 3rd of his engineering crew is in Ukraine.

A month later, Mr. Rogynskyy gave his crew in Kyiv directions: Be sure to and everybody in your loved ones has a passport, convert your cash into U.S. {dollars} and depart Ukraine. The corporate despatched staff screenshots of instructions from Google Maps displaying the very best routes in a foreign country to a secure assembly level, and lodges alongside the way in which.

“They thought that I’m loopy,” stated Mr. Rogynskyy, 36 years previous, who grew up in Dnipro, which has been hammered by Russian assaults.

Most Folks.ai staff had been out of Ukraine by mid-February. The corporate paid for passports for workers and rapid households, transportation, cellphones and housing.

Mr. Kolomyeytsev, of StarWind, stated he has anticipated a Russian invasion because the annexation of Crimea in 2014. In recent times, he and a few staff had practiced capturing most Thursdays—their model of crew constructing, he stated. He estimates seven staff have joined the Ukrainian military.

Mr. Kolomyeytsev dispatched Mr. Tuzov, StarWind’s head of enterprise improvement, to Wroclaw, in southwest Poland, to open a brand new workplace. Usually, Mr. Tuzov’s job entails working with StarWind’s companions and clients, which embrace large retailers and the U.S. Military. However for greater than a month, the 29-year-old has been shuttling his colleagues and their households who arrive on the Polish border to a hostel he ready.

Among the many latest arrivals is

Daryna Havrada,

a StarWind customer-support worker, who made a 33-hour trek to Wroclaw from western Ukraine, the place she left behind her dad and mom and youthful sister.

“I actually didn’t anticipate that the corporate would take care of me when I’m so younger,” stated Ms. Havrada, 18, who joined StarWind in January.

About 60 of StarWind’s roughly 180 Kyiv-based staff have relocated to Wroclaw. “It’s just a little little bit of a survivors’ complicated as effectively as a result of we’re right here,” Mr. Tuzov stated.

Mariana Lutska,

head of human assets for Folks.ai’s Ukraine operations, is now tasked with serving to co-workers set up themselves in a brand new metropolis. This contains, amongst different issues, securing authorized residency and work permits, and enrolling kids at school.

On the weekends, she and her colleagues go to native pharmacies and purchase first-aid provides to ship to Ukraine, Ms. Lutska stated. Many be part of pro-Ukrainian demonstrations.

However the 31-year-old wonders if she and her husband will ever reside within the new home in Kyiv that they had almost completed constructing when the struggle started.

“We don’t know if we will return again,” stated Ms. Lutska, or “if Ukraine will likely be free or not.”

Write to Heather Somerville at Heather.Somerville@wsj.com