For many here in the U.S., the fact that the Russo-Ukrainian War marked its one year of existence last Friday may have been overshadowed by more immediate interests on the homefront.
“It’s human nature to get desensitized to an ongoing war,” said Charley Miller, CEO and co-founder of OrgVitals, “And we don't know if this is the eighth inning of this war or if we're still in the first or second inning of this.”
For those tech companies located here who have employees in/from Ukraine like Miller, though, the significance of Feb. 24 was not lost.
For the actual employees, it cannot be forgotten. They are reminded every time they lose power — a major issue for some in the tech field — or feel the reverberations from a building being shelled in the distance.
When David Galownia, founder and CEO of Slingshot, a software development company based in Louisville, realized the one-year anniversary was around the corner he decided to do something “just to reaffirm our support, most of all” with 27 of his company’s approximate 55 team members from Ukraine.
So, he and his leadership team came up with the idea of selling Slingshot T-shirts designed by their Ukrainian designers — and then match the cost of the T-shirts dollar for dollar, up to $2,500. The sales began on Feb. 24. The shirts are being sold through an online e-commerce platform, Bonfire. Prices are $30 for traditional T-shirts, $45 for a crewneck sweatshirt and $50 for a hoodie.
As of a recent date, they had sold around 60 shirts, resulting in a total of around $1,000 (and counting). The proceeds will then be donated to charities chosen by Ukrainian team members. Those who wish to order T-shirts can do so at this link until Friday, March 3.
Slingshot has had Ukrainian employees on its team by way of Abto Software (a third party) for a little under four years.
“We gave them grace and time and whatever they needed to be as understanding as possible in such a crazy situation,” said Galownia, adding that several people have found themselves in “bad positions” and had to move throughout the country. “Now that the war is a year later, unfortunately, they’ve settled into a new normal where this is part of their lives.”
‘The things I can change’
Artem Shynkarenko has worked for Slingshot as a department manager from the start. He has been with Abto for approximately 14 years total. He is currently living in his home city Lviv, located in the western part of the country, not too far from the Polish border.
In the first two weeks of the Russian invasion, he and his family — his wife and their toddler — temporarily moved to Uzhhorod near the border of Slovakia. After spending the spring 2022 there, they moved back to Lviv that summer.
Through responses returned to questions posed in an email, he told me that his new normal started in May 2022.
“It took about two months,” Shynkarenko said. “Most of my social bubble too. Still some news could make me 'freeze' for hours, but I’m trying to concentrate on the things I can change.”
He added the “overall current citation is stable and safe as much as possible” in his city, located a little more than 600 miles from the eastern front line of the conflict.
“While Russia practically can send [rockets] to any point in Ukraine, they are [not] so stupid to spend expensive/hard-to-replace missiles on totally [civilian] targets,” Shynkarenko said.
Before this new wave of stability, he and his family had to deal with “terroristic attacks” on their power grid, resulting in homes only being able to have electricity for 8 to 10 hours a day. This lasted from October to January.
Still, he manages to focus on work.
Shynkarenko said that it comes down to biology and three options one has when in danger: flee, freeze or fight.
“Since I don’t want to leave my homeland without critical danger to my beloved [ones] I choose to stay,” he said. “I could choose [to] freeze for [a] full day by reading social media, news, etc. ... but it gives zero output to myself — only nervous exhaustion.
“So the single option for me is to fight back somehow. I’m [a] bad [soldier]and not [a] persistent volunteer, So I put my effort into continuation of the work: earning money for [my] family, earning money for donations to army/friends in need, [and] finding [jobs] for people to do the same.”
Shynkarenko added that a majority of his clients have supported his homeland “in the best possible way” by continuing to do business with Abto during the conflict. He said Abto has collected a total of $500,000, to date, from outside donations.
‘Normalcy as a point of pride’
Miller, co-founder and partner of OrgVitals, said he has been trying to serve as a catalyst to make connections between workers he knows in Ukraine and American companies — especially those in Louisville — who can benefit from their services.
“These people need work ... Ukraine built such a huge economy off, not only software development, but also on sort of international offshore development types of engagement. I think when the war started, a lot of that died down. A lot of people pulled out,” Miller said, adding some found other offshore countries where the threat of war would not disrupt their business affairs.
“There's so many people there that still need the work for their livelihoods — literally having to rebuild their roots in new cities.”
Out of OrgVitals’s nine employees, five of them are Ukrainian (three full-time and two-part time), with four living in Poland in a makeshift office in Lublin, Poland, that Miller and his team preemptively set up in the fall of 2021 when they noticed increased tension caused by Russia. The other lives in Ukraine in the capital city of Kyiv.
In addition to OrgVitals, Miller’s other business is Unitonomy, an online startup studio where he and his partners often hire “Ukraine friends” — about a dozen or so, all together — as freelancers to help with software development and correlating support for clients. One of those developers is living in Kyiv, with the rest stationed in the Poland office.
OrgVitals, named one of our Startups to Watch in 2022 became a spinoff company of Unitonomy in 2021.
Miller made the mistake of first saying that his Ukraine team members did not need to work.
“They made it very clear that work provided them some normalcy as a point of pride,” Miller said. “Their commitment to work I think is also incredible because it's not just about the bombs.
"I think we have to understand day-in and day-out, even if they're far away from the front lines. They may not eat. They may go through periods without electricity. And yet, in this day and age, they're still able — when they do have electricity — jump on a video conference and they're still able to meet their deadlines.”
All in, Miller said he has connections, give or take, with about 100 people from Ukraine after establishing ties there as far back as 2008 with another startup studio called bMuse, which resulted after he and his partner needing to build remote product development teams to create game products for the toy company Hasbro. They stumbled across Ukraine through a simple online search.
When a spinoff company was created, Touchcast, they built an office for 30 people in 2012.
He said that when he first started working with them, Ukrainains immediately made him think of Kentuckians in terms of the sense of pride they have.
“I’ve worked with people all over the world, and you can find great people all over the world,” Miller said. “The reason I keep building teams in Ukraine is because I’ve just had consistent good luck in being able to recruit talented, nice people.”
He might want to add iron-willed to those list of adjectives.
“Please be aware that Russia will not stop [even] if they burn [all of] Ukraine to ashes,” Shynkarenko said. “And If they show that brutal force ... that will change the whole world. So I put here [the] words of Abto Software’s CEO: ‘Let’s make another push, and make 2023 the year of the big victory of Ukraine — and the whole democratic world. There is no other way.’”
