Start-Up in an Active Warzone, with:
Yurii Filipchuk, CEO and Founder of Party.Space
Welcome to this riveting episode, that forewarning, may be difficult to listen to at times.
By the end of this conversation, you’ll have a new lens for how you see start-up growth, war, and maybe even develop a reverence for worst-case thinking.
You see, today’s dialogue is with a legendary founder, Yurii Filipchuk, who at the time of recording on Sep 15, 2022 is ACTIVELY in Ukraine in the midst of the Russia-Ukrainian war.
If you’ve ever founded a start-up, you’re well acquainted with the chaos, stress, and battle the early days.
But what if you were doing all those things AND you happened to be in the middle of an active warzone?
Yurii Filipchuk is the founder of Party Space
Today, you’ll hear about everything from:
- Hiring people for your start-up in an active warzone
- The effect war has on employee motivation
- And even, the difficulty of separating good people from the nation attacking you, and how that impacts both personal and professional decision-making
As a side note, Yurii’s company, Party.Space, is in the middle of funding rounds. If you’re an angel investor listening, and you’re looking for incredibly resilient founders, reach out to Yurii.
Starting something new comes with a lot of challenges.
The fear of these challenges is why some people refuse to go ahead with that great idea of theirs. But when you have to start a company in the middle of a war, that is a real challenge.
If being "brave" and having a "resilient spirit" was a person, Yurii Filipchuk is that person. It is fascinating to know that despite being an optimist, Yurii conditioned his thought process to consider the worst-case scenario first.
Warning other countries, he says, "the worst-case scenario is the real scenario."
Join us on this mind-blowing episode as we get an insight into how he managed the natural stress of starting a company and the distress the startup is experiencing by being in a war zone. This should be the much-needed motivation to bring your ideas and creations to life.
Yurii to GenZ's who are unprepared for the reality of war in recognizing the warning signs early enough.
"If you conceive the chance of the dark ages starting again, you should be ready for them." - Yurii.
Yurii thinks Gen Zrs have a more very expansive and globally-focused worldview which gives him hope that if a disaster, like what has happened in Ukraine, occurred in other parts of the world, Gen Z would be ready for it., and as opposed to what millennials might like to think, they might be more ready for situations like this.
"It is becoming the new normal to be ready for stuff things that weren't perceived as possible." - Yurii.
Yurii's experience being a startup founder in the middle of the war.
"Being a startup founder puts you in the situation of being in the midst of war every day." - Yurii.
He explained that Party. Space started two years ago, and every day has been full of challenges. Being a company with its base in Ukraine, the most recurring challenge is dealing with client skepticism about trusting the brand.
This impacts funding efforts, growing his client base, and more.
The emergence of war, as you would expect, made it worse. In the first month, the operational level dropped and only experienced a spike after about 3 months (war was a surprising motivator), but Party Space still paid salaries and supported people by hiring.
About Yurii Filipchuk
Yurii Filipchuk is CEO & Founder of Party Space, a metaverse events platform for remote teams and online communities. Yurii was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and currently lives in Los Angeles, USA. He started his career in traditional banking and moved to investments, but the entrepreneurial spirit took over him.
Party Space is in the middle of funding rounds. If you're looking for incredibly resilient founders, reach out to Yurii.
