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For immigrant founders in the UK, office hours with VCs are rocket fuel • ZebethMedia

Lyubov Guk is a founding partner at Blue Lake VC. She supports early-stage international founders working in the U.K. Robyn Klingler-Vidra Contributor Robyn Klingler-Vidra is associate dean of global engagement and associate professor in entrepreneurship and sustainability at King’s Business School. Juanita Gonzalez-Uribe Contributor All three of us are immigrants to the U.K. We were each greeted with the classic “catch-22” of trying to open a bank account and finding a place to live: To get a bank account, you need an address, but to rent a flat, you need a bank account. This is just one of the (very minor) points of friction immigrants face when moving to a new country. Entrepreneurs who set up a business in a new country encounter more challenges. Lyubov’s own experiences as a Ukrainian immigrant in the U.K. gave her both great empathy for the trials immigrant founders face, and the belief that immigrants often make and build world-leading businesses. Beyond personal experiences, academic research seems to point to an almost inverse relationship between the contributions immigrant founders make and early acceptance by the ecosystem. Designing an international founders open office hours pilot With personal experience as her motivation, Lyubov piloted a program that would offer a softer landing for immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.K. The pilot was an “International Founders Open Office Hours” program that would help immigrant founders boost their social networks and local know-how by meeting with VCs in the U.K. Instead of the usual pitch format, the meetings were informal conversations that aimed to help founders build up this essential — and for immigrants, missing — social capital. The program was inspired by Playfair Capital and its Female Founders Office Hours. The initial start was rocky, as it coincided with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Lyubov and her Blue Lake partner, David Gilgur, were helping families and friends in Ukraine by day and drafting the program plan by night. Early on, there was the challenge of bringing VCs and partners on board. Blue Lake had been active for a few years but was still a new name in the investment ecosystem. Asking for investors’ time meant that we had to prove we could launch something impactful that key players would want to be a part of.

How to effectively manage a remote team during wartime • ZebethMedia

Alex Fedorov is CEO and founder at OBRIO, an IT company with Ukrainian roots that develops products in mobile applications, web products and SaaS. Business owners always say that each company has to live through a real crisis before it becomes a real business. All big companies we know have experienced a few big crises during their lifetimes, and they are still in the game. There are a lot of studies about crisis management on the web, but none of them tell us how to manage a company during times of war. Our company had never seen a real crisis before February 2022. However, even before we did, I always told my team: “Every company has its time in the sun and a time of crisis.” When the Russo-Ukrainian War began on February 24, all Ukrainian businesses faced a crisis. I’ll use our example to explain how we dealt with it. Here are six tips for effectively managing a team during a war. Establish an emergency communication channel In such times of upheaval, people will require a lot of up-to-date information about what is happening. When people don’t know what’s happening, there arises a vacuum that can be filled with rumors or distorted news. To avoid this, you must establish a special communication channel that’s active around the clock. Slack notifications, for example, can be automatically turned off outside of working hours, so make sure you utilize a channel that your team uses most often so they are less likely to miss important notifications. This might seem like an easy and pretty obvious step, but it is the most efficient way to help your team when they’re feeling lost or disoriented, which is only natural when there’s a war raging around them. Communicate with your team twice as often Training to manage stress, anxiety and personal finance will help your employees build the needed knowledge and respond to tough situations. Great leaders communicate with their people, and we must all remember that “overcommunication is good communication.” For us, this saying has never been more correct. Communicate as frequently as there are updates on the issue but not less than twice a day. Additionally, follow your usual rules for team communication: Be honest, empathetic and humane. Finally, when there’s a serious crisis, most people’s critical thinking faculties can be hindered. In such situations, you may have to over-explain things to your team more than usual. Do not shirk this responsibility. If your team needs its hand held, be there to hold it. It’ll pay off in the long term and help you stay in control from the early days of the crisis until things calm down. Stop investing in R&D and get people back to work ASAP As a leader, you must save your business, as it is something people rely on in times of uncertainty. The first thing to do here is to save as much cash as you can in order to stay in business as long as you can. That often means cutting back on non-essential spending. This can be a tough decision, but it is a sacrifice you may have to make. After our team was in safe locations, the best way forward was to get them back to work and help them calm down. It sounds strange, but this is the best way to direct the anxieties and nervous energy of war. At work, where everything is known, prescribed and straightforward, people find calmness and a continued sense of purpose. In my experience, the first wave of crisis is the most difficult because of the high levels of uncertainty. However, once you get over that phase, there will be fewer variables, which is when you return to investing activities if they are still feasible. Use your standard remote-work policy When the war broke out, it was very difficult to manage the team and reestablish our business processes. So we waited to do it after our team was evacuated and relocated safely. Proven remote policies were a lifesaver when our employees were not in their usual environments. Nobody discounts the value of team spirit, so invest in it more since people will need each other’s support at a much greater degree during times of great strife. Among online team building activities, AR activities proved to be an amazing mood enhancer. Conduct special training to support your team Crises, thankfully, are rare, but that also means people often do not have enough knowledge to handle the loads of unusual information they’re bombarded with in such situations. In such situations, you should: Educate people by conducting special training with the help of experts. Training to manage stress, anxiety and personal finance will help your employees build the needed knowledge and respond to tough situations. The Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications has created a guide titled “Psychological support during the war,” explaining how to spot and assist with mental health problems. Invite successful and respected people to share positive thoughts on the situation and perhaps explain how they’ve faced especially tough times. Authority bias is real and it works as a morale booster when a team needs direction and a sense that things will turn out to be fine. Share relevant positive news to cheer up your team and create a vision of a better future. Tie business goals to social initiatives When war broke out, people wanted to help. This was good, but we realized it can affect focus on work and could eventually lead the business to an even more profound crisis. In such times, put your over-explanation tool from Step 1 to work and educate people on how your company’s success benefits society. As a result of what your team accomplishes at work, your company can invest more resources in charity initiatives when growth or profitability is maintained or improved. As a consequence, your team can do more and have more resources to do something significant for society. This should have no effect on your existing

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