Warzone Lessons for Silicon Valley Success with Roman Sevast

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Created with John Ushai. Today, we'll be breaking down Warzone lessons for Silicon Valley success. To drop these value bonds, I brought Roman Savast in EO Fire Studios. Roman started programming at 13, led a dev team at 18, raised$3 million for his startup in a Ukrainian bomb shelter at 25, and now he's growing it from Silicon Valley. In today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about a very challenging environment.

0:36We'll talk about how decision-making has changed as a result. We'll talk about studying success, the key ingredients, stress, anxiety, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Roman and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business.

1:15Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Roman, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, everyone. It's Roman. happy to chat with you guys i think in our society we have a lot of talks about like follow your passion while i really think uh we should focus on doing a good work and that's it success isn't kind of like predeterminated path for any person it's more like you pick something what you might be interested in or even not, and you start kind of like crafting yourself and doing a good job.

2:04So based on my path, I never ever thought that I would build a company in design space and hiring more than 100 designers and so on. But somehow I spent a lot of time to learn in that. And yeah, we have a summit right now. Well, Fire Nation, we're talking about Warzone lessons for Silicon Valley success. And Roman, you have a fascinating story. I talked a lot about it in the introduction. You started scaling your startup in a very challenging environment. Tell us this story and the skills you developed in order to thrive. I think we launched our company probably during the worst timing ever because we literally launched it when the pandemic started and two years after war in Ukraine started.

2:59I've been in Ukraine back then, in Kiev capital. So a few things which helped me go through these obstacles, I would say. The first one, scenario planning or contingency planning. That's the first skill. So how it works for me. Before the war started in Ukraine, I've been analyzed public media, information that Russia invasion would happen in Ukraine and so on. And I started planning what I would do if this happened, what I would do if this not happened, what I can prepare in advance. And one of the best decisions I did when I just spent half of the day exercises this potential scenario planning i relocated people uh who've been um living uh closer to russian uh border and i told them guys like we see that something going uh on on uh on the border wire might become so please relocate for the next two weeks in other city uh let's say it would be kind of like a workation we would pay for everything for you and so on and so far so i did it exactly three five days before the war started and that's been one of the best decision because i i didn't expect that it would be so much big war i expected it would be smaller somewhere in the border but still this decision basically saved few families so that's a fun thing and i i still continue to kind of like this scenario planning for potential future events and so on second skill which I can develop during during the war and Y Combinator told us that startups actually shut down when founders give up so the skill just never give up keep going think about your mental health and so on.

5:13Find some way how you can rest, recharge, but never give up. Because like when you go up, it's over. You close the company and so on. And I had a multiple times in super tough position. Like when we've been running out of the money, when some issue happens with the corporation, with the customer, so on, and so on. but like we just keep going and the third thing i would recommend it's more like entrepreneurship skill i call it cash flow is the king so uh when when we got our first cash gap i told myself i would never allow it happen anymore with me so i dramatically improved our financial planning and yeah, that's very important because when you have free cash, in most cases, you can solve almost any problem except like some super critical, but anyway, you can survive during the war, during pandemic, anything can happen to you and cash, it's our backbone which you can use to survive.

6:28Well, Roman, I want to really dive into the specifics on this though. How did your approach to strategic decision-making change based off of all of this that we're talking about right now? I would say the only one thing that matters, especially in startup, is the speed of making decisions. Because any way you would do mistakes, it's inevitable. But it's better to fail fast as possible. And if it's possible, cheap as possible. Make fast decisions. Well, I love personally studying success. So let's right now talk about the key ingredients that you would say are a result of your company's success.

7:10When war happened and so on, we started launching immediately, literally on day three when the war going on. We decided, okay, we're launching in new markets because we've been mostly hiring designers from Ukraine. And as there are war, it's not super reliable to just be only one this country hiring from there. So we started hiring in LATAM, in Europe, in other countries. Second thing, we as founders, after spending like six months in Ukraine during the war, we still decided to move to the US. Obviously, after we fixed our operation in Ukraine, so far we have 75 people who still live in Ukraine and working from there.

8:06We found an office space with an underground bunker. We made sure that people have internet, water, electricity, and everything like that, and we basically can work in any circumstances. So that's the second thing. And the third thing, we hiring highly adaptive people who can handle such pressure. Like basically working in startup, it's already pressure. But in our case, it's a higher level of the complexity of the pressure. and from our side as founders I provide as much care as possible to my team I mean for example we have unlimited day offs we provide free psychological help we had a cash button we literally made the process when any person in company can ask for help I need the money, like$1000 or so and no question asked you just receive it immediately because like anything could happen in your life you need to kind of relocate your parents and so on so yeah that's what helped us Fire Nation, there's a lot of takeaways from that but one thing that I really want to emphasize from what Roman is sharing, take care of your people, take care of your team, they will take care of you when you build loyalty you win, period end of story.

9:39Churn, that means losing your team and having to rehire, retrain. I mean, that is such a killer for businesses. It's a waste of time, energy, resources. Take care of your team. That$1 ,000 that Roman just sent to somebody without a question to ask, guess what? That created a loyal teammate for life. That person is going to be loyal to Roman and his business to the core and save him potentially tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars by just extra efficiency, not losing that person now to somebody. I mean, there's so many benefits. Think about that. And we have so much more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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10:55Ready to get up and running fast? HubSpot is on a mission to help you do just that. And the best part is HubSpot's entrepreneurship kit is free. Starting a business doesn't have to be so hard. Go to clickhubspot.com slash ENT to download the guide right now. Roman, we're back and listen, uncertainty is part of the game. I mean, listen, I spent 13 months in Iraq as a tank commander in a war zone. I felt uncertainty in a war zone personally, but I want to chat about how you navigated uncertainty to keep your business on track? Probably as you live in war zones, you know that you can survive based on two things, based on your professionalism and just luck.

11:44So yeah, just hope for the luck, obviously. Learn and improve yourself. As I shared before, one of the kind of skills I learned is a financial planning and so on. But also what I discovered, sometimes in situations of extreme of uncertainty, you literally, nobody knows what to do. And I remember when the first day of the war in Ukraine, I messaged my investors from US and I asked him like what should I do and they didn't know like we don't know so one of the things I kind of like use I started to use it more it's basically my intuition sometimes when I don't even know answer but I believe okay this is a potentially good way to escape or right way to do let's just do it and so yeah because like for me it's very untypical in the past i've been a software engineer i've been studying applied math in university and kind of like a very very geeky guy who always need a reasonable explanation on everything and this spiritual I think intuition has not been something what I've been focusing on.

13:14But after going through many situations, I think intuition is actually a very, very powerful instrument. You just feel what's right and just do it. Now, Roman, war zone aside, running a business is stressful. I mean, when you add a war zone on top of that, forget about it. It's through the roof. So how do you stay positive and manage anxiety? What would your advice and thoughts be for our listeners today around that topic? It's more about how you manage yourself. And the first thing, it's super obviously, but it works to remind healthy lifestyle. Sleep and eat well. It's extremely important. It's your base.

13:57Without that, you cannot build a big house on top of that. So that's the first thing. uh also i started um doing every six months a blood test to see which supplements do i need and just buy supplements it costs 100 200 per month but it would dramatically improve your internal feeling because like think about that everything what you eat basically um turn into your body so your body is literally what you eat if you eat a junk food your body would probably not feel very well. So yeah, focus on a healthy lifestyle. Second thing, that's my personal. I almost never took any vacations, any day off and so on.

14:47And for me, for the last two years, I had to learn how to relax, how to turn off all internet access, not reading news, not communicating in Slack with my team, but like being able to have off for a few days or week and so on and recharge um so that that's my personal thing i'm going to tell him to people like i don't know how to relax i really like but but yeah i i learned it for for the hard way after few burnouts and so on so right now i'm kind of even planning okay i haven't had any day ops for like three months i need to have this weekend off because like i'm feeling i'm uh about to burn out so ability relax as well and the last it's a vipassana uh so um when the water been going on for the second year and so on i'm being kind of like in depression where is my right place to be am i doing enough to help my country and so on am i donating enough to support the people and i've been testing different methods how to escape from these bad moods and being able to execute more and one of them it's been vipassana vipassana it's actually meditation technique uh it's free for anyone um more than 100 000 people uh go through vipassana every year around the world there are a lot of meditation centers especially in united states and you go there for 10 days you just sit in a buddhist temple for 10 days and they teach you how to meditate.

16:28They don't tell you anything about religion and so on, nothing about it. They just teach you how to meditate. And during this meditation process, you are able to reflect on things which happen in your life and basically change yourself and so on. Because we're talking a lot about physical exercise, going to gym and so on, but we don't talk at all about mental exercise And Vipassana meditation, it's actually kind of like a mental gene. It's a way how you rebuild your thinking process. And that really extremely helped me in my way. Roman, I want to give you a magical button. And if you push this button, it's going to take you back to the beginning.

17:15What would you do different? That's a great question. I don't regret about anything what happened. but if I would be with my mind but in younger body, I would do everything same but faster. Like not spending a month on that but spending a week. Not spending a week on this task but spending the days. So yeah, speed of execution is basically probably, as Y Combinator told us, it's one of the most predeterminated factors of the success. Even if you're like not the smartest person and so on, but you executed fast, you would definitely reach a success. So speed really, really matter. Fire Nation, what are you waiting for?

17:59I mean, you need to get things out into the world to see what works, to see what breaks, to get real customer and client interaction with that thing. I mean, it's so key. It is what's going to make you win or lose. Now, Roman, you dropped so many value bombs today. What's one key takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? Never give up. Iterate as fast as possible. And if you haven't launched anything or thinking about starting a new venture or like about some idea, project and so on, just do it. Just like start doing from day one and do step by step and you would get to success.

18:42Fire Nation, you are the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with Roman and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And Roman, if Fire Nation wants to learn more about you, if they want to connect with you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? So I'm very active on LinkedIn and X. Please follow me. Feel free to message me. I'm more responsive over LinkedIn. If you have any specific question, just like message and I would be super happy to answer you. um also there are a bunch of podcast interviews with me on youtube um some materials on our website astomic.com um so yeah um feel free to ping me out about literally anything i would be super happy to help you fire nation when somebody offers to directly communicate with you of roman's stature of his success please take him up on that that's a great opportunity and roman i want to say thank you for your truth, your value, your awesomeness with Fire Nation today.

19:42For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you for this opportunity, John. And yeah, been excited to talk with you and have a nice day. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Roman for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, what can 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment. My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com.

20:24I will catch you there or on the flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.

21:01Thank you.