Latest / Women Disrupting Tech / How a Female Founder Builds a Tech Startup During War in Ukraine with Oryna Starkina | Ep. 142

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How a Female Founder Builds a Tech Startup During War in Ukraine with Oryna Starkina | Ep. 142 · Women Disrupting Tech

• 0:00
  To be honest, for anxious people, this is the time that
• 0:04
  they are more comfortable with because before we were just like
• 0:12
  anxious and everybody else were OK and the situation were OK.
• 0:17
  And when the crisis happens, anxious people minds actually
• 0:23
  like I told you, and I already had all those scenarios and
• 0:29
  finally the catastrophe did happen.
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  So our mind is actually more relaxed right now because, you
• 0:39
  know, the worst scenario and usually anxious people thinking
• 0:43
  about the worst scenarios. Yeah.
• 0:46
  And worst scenario finally unfortunately happened.
• 1:03
  You heard the voice of Orina Starkina.
• 1:06
  Orina is the founder and CEO of Stark Soft, a software
• 1:10
  development company from Ukraine.
• 1:13
  Today's episode is about what it takes to build a tech company in
• 1:17
  the middle of a war. We talk about how diversifying
• 1:21
  employees and customers helped her prepare for the worst, how
• 1:26
  having an anxious mind became an advantage when crisis hit, and
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  why she believes that women entering the Ukrainian texting
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  during the war are in there for the long haul.
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  What struck me most about our conversation was how Orina
• 1:41
  openly talks about being anxious.
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  She shares how it helps her prepares for scenarios that
• 1:47
  other entrepreneurs avoid thinking about and how she makes
• 1:51
  sure that fear informs her decisions without controlling
• 1:55
  them. So if you're curious how this
• 1:58
  female founder built a tech company during the war in
• 2:01
  Ukraine, here's my conversation with Orina Starkina.
• 2:05
  So Orina Starkina, welcome to women disrupting tech.
• 2:09
  Good to have you. Let's start with a little bit of
• 2:12
  background. I think you started in 2020
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  during the pandemic and I think there was the war was already
• 2:22
  with between Russia and Ukraine was already going on right then
• 2:26
  as well. Why did you start to the to
• 2:31
  build a tech company like in the middle of a crisis and at the
• 2:36
  beginning of war? Hi, thanks for having me.
• 2:40
  And to be honest, I all very often hear the question and
• 2:46
  people do not realize that for the tech, it wasn't really a
• 2:52
  crisis. It was more like the window of
• 2:55
  opportunity because people start to go online massively and they
• 3:03
  started needing a lot of online tools and entertaining tools
• 3:07
  because they were locked in their houses.
• 3:11
  So actually, I could say that for tech companies and services,
• 3:16
  for the tech companies, it was golden window.
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  People were starting startups like daily in enormous sizes.
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  Yeah. So I don't see that it's a
• 3:33
  really. Yeah, what we'll go into the
• 3:35
  impact of the war a bit later. You're right now you're in
• 3:39
  Ukraine. So that does play a role.
• 3:44
  So, but what I'm hearing you say is actually that you saw it as
• 3:47
  an many entrepreneurs with you actually saw it as an
• 3:52
  opportunity to start a business online because there was so much
• 3:56
  demand. Yeah, yeah.
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  Where a lot of demand and actually it was the
• 4:06
  circumstances that made it easier for more people to start
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  businesses, especially for people like me with high risk
• 4:18
  profile. So I'm really anxious and
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  haven't ever seen online really helped me because, you know, you
• 4:25
  don't have to care about physical facilities.
• 4:28
  You don't have to have offices. You will even forbidden to
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  attend them back in 2020. And that really helped.
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  And also, yeah, we'll jump to that later.
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  It was a good preparation for the war because it makes
• 4:47
  operations online. Yeah, you had to be, yeah, you
• 4:51
  had to build really for online instead of offline, which would
• 4:57
  have been more vulnerable. So your company is called
• 5:02
  Starksoft. Maybe good also to to explain a
• 5:07
  bit what the company does, what it offers with helps.
• 5:12
  Yes, we are mobile development companies.
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  So we have we help businesses develop mobile applications to
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  support their existing services or products or to create new
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  offerings. We work with the startups or
• 5:33
  SMEs and we cover for them or the full development from
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  scratch, like from idea to release or we support their
• 5:45
  existing products by debugging, adding new features, creating
• 5:52
  something new. So yeah, we cover pretty much
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  mobile development. OK.
• 5:58
  So from from 2 ends and also in the middle, so you just already
• 6:03
  hinted on it. The fact that you started in the
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  pandemic sort of prepared you for war.
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  How did that help you build your company?
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  Yeah, as as already said that it really helped because we started
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  online and we keep being online like 100%.
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  We don't have offices. All the team is distributed in
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  different locations. So it really helps to keep
• 6:33
  everything in clouds to be be and stay robust because we can
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  hire from investigations and that helps to keep operations
• 6:49
  under really uncertain circumstances.
• 6:53
  Yeah. So, so can you double click on
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  that? So you have a distributed team.
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  Does that mean that they are working globally, so not only in
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  Ukraine? Yes, yes, they work not only in
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  Ukraine like most, yeah, I guess 100% they are Ukrainians, but
• 7:14
  some of them based in Poland, it's like father in Europe and
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  the most of them based in Ukraine, but but in different
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  cities. OK.
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  And and, and how does that help because if you're like, if
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  people are in Poland I and other parts of Europe that's
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  relatively safe. But do you then also how do you
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  do this in terms of distributing task is there, do you think
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  about that on OK, I need to have backfills for people on outside
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  Ukraine, for instance for critical roles?
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  No, really we actually do not think on that from that
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  perspective. We just hire a strong engineers
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  no matter what where they are. But it's more like kind of back
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  up and more like reassurance for clients that we have.
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  We still have engineers in different locations, Yeah.
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  So that's also help particularly right now when during the power
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  outages, it's more help to have people that have electricity all
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  the time or they have just different schedules inside the
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  Ukraine. I mean so they have work
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  asynchronously and support each other.
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  OK, So you can actually make sure that people can work on
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  different times and that way sort of work around power
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  outages and, and, and sort of de risk your, your operation.
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  So what I was wondering about, so many, many people think about
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  resilience as a, as a sort of mindset thingy, but you sort of
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  had to build that in to survive as a business and maybe good to
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  take us through what happens you, you start in a pandemic,
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  you build something on purpose, let's say distributed.
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  How did that help you beyond the practical aspects of working
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  around the power outages, but how did that help you survive in
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  when war came? Beyond the practical aspects of
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  this diversification line operations, I guess the key role
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  was the size and the age of the business and the size of the
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  clients. So we work with small medium
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  businesses. This is important because they
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  more robust and they how to say that properly a less risk there
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  sometimes which really helped during the first months of
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  pandemic. And I really want to say thanks
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  for all my clients that were with me back then and some of
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  them are still working with us. Some of them just closed their
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  products, but back in the day they didn't, you know, froze any
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  contract or pause it. They actually supported us a
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  lot. They were really robust in
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  shifting deadlines. They some, some of them send us
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  money like additional money just to help like personally and some
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  of them just support supported us by Stain.
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  So I'm looking on that from perspective of the client
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  segment you're working with, because for bigger companies who
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  worked with the large enterprises, it wasn't that way
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  because that companies could and some of them did froze all the
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  accounts like just in the one day because operations wasn't
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  safe anymore according to the risk departments.
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  Yeah. But my clients, so this medium,
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  small, medium sized, they were more robust.
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  Yeah. So it actually helps you that
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  they didn't have this big organization with risk
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  department saying, Oh well, maybe we need to freeze
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  everything. Yes, this and also partly the
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  geography because we work, so this is the mixed geography of
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  the clients we work with 100% from abroad, but it's 30% United
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  States based and I guess 30% Israel and with Israel clients
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  that are really they understand us because they they more or
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  less in same state of war, Yeah. Just by the way, we're talking
• 12:48
  about Israel for a minute, just that it gives gives the
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  customary relationship in the sense that they understand you.
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  But just did it help you understand their perspective on
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  where they are? Yes and understand their
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  day-to-day life when they are under attack and also we work
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  with them. There are a lot of Ukrainians
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  there and the citizens they immigrated really big then where
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  there was AUS. So we kind of all came from the
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  in big grounds. Ah, so, so Jewish people
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  immigrating to Israel at that time.
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  Yeah, that that part I remember. So a lot of Russian, as they
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  were called at the time, Russian Jews that were going to to.
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  Yeah, yeah. But we actually were like from
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  people that from Ukraine. So they lived like in Kiev or
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  NASA, and then they lately immigrated to Israel.
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  OK. So out of curiosity, like like
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  30% of your customers comes from Israel and there's a whole bunch
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  of people from our businesses from the US.
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  How do you, how do you attract those businesses from Ukraine?
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  Advance on the geography. So with Israel, you really had
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  to be recommended by someone and people do recommend me my ex
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  colleagues or my clients. And for the United States, this
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  is more, let's say standard way to to do that.
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  It's true freelancing platforms like up for but you operating as
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  a company. So you're bidding on the
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  projects, but then you offered service as a company, not
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  freelancer. Yeah.
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  So does that help you to be offering services on a work and
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  platforms like that as a as a company?
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  Yes, it's just like additional channel, but what works for us
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  it's yeah work recommendations and also yeah, networking.
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  Because I also a part of few exchange programs like Ukrainian
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  business leaders and we did a visit to the United States and
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  we now the part of powerful network system which can
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  directly connect to the United States clients and so up work
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  and platforms like that, it's like just one more channel.
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  Yeah, but it's mostly, if I understand you correctly,
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  recommendations and networking. Yeah, Yeah.
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  Well, it's 5050 still. We use it for, but we try to
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  also develop new channels to diversify again.
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  OK, So I want to touch back on something you said all the way
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  in the beginning when COVID hit, you were sort of anxious.
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  In what way were you anxious? Just the regular way, quote UN
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  quote, regular way, Hey, there's a pandemic going on.
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  Or was it also in a different way?
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  In a different way, it's just like my personal trait.
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  So as a human being, you know, I'm quite anxious person, which
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  when I think on that funding during the pandemic really
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  helped me because again, everything was online and I
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  simply didn't have to do a lot of stuff that usually people do
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  when they found the company. So I, I didn't, I have to care
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  about that. And that helped me because that
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  helped not to raise the level of anxiety.
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  Yeah, so, So what? What were you anxious about on
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  the As a follow up on that, I was wondering how did you grow
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  from the anxious woman you were to the entrepreneur that you are
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  now to? Be honest, I started to really
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  overcome in that just quite lately.
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  So this really hard, hard to fight.
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  And that might sound really funny to someone, but it was
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  just the anxiety about simple things like hiring people for
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  the first time, being responsible for them, being
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  responsible for clients, projects.
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  And it also, you know, mixed up a little bit with the imposter
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  syndrome. And I just lately gave
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  consultation for another woman in tech and she asked me about
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  how do you have an imposter syndrome and how did you
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  overcame it and I answered that I can 100% say that I overcame
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  it. So still time to time I feel in
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  myself like imposter. And following your second
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  question, if you really find that it's important to speak
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  with like minded people, with like minded women, founders and
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  founders overall to really see that they have similar problems,
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  similar challenges and you are not alone.
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  And this is OK to someday be low in moods, be do not know what to
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  do and another day you will fight.
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  So yeah, that's this I guess my recipe to connect, network and
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  exchange with like minded. Yeah.
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  So does it then also help you? Sort of.
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  There's a certain periodicity, of course.
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  Some days you have bad days and some days you have, well, good
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  days or better days at least. How, how do you accept that?
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  How do you deal with that? Is that something where you're
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  now? Do you have, do you meditate for
• 19:53
  instance, or do you, you know, maybe work out?
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  I don't know if that's possible. So I do have a day routine I
• 20:02
  follow, like morning routine. Yeah, that helped me to stay,
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  you know, grounded, especially considering the context of war.
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  That really helps to know that you start your everyday with
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  more or less same set of actions and that mean that you have
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  something stable. And that you at least can
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  influence the tiny part of your life right here and right now.
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  I also do sports. That was a base decision like 2
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  years ago to start doing sport regularly and yeah I can 100%
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  advise that for every woman and man who listening us right now,
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  please do that. That really helps and does.
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  It help you. It also give you that routine
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  and for me the that time that I spent in the dance studio, I do
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  ball dancing. This is the time of free in your
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  mind. So you could have really tough
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  time with your work. You could have really tough like
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  negotiations or you have to estimate some big projects and
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  you'll have a lot of pressure. But when you enter in the room,
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  you'd have to concentrate on what's your instructor telling
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  you. So after like certain period of
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  time, you just forget about everything that is outside.
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  And that is the key point because you do not let your
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  anxiety again rise up because you don't do not fall into the
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  sinking loop. You just free your minds and
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  then your unconsciousness could produce some maybe new creative
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  decisions and some your mind can get some older information from
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  the really back of your memory. And so, yeah, the sport is
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  really how just shifting the focus, changing the context, and
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  of course it's good for your health.
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  So when you have a healthy body, you have much less to care
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  about. Yeah, Yeah, I recognize a lot of
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  what you say. I've, I do work out on on
• 22:44
  Tuesday and usually Friday, sometimes it's Saturday or
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  Sunday, but going, going there, especially on Tuesday, it's
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  like, how do you say it's, it's a high intensity workout.
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  So I have to really focus indeed on what the instructor is
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  telling and on doing the exercises right.
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  And that's right. I usually come completely
• 23:10
  drained. I come away from those workouts,
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  but my mind is really clear after that and I'm like really a
• 23:19
  lot more creative all of a sudden.
• 23:21
  Yes, that's exactly, that's exactly it.
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  Really back to the question of anxiety, that really helped
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  because I tend to, you know, over sing.
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  Yeah, because of this anxiety. So I create different scenarios
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  in my head. So this time when you are far
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  away in the sport class really stops that process because you
• 23:47
  cannot do that. You have to be.
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  You have to concentrate. Yeah, you have to be a really
• 23:52
  here and now to to actually to to do the well work out or the
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  dense. Yeah, it's it's my.
• 24:01
  But then in that sense, I think it is indeed mindful to do it.
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  How does the sort of over thinking and over you have a lot
• 24:13
  of let's say working in scenarios.
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  I want to go to the upside of that.
• 24:19
  How does that help you in your business as a as a leader?
• 24:24
  That's a good question. So now as you ask it, I really
• 24:28
  realize that this sort of skills really helps because when you
• 24:37
  lead in the company, you have to doing of course, risk management
• 24:44
  and plan a lot. So this kind of over thinking
• 24:49
  really helped in quickly seeing and imaging a lot of scenarios.
• 24:57
  So you kind of prepare for more or less errors.
• 25:02
  Of course you have to take control over it and don't let it
• 25:08
  kind of suck your but if you use it like leverage that that's
• 25:16
  really helpful because you create those scenarios.
• 25:20
  You have a plan ABC and I noticed that this is something
• 25:27
  my class also like when I give them few options on behalf of my
• 25:35
  team and they really like that. So they really, oh, there was a
• 25:40
  great job of preparing all those options and we just have to pick
• 25:45
  one of them and not, you know, doing a lot of dialogues and
• 25:50
  discussing stuff. Now it's.
• 25:53
  Easier, but it also gives them sort of control back.
• 25:57
  Like if you and and and I think back to your point about dealing
• 26:02
  with anxiety, you control the things you can control and how
• 26:07
  do you deal with the stuff that, you know, you can't control?
• 26:10
  But it is. Yeah.
• 26:12
  I mean, I can imagine that things around war, especially
• 26:16
  and the power outages and especially in the beginning and
• 26:20
  now that so we're recording this in November 2025 S Russian
• 26:26
  attacks are picking up. How do you deal with the part
• 26:31
  that you can not control in your mind?
• 26:34
  We still look, I'm not sure if it's easy to imaginate for
• 26:40
  people who are not under such circumstances.
• 26:44
  But partly, first of all, it's because we used to those
• 26:50
  circumstances. This is already part of our
• 26:54
  life. So power outageous missile
• 26:58
  attacks, drone attacks like the World War contests.
• 27:03
  So somehow like mentally you just used to it and this is a
• 27:09
  big ground of your life. And on another hand, you still
• 27:15
  looking for things that you can influence and you can control.
• 27:23
  So you can control your backup power set up.
• 27:27
  You can't have additional power sources.
• 27:32
  You can think about additional places to work from like Co
• 27:36
  workings, restaurants, etcetera. This is this balancing of Sept
• 27:44
  in reality controlling this small parts of things and just
• 27:51
  living through it. So at some points you you cannot
• 27:59
  hear every minute about that because your head will blow up.
• 28:05
  Yeah. Now that I can imagine, but
• 28:08
  it's, I can also imagine that especially at the start, it's
• 28:12
  sort of difficult because there are so much uncertainty that
• 28:16
  you're like, oh shit, what is happening?
• 28:19
  And that was also one of the reasons why I wanted to come
• 28:23
  back about the, the anxiousness, because I think it's incredibly
• 28:27
  brave for especially if you're have, let's say, an anxious mind
• 28:34
  to, to start a business in, in the situation that you started
• 28:41
  business in. So with war coming and a
• 28:44
  pandemic, I mean, that's, I think that's incredibly brave.
• 28:50
  You know, I heard an interesting thought and I kind of agree with
• 28:54
  that, that to be honest, for anxious people, this is the time
• 29:00
  that they are more comfortable with because before we were just
• 29:08
  like anxious and everybody else were OK and the situation were
• 29:13
  OK. And when the crisis happens,
• 29:17
  anxious people minds actually like I told you and I already
• 29:24
  had all those scenarios and finally the catastrophe did
• 29:29
  happen. So our mind is actually more
• 29:34
  relaxed right now because, you know, the worst scenario and
• 29:39
  usually anxious people thinking about the worst scenarios.
• 29:42
  Yeah. And worst scenario finally,
• 29:46
  unfortunately happened. So our mind is like, yes, I told
• 29:52
  you and it happened. And we were kind of prepared
• 29:58
  with all our catastrophe scenarios.
• 30:02
  So this is some minutes, some moments of relaxation.
• 30:09
  Because you you actually the the thoughts you had were validated.
• 30:15
  Yes, yes, this problem was an anxious people because we tend
• 30:20
  to overthink about tons of scenarios and usually this is,
• 30:25
  you know, the worst case, like worst of the worst.
• 30:29
  And normally that doesn't happen.
• 30:31
  But what could be worse than the war?
• 30:35
  And when that happened, we were like, oh, OK, I like overseas
• 30:42
  that. Yeah, because it's actually you
• 30:45
  were prepared in that sense. Yes, yes.
• 30:51
  That's shift a bit to to work into the to what the
• 30:55
  consequences of the war are. One of those, I think we talked
• 31:01
  about it when we prepared is that most men are leaving
• 31:08
  companies to to fight to defend the country.
• 31:13
  So talk to me about what the impact of that has been on the
• 31:19
  company and how it helps women like you step into leadership
• 31:24
  roles that they otherwise may not have had.
• 31:28
  Yes, unfortunately that really helps women because right now
• 31:35
  women became the this big substitution for men for a lot
• 31:43
  of positions from leadership to just work in positions.
• 31:48
  And I see the definitely the focus on the women
• 31:53
  entrepreneurship, a lot of educational programs, a lot of
• 31:58
  grant funding, just the overall context and talks around it is
• 32:05
  about women entrepreneurship, women leadership.
• 32:09
  I personally participated in empowering Women program, which
• 32:15
  was program for women who have businesses on another hand that
• 32:22
  in my industry. So IT is still male dominated
• 32:26
  industry and that's really impact businesses from the side
• 32:32
  of lacking workforce because most of the engineers right now
• 32:40
  like they are men and that's that really.
• 32:45
  And given that having this distributed team also helps
• 32:51
  because yeah, we can in having all operations online because we
• 32:55
  can hire like from Poland or Europe.
• 33:01
  But the best thing that I noticed is that government and
• 33:07
  society to my mind thinking about that more systematically
• 33:13
  and strategically. So they do this educational
• 33:17
  programs and they not simply use some kind of minute decisions
• 33:24
  like temporary decisions to hire from abroad or like leverage
• 33:29
  migration or whatever, but they educate women and that will be
• 33:36
  long term for now substitution and for later after the war will
• 33:42
  end, it will be this synergy and it will just increase the
• 33:47
  percent percentage of a woman involved.
• 33:51
  Yeah. Do you see the percentages
• 33:53
  change already? Like like especially in
• 33:56
  engineering and development that are more women.
• 34:01
  Yeah, it it rises that keep rising.
• 34:05
  We had some statistics published by the largest tech media and we
• 34:11
  definitely see that there are more and more we men into the
• 34:15
  industry, but it's still not enough like I guess it's reached
• 34:22
  30% but I may be wrong. Well, I should check that.
• 34:27
  So yeah. And also still there are more
• 34:33
  women in the non tech positions like project managers.
• 34:40
  But right now we definitely see the tendency to them to begin
• 34:45
  like engineers and quality assurance specialists, other
• 34:52
  specialities. Do you do you see a sort of
• 34:55
  pathway there for women from let's say non tech positions
• 35:00
  into tech like like going to quality assurance, going to
• 35:04
  maybe then going down to the engineering and development
• 35:08
  level? What?
• 35:09
  Do you mean by that? Do you, do you see that as a
• 35:12
  pathway for women into tech into the from from non-technical
• 35:17
  like? Yes, yes.
• 35:20
  And actually when the war started, also a bit with the
• 35:26
  beginning of the pandemic and then more when the war started,
• 35:31
  people tend to switch to to the IT and specifically women.
• 35:40
  Yeah. But there are another pitfall in
• 35:44
  there is that still Ukraine consider it as a dangerous Dome
• 35:53
  to keep stable operation. And we constantly addressing
• 35:57
  that issue as a company's reassuring our clients that we
• 36:01
  build the backups and we have like Plan ABC, but that impacted
• 36:09
  workforce that they switched. So they finished some courses or
• 36:15
  whatever, but then they can't find a job because lack of the
• 36:21
  projects. So this is like another side of
• 36:28
  the situation. Oh, so because of the war there
• 36:33
  are less clients building and as a result there are less jobs?
• 36:38
  To be filled war is one of the reasons another one was the the
• 36:44
  situation in the United States because they still one of the
• 36:48
  biggest collective customer, let's say yeah and they
• 36:54
  definitely do not have that much capacity right now for creating
• 36:58
  startups and ordering services and also because of their
• 37:02
  government politics. Yeah, but the war again, so it's
• 37:08
  more dangerous to hire from Ukraine for opinion of some
• 37:15
  clients. We're addressing that issue, as
• 37:17
  I said, but yeah, that's, that's another challenge, yeah.
• 37:21
  I can imagine that I just want to hope back to, to the increase
• 37:27
  in, in, let's say to the shift to more female entrepreneurship.
• 37:33
  Is there a sort of vision in in Ukraine to keep that going when
• 37:41
  the men return from war because that at some point, hopefully
• 37:46
  they will return? As I said, what I see that the
• 37:53
  this encouragement women to step in is more in form of
• 37:58
  educational and grant funding. And that itself to my mind is
• 38:04
  more long term because when the woman finally she looks and she
• 38:14
  finally sees the opportunity or sees some particular situation
• 38:19
  she wouldn't like, she won't Unsee it later.
• 38:24
  So they already stepped in and I don't think that they simply
• 38:29
  will step out just because all the men will be back.
• 38:33
  So yeah, of course some women just Temple is there because
• 38:39
  that was originally a business of her husband or whatever.
• 38:45
  Yeah, but still those who started their own company or
• 38:51
  like shifted their career, like switched to another industry,
• 38:56
  they won't step out because you simply started this work.
• 39:01
  You're already in the context, you understand that you liked
• 39:05
  it. Why?
• 39:06
  Why should you give up? Yeah, the reason I asked is that
• 39:10
  what what you saw at the end of World War War 2 is that a lot of
• 39:15
  women were put during the war, were put into even technical
• 39:20
  positions because of a lack of men.
• 39:24
  So as a sort of backfill. And what you saw after the war
• 39:28
  is that this sort of return. So people, women started going
• 39:32
  back to home situations in part also because they there was a
• 39:38
  baby boom going on, but they had to give back the the space they
• 39:45
  had gained quote UN quote to the men.
• 39:49
  And so, so that's what's more the background of my question,
• 39:52
  yes. But also, I guess the context is
• 39:55
  different. So it's more so again, women
• 40:02
  stepped in not because they really forced to do that.
• 40:07
  Most of them, they wanted to do that and they just leveraged
• 40:12
  that. And it's an opportunity as this
• 40:14
  breach. So I guess that's changed the
• 40:18
  situation. And also, of course, that we are
• 40:22
  living in 2025 and thanks for all the women who fought for our
• 40:28
  rights, like the feminism, the situation, situation is much
• 40:34
  better. So again, you, you have much
• 40:38
  more opportunities not to be pushed away.
• 40:43
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 40:44
  And I I really like what you said is once, once you see the
• 40:49
  opportunity, you cannot Unsee it.
• 40:51
  Yes, yes. I think that's really powerful.
• 40:54
  So in that sense, especially the education part will will do a
• 40:59
  lot of good and grants also will do a lot of good because people
• 41:03
  or women start business. It's easier to start a business,
• 41:08
  I guess, that way. Yeah, it more systematical, you
• 41:12
  simply, it may be more long term at some point, but you change
• 41:17
  the vision and you change the perception.
• 41:21
  So yeah, you give this educational tools and that mean
• 41:26
  that this background will stays with the women.
• 41:30
  So I was wondering because you've had a lot of experience
• 41:35
  over the last five years as a as a founder, as an entrepreneur,
• 41:39
  also in a very, very uncertain environment for female founders
• 41:45
  in Europe or maybe even in the US who are listening, what is a
• 41:49
  lesson that you would want to give them from your own
• 41:54
  learnings? Keep pushing.
• 41:57
  Just keep doing what you are doing, trying new things but
• 42:03
  still follow this day-to-day war.
• 42:08
  For me it was and still are like different periods of
• 42:16
  uncertainty, of doubts, whatever.
• 42:21
  But I still doing what I chose to do.
• 42:26
  And I guess that's the most important.
• 42:28
  You just have to follow this path and eventually you will you
• 42:35
  will reach and the result. Yeah.
• 42:41
  So there's also a bit of patience coming in.
• 42:44
  Yeah, of course. And the second important thing
• 42:47
  that you have to be self aware by the way, you have to, it's,
• 42:52
  it may sound, you know, too philosophical, but you have to
• 42:58
  look inside you and understand truly what you are passionate
• 43:02
  about, your values and understand why you are doing
• 43:08
  certain things that you are doing right.
• 43:11
  And for me, it was a big discovery to understand that
• 43:14
  despite all the challenges and despite all the difficulties, I
• 43:19
  really like entrepreneurship because I like to be creative
• 43:23
  and to create my own system and rules.
• 43:27
  So you discovered that that it was your way of controlling
• 43:30
  things. Yes, yes.
• 43:33
  Also like I like to be creative. I like to create something you
• 43:38
  and I understand that entrepreneurship really gives
• 43:41
  that to me. And yeah, I'm my own boss in in
• 43:47
  this terms, and that helped me actually fight other
• 43:54
  uncertainties and other fears of like, how to say that of being
• 44:01
  responsible. Yeah.
• 44:02
  And considering a lot of stuff, understanding what inspires you
• 44:08
  really helpful. Yeah.
• 44:11
  So if you had to give start up founders free practical pointers
• 44:17
  for when they want to prepare their business for a known
• 44:21
  situations, what are those three things that every founder should
• 44:26
  do? That's interesting question.
• 44:29
  Think about not all the possibilities.
• 44:34
  That's not possible. Think about like at least few of
• 44:38
  them. What might happen?
• 44:41
  Think about if that's already it happened, what, what would you
• 44:47
  do? And just write down it So it's
• 44:51
  base risk management. But also again, be self aware,
• 45:00
  like understand your strengths and your force and try to
• 45:08
  leverage that. And that might be weird, but do
• 45:13
  not overthink. You can be prepared for
• 45:17
  everything. And actually, if you do
• 45:21
  overthink, you would be paralyzed and that's no good as
• 45:27
  well. So think about few scenarios,
• 45:32
  prepare your steps, write them down, check them time to time
• 45:36
  just to give yourself this calmness.
• 45:41
  Yeah. And then keep moving, keep doing
• 45:45
  your operations, find new clients like operate and
• 45:51
  everything will be fine. OK, so 1 interesting thing I
• 45:56
  heard you say is that act as if it already.
• 46:00
  Happened, yes, so. So, so give me give.
• 46:05
  This is, by the way, really important from a risk management
• 46:08
  point of view. If you ever for the listeners,
• 46:11
  if you ever learn about this, this is the Yeah, this is just
• 46:16
  something really major when thinking of risks.
• 46:20
  What do you do when something happens?
• 46:22
  If you look into the future, you can, yeah.
• 46:24
  It's easy to to start overthinking.
• 46:28
  But if you act as if it's already happened, it's is it
• 46:32
  much more clear than what what you need to do?
• 46:37
  Do you find that? Yes, of course, because you
• 46:42
  start to you first of all stop to creating new scenarios
• 46:48
  because you focus on this like particular one.
• 46:52
  And of course then you cut off all the not necessary steps.
• 46:58
  You just like straightforward thinking of what is important to
• 47:03
  do in this particular situation and then you will simply write
• 47:08
  it down as you emergency scenario and that will be your
• 47:13
  plan. And also this is kind of therapy
• 47:16
  for your personally because you kind of lived through that
• 47:22
  situation already, at least in your mind and you have this plan
• 47:27
  prepared which is your safe space.
• 47:31
  You know that I have this plan a sort of all that I calmed down
• 47:38
  my anxiety. So it also helps you sort of
• 47:42
  extend expand your comfort zone in that sense.
• 47:45
  Yes, yes. OK.
• 47:49
  So in terms of because you also talked about don't think about
• 47:55
  all the things that can happen. So how do you prioritize the
• 48:01
  scenarios that you want to? Work on well basically thinking
• 48:06
  which is more realistic to happen.
• 48:10
  It's hard sometimes, but again, don't be hard on yourself.
• 48:15
  Even if you create some scenario for rare case situation, that's
• 48:21
  OK, at least you calm down yourself in the moment.
• 48:27
  Yeah. So it's also therapeutic in that
• 48:29
  sense. Yeah.
• 48:31
  OK. So, So what is the shift that
• 48:34
  you made as a as as an entrepreneur over the past years
• 48:39
  that you want other women to embrace or experience?
• 48:44
  The realization that really came to me just, I don't know, few
• 48:52
  weeks ago is that after all those years, I'm capable of
• 48:59
  doing that. So which means like I only
• 49:02
  lately realized that everything that I did and I want the other
• 49:13
  entrepreneurs, they realize that Foster and they lived with that
• 49:19
  thought in their head that they build something.
• 49:23
  Or even if you didn't build something like yet, the fact
• 49:29
  that you are thinking about building your business and you
• 49:32
  having an idea that means a lot that you already have some
• 49:36
  resources, you have some inner capacity, you have some
• 49:40
  experience that give you an opportunity to even to think
• 49:44
  about the idea. And this is important to
• 49:48
  realize. And you repeat to yourself, I
• 49:53
  can do that. I have that knowledge and that
• 49:56
  knowledge will be forever with me.
• 49:58
  So I already know that. Yeah, I think it's really
• 50:02
  powerful. Thank you.
• 50:03
  So I need some advice from you because I'm currently developing
• 50:08
  an app that helps female founders by basically helping
• 50:14
  them get funding and being connected to investors.
• 50:20
  So if I want to build it in a resilient way, what what tips
• 50:26
  would you have for me besides going through the scenarios what
• 50:30
  we just discussed? You mean build in resilient way
• 50:34
  as a start up or build in resilient way in technical?
• 50:39
  Both. Both actually.
• 50:43
  Do your homework. You already kind of doing that,
• 50:47
  you learning your targeted audience, be curious and learn
• 50:55
  about technology in order to have the wider perspective on
• 51:01
  that and to be able qualitatively communicate with
• 51:05
  any providers if you have any or plan to have any and really
• 51:12
  think about your strategy. How big your app will be like in
• 51:20
  six months, one year, five years and then choose tools based on
• 51:27
  that. So do not use some, do not do
• 51:31
  some overkills. And I guess that will help
• 51:35
  because you will build step by step.
• 51:39
  You will know what you building and for whom you're building and
• 51:43
  you will definitely will have like 99% the chances that you
• 51:49
  are using the right tools in the right time.
• 51:51
  Yeah, well, I've started doing some what is called vibe coding
• 51:57
  just to to see what happens and to to build something basically
• 52:02
  in my own language, so not having to worry too much about
• 52:06
  code. How do you look at that trend
• 52:09
  that people are more vibe coding now?
• 52:13
  Does that impact your business at all you think?
• 52:16
  Like in the moment probably because with the wipe coding we
• 52:21
  had the cat of that segment of people who could potentially
• 52:26
  came to us and asked for an application.
• 52:30
  But if you think about that more, they are simply not our
• 52:35
  clients. So this is a great tool for
• 52:37
  prototyping and for exploring, which you're doing right now.
• 52:43
  But it's important to understand that later you still have to go
• 52:48
  to professionals to build that at the scale.
• 52:54
  And yes, still engineers will use and leverage AI, but they
• 52:59
  have a necessary background to make that smarter and avoid some
• 53:06
  pitfalls. So I look at that as a great
• 53:08
  tool for prototyping, a great tool for clients to educate
• 53:13
  themselves before they order some IT products.
• 53:19
  And this is the great tool to understand de Owen prod because
• 53:25
  you can change, you can experiment, you can test
• 53:28
  hypothesis. So this is the ally, not an
• 53:34
  enemy. No sounds like a great place to
• 53:38
  close. Thank you very much Orina.
• 53:42
  If people want to learn more about you, or connect with you,
• 53:46
  or learn about the work that Starksoft is doing right now,
• 53:50
  where would you like to send them?
• 53:52
  First of all, my LinkedIn page, I post there more often.
• 53:58
  Second is the Starksoft website and please keep in mind that
• 54:05
  both LinkedIn and the website, they have a link to Google call.
• 54:12
  So if you want to connect with me, we can just have a friendly
• 54:15
  Zoom coffee and you know, chat a little bit.
• 54:19
  I'm open for all the connections and sharing my experience.
• 54:22
  So I guess that's the best way. Cool.
• 54:25
  And we'll include those links in the show notes.
• 54:28
  So Olina Starkina, thank you very much.
• 54:33
  Really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you also for your
• 54:36
  openness. Good luck with, yeah, the whole
• 54:41
  situation right now. Listeners, thank you very much
• 54:46
  for listening. And until the next episode, as
• 54:49
  always, keep being awesome. Well, that's it.
• 55:02
  Thank you for listening to episode 142 of Women Disrupting
• 55:07
  Tech titled How a female founder Builds a tech starter during a
• 55:11
  war in Ukraine with Orina Starkina.
• 55:15
  If you have any questions for Orina, please leave them in the
• 55:18
  comments on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
• 55:22
  I do read all the comments and I'll make sure you get an
• 55:24
  answer. If you want to connect with
• 55:27
  Orina or learn more about Stark stuff, please use the links in
• 55:31
  the show notes. As usual, you can find the show
• 55:33
  notes at Women Disrupting Tech Talk blog and on my sub stack.
• 55:37
  Find the link in the caption. If you found this episode
• 55:40
  helpful, please take a moment to rate and review the show on
• 55:44
  Spotify, Apple Podcast, or YouTube.
• 55:47
  And if you don't follow the show yet, please hit the follow or
• 55:50
  subscribe button so you never miss a future episode.
• 55:54
  Once again, thank you for listening.
• 55:56
  I hope to see you in the next episode.
• 55:58
  And until then, as always, keep being awesome.