Lessons From The Founders Scaling Their Startup In A War Zone

TL;DR

Founders Stacy and Roman of Asamic, a platform matching companies with designers (100+ designers, mostly from Ukraine), experienced Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine starting February 24, 2022. They evacuated Kyiv, executed a pre-prepared emergency plan to secure their team’s safety (including hiring “kamikaze drivers” to evacuate people from occupied cities), and resumed normal business ope

Key insights

• Having an emergency plan in advance allowed the founders to shift into “robot mode” – executing step-by-step without panic – during the crisis.
• The emotional toll (e.g., staring at the wall for a week) surfaced only after the initial pressing work of helping others was done, triggered by events like the release of photos from Bucha.
• Safety threats were prioritized above all else: the first action upon any new threat was to eliminate potential safety problems for their people.