Can a booming tech economy help Ukraine in the war against Russia?

Can a booming tech economy help Ukraine in the war against Russia?
Ukrainian Independence Day is almost upon us, and as the war with Russia continues well into its third year, we want to look at how everyday tech development continues and is a vital part of the country's economy.  We’ve brought together three entrepreneurs to tell us about their work. Andrey Klen is co-founder of  a number of tech businesses – including Petcube, O0 Design, and Spend With Ukraine. The platform brings together startups and tech companies in one place, making it easy for consumers to buy directly from Ukraine companies and therefore support the country’s economy.  Also joining the show is Vira Tkachenko who is Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at MacPaw. In 2022, Forbes Ukraine named her on its list of the Top 25 women in IT. MacPaw develops and distributes software for macOS and iOS. And finally co-founder & CEO of Esper Bionics Dima Gazda. His human augmentation startup is working on the first bionic ecosystem in the world.   

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell and the studio expert isPeter Guest.

More on this week's stories:

Spend with Ukraine

Transcript

00:00:00 Gareth Mitchell 

Hi everybody, it's Gareth. This is Somewhere on Earth and it's Tuesday the 6th of August 2024. Very warm greetings from our studio here in London. Plenty of voices from Ukraine today. 

00:00:18 Gareth Mitchell 

And with us today is Pete Guest again. Hello, Pete. How's things?   

00:00:23 Peter Guest 

I'm OK. How are you? 

00:00:25 Gareth Mitchell 

I’m very well. And you've been to Ukraine haven’t you? 

00:00:26 Peter Guest 

I was there last year. Yeah. 

00:00:28 Gareth Mitchell 

How was it? 

00:00:30 Peter Guest 

Well, we'll hear a lot more about it. A strange mix of things functioning as absolutely as normal with the the occasional challenge. 

00:00:38 Gareth Mitchell 

I'm sure, as we will be hearing, so let's jump in. 

00:00:47 Gareth Mitchell 

And coming up today. 

00:00:53 Gareth Mitchell 

It's Ukrainian Independence Day on the 24th of August. Now, ahead of that, we're getting in early, and with the conflict now of course, into its third year and grim headlines continuing, we want to remind the world that life and business goes on as best it can in Ukraine, and that's why we've brought together three entrepreneurs from the country to tell us about their work. 

00:01:14 Gareth Mitchell 

One has a platform showcasing a couple of hundred brands and companies. Another specializes in software for Macs and we have a company specialising in bionic tech. It's all right here on the Somewhere on Earth podcast. 

00:01:33 Gareth Mitchell 

First, then let's jump in with Andrey Klen. And Andrey is co-founder of quite a few businesses actually, including being the co-founder of PetCube and another one called O0 Design and Spend with Ukraine. And Andrey welcome along. Nice to have you. 

00:01:50 Andrey Klen 

Thank you so much for having me. 

00:01:52 Gareth Mitchell 

So we could talk about all your businesses, but I want to focus on the latter, if you don't mind Spend with Ukraine, what is it? 

00:01:58 Andrey Klen 

Sure thing. 

So this is like a large platform that brings together a lot of Ukrainian rooted businesses for the global community to explore. And hopefully to buy some of the products that they're producing and this way, this is like the subtle and nice way to support Ukrainian economy because lots of money from, from it, getting like kicked back to the people who work here, to the taxes that are being paid here. And that's how people can, yeah, support Ukraine economically. 

00:02:30 Gareth Mitchell 

Do you see this as a shop front almost for these, quite prominent in many cases, 240 brands and companies. A way of showing them off to the world and to Ukrainians as opposed, for instance, to this being an e-commerce platform, which it definitely isn't. So can I call it a storefront to demonstrate and to show off what you do. 

00:02:49 Andrey Klen 

Of course you can. We're not interested like in making any money here. We're nonprofit. We're just really focused on presenting the companies, like globally and directing the traffic to their, like, prospect websites and whatever representation they have. 

00:03:07 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. And some of these brands, for instance, Grammarly is on there, isn't it?  

00:03:10 Andrey Klen 

Oh of course, one of the biggest software products made in Ukraine. 

00:03:15 Gareth Mitchell 

Of course. So the copy on your website is obviously going to be completely grammatically perfect, and you have 

00:03:21 Andrey Klen 

No. 

00:03:23 Gareth Mitchell 

Oh my goodness. Well, you need to get the Grammarly people in in that case. But it looks good to me. Anyway, I've had a good look at the website. But you have things like, digital fashion is represented there. Everything like blankets, electric bikes. There's so much going on. 

00:03:37 Andrey Klen 

Of course. Like fashion, home brands are probably one of the most popular categories because that's where we feel the culture. That's where Ukraine is making the vibes currently in the [morning] world. So we are quite known for some of the fashion brand representation for good design either for the like outfits or like furniture like any type of equipment. 

00:04:05 Andrey Klen 

And you can see them like on pop stars like Beyoncé and you can see them in some really nice homes. So altogether that paints a pretty nice picture of Ukrainian, like creative economy on par with technological startups and stuff like that. 

00:04:20 Gareth Mitchell 

Sure. And Pete, one thing I really like about this whole conversation about this whole episode is we're saying look, business goes on in Ukraine and yeah, sure, things are tough over there and quite significant chunks of territory have been occupied, but even more of the territory actually isn't occupied. It has its challenges, but business goes on and I think you had a sense of that when you were there a year ago, didn’t you? 

00:04:44 Peter Guest 

I mean it. Yeah, I mean, before the fullscale invasion, Ukrainian startups doing all kinds of cool things, just quite incredible that they kept on doing it after February 2022. 

00:04:55 Peter Guest 

You know, I think Andrey's talking very calmly. People there shrug it off often. But you know, when I was there as meeting people who were running multi million dollar companies from basements with the lights going out. As you know as Russians hit power plants. You meet people who were kind of dialing into conference calls from not far from the front line, and like the resilience of the [] is an absolute miracle. And I'll tell you this, from my personal experience, I was there just for a couple of weeks and every evening the sirens are going off. You're trooping down to the basement, and I was fried. And there are people have been doing this for two and a half years. It's extraordinary. 

00:05:25 Gareth Mitchell 

How is it for you, Andrey? Andrey. And I'm sure you'd actually. And we will get this back onto your your business and so on. Maybe you get sick of having to talk about the conflict and so on. But listeners will be wondering how the heck are you just keeping things going over there. 

00:05:41 Andrey Klen 

I guess we got used to it. You can get used to pretty much anything. So we're getting used to that. And the thing we did describe is staying pretty much the same, so they keep shipping missiles and we keep shipping products. You know, it's really it's it it, it is business as usual. So I wouldn't say like we have any other healthy alternative, we just need to carry on. 

00:06:06 Andrey Klen 

And we need to like perform on like multiple jobs. We have our regular jobs with our regular businesses and then we go ahead and we volunteer. We lobby, we educate western audiences on what's going on here. We might be like a stickler for terminology there.  We can come on the show and say the conflict isn't quite a good word to describe our situation. It is a full blown war. I'm sorry about that. 

00:06:31 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, fair enough. Well, why should have run that through Grammarly? You know, so no, this this is what it is. Like you say it's a fullscale war. You are at war and, yeah, conflict perhaps understates it a little bit. 

00:06:44 Gareth Mitchell 

So well, so Spend with Ukraine then, and I'm really intrigued by this platform and the idea of showcasing the best of Ukrainian business, basically saying let's advertise this so that people spend their money and then this goes back into the Ukrainian economy. And I suppose, I mean, I mean this question in a nice way actually, but is there a need for this website? I think what I'm asking is, aren't these successful Ukrainian businesses just the story in themselves, in other words, do they need you to showcase them? People are going to find them through the web, through social media, through the online retail platforms and so on. Do we really need Spend with Ukraine? 

00:07:26 Andrey Klen 

Of course they might find it like different products and services in different ways, but the main benefit here is actually in unity and creation. You have everything in one place and you know, like Western people have this sort of like a fatigue, right, as all people do, like they can't stand too much negativity. And like all the bad news are coming from Ukraine and it's really hard to keep up right. 

00:07:49 Andrey Klen 

And with the time it's passing and sort of support like chimes down, right. And we were thinking about what are some of the positive contexts that we can bring like to the world and show like new ways to support our economy. Not just as a direct support to our like defence forces. But maybe contributing to our economy by buying,  

00:08:11 Andrey Klen 

what a surprise, absolutely sublime products and services that are really rooted in Ukraine and designed in Ukraine. So you know, that's like an alternative to the news that Ukraine is producing and the image that is sort of like created with all the media that's going around, and all the propaganda from all the sides and from the side of the enemy. 

00:08:36 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. Because obviously your specialism is in design. From a purely branding point of view then, how damaging has the war been, you know, so I don't mean so much how disruptive is it to the daily operation of running a business but more just brand Ukraine because you could say, well, of course it's been tarnished, maybe the perception outside Ukraine is it's just a basket case, everything's going wrong. Another perception could be this is a country that just speaks 

00:09:04 Gareth Mitchell 

Resilience, that the Ukrainian quality is all about being able to just handle the worst of circumstances and put out great products.  A brand can be affected either positively or negatively. Which do you think it is? 

00:09:16 Andrey Klen 

It's rather the latter. Yeah, I think we're doing things. We're perfecting things. We're doing things better. We're accelerating our growth in spite of like the adversity that we're currently having. So, like from the people that I'm talking to and like the perception that they're getting, I feel like everybody thinks that we're sort of taking our operation on the whole like new level on a different level, and it's definitely worth like people's attention and people’s support. 

00:09:49 Gareth Mitchell 

OK. Well, thank you very much indeed for that. So folks that Spend with Ukraine, check it out, there will be some brands that you recognize, but a whole load that you that you don't. And I'm sure Andrey would very much like it if you follow those up and spend money  on Ukrainian business and products as well. Andrey, thanks very much for that.  

00:10:27 Gareth Mitchell 

Now we also have Vira Tkachenko here and chief Technology and Innovation Officer at MacPaw and now in 2022, Forbes Ukraine named Vira on its list of Top 25 women in IT. And MacPaw, you may well have heard, in fact, you'd probably use some of their products especially, well obviously if you have a Mac. so MacPaw develops and distributes software for macOS and iOS. 

00:10:35 Gareth Mitchell 

Um so Vira, the tagline here is simplifying life for Mac users, isn't it? Tell me more. 

00:10:40 Vira Tkachenko  

Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, our main purpose is making your, like, make life easier. Just keeping your Mac just as good as new. 

00:10:51 Gareth Mitchell 

And one of your products, probably the best known, certainly from my point of view is CleanMyMac, isn't it so? 

00:10:54 Vira Tkachenko  

Yeah. 

00:10:56 Gareth Mitchell 

Tell me about that. 

00:10:56 Vira Tkachenko  

Yeah. It's our flagship product. It's actually the product that our founder and CEO Oleksandr Kosovan created in his dorm room, like in Kyiv Shevchenko University.  It’s almost 16 years old product, one of the biggest our product and in a nutshell CleanMyMac helps you organize your disk drive because disc drive is very limited and usually you run out of space and we help with this. 

00:11:23 Vira Tkachenko  

We just can, like easily just in one button click click, just remove all unneeded data like cache files and help you remove large, for example old files and like remove applications. But it's not only about cleaning, it's about maintenance and 

00:11:43 Vira Tkachenko  

so we're making some performance tweaks, and recently we've added this anti malware like module because it's a reality for Macs. It's not just about Windows. Macs do have viruses too and we have our own like anti malware engine, like we created like 4 years as for now and to help users fight these threats with viruses. 

00:12:09 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, sure. So so it's quite a suite of products. And Pete here in the studio here in London. I must be honest, I didn't realize CleanMyMac was a Ukrainian company. I might have just thought, oh, I bet they're from Silicon Valley. They’re from Cupertino. They're somewhere around there. So that, that, that, that Vira was my perception. I don't know if Pete did you have the same perception? 

00:12:30 Peter Guest 

Well, I mean, there's, there's that old joke isn’t there, that war is the way that Americans learn geography. But I think that this is something that a lot of people did learn in the early days after the fullscale invasion, was just how much Ukraine is part of the global tech stack and the Ukrainian developers build and maintain software that you and I use. They freelance as a part of the global digital workforce. These companies, Grammarly, MacPaw, they're there in Ukraine, and it's a shame that it took the invasion for us to know that. 

00:12:56 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, Vira I'm sure you'd probably echo that as well, and a product like CleanMyMac, is there any part of you or your company or your marketing that tries to sell this as like the best of Ukrainian technology or are you quite deliberately non kind of show off about where it comes from. I suppose what I'm getting around to is just how important is it to you to market yourselves as a proud Ukrainian company? 

00:13:25 Vira Tkachenko  

Like before the full scale invasion, we were like, not really quiet about our like location because from the day one it's like very clear that we are headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine. You can, like we read it in our website and because we have headquarter in Ukraine and like our CEO and the like, 70% of the company is here. But before fullscale invasion, we were like more proud and about they’re Ukrainians. And we even put this small Ukrainian flag in our software. So it was part of the logo.  

00:14:07 Vira Tkachenko  

And we even have this banner on top of our website where we shared like news about Ukraine and now we are more loud about our routes and that we are here in Ukraine and like we see only support and only people from that side,  

00:14:27 Vira Tkachenko  

I mean Russia and countries that support Russia, they kind of angry about it and they can even write reviews like bad reviews for us. So please don't be political. Please remove all  those, you know, flags and all this yellow and blue colors like from your products. Yeah. But we are still like doing it. Yeah. So it changed. It changed, yeah. 

00:14:53 Gareth Mitchell 

OK. Yeah, I can imagine. Inevitably that would make you targeted in some ways, but there's a greater benefit to, you know, the the blue and the yellow. So yeah, and and just to give listeners a bit of context here, you were founded in Kyiv, you have an office in Boston, your products are in more than, used by more than 30 million people worldwide. 

00:15:14 Gareth Mitchell 

One in every five Mac users has at least one of your apps downloaded so that folks out there in listener land gives you an idea of what we're talking about here with Vira, who's been with the company pretty much from the beginning as well as I understand it. 

00:15:26 Gareth Mitchell 

I also want to talk to you about one, you have a VPN, don't you? And one thing that part of your business that you have stepped up since the beginning of this war, this fullscale invasion has been combatting Russian cyber attacks. Isn't that the case? 

00:15:39 Vira Tkachenko  

Yeah, it is. We have this like smaller products like CleanMyMac, but our like one of our cyber security like direction product from that direction it's called ClearVPN.. 

00:15:52 Vira Tkachenko  

It's not only for Apple ecosystem, it's also for Android and Windows platforms and it's VPN client. And when the war started, we saw that people from occupied territories, they don't have access to like real trustful news. And we decided to make it free for all Ukrainians. As for now, you can use this DIA we call DIA [?]. It's like authorization from D application. It's application every Ukrainian has.  

00:16:25 Vira Tkachenko  

It’s government application. You can identify yourself as Ukrainian. So you can use this authorization and activate clear VPN for free and it helps Ukrainians to reach like like real news. So like it change the product a lot so it's not just like commercial product as it was before. Now it's has this additional, you know, social mission behind this product. 

00:17:01 Gareth Mitchell 

OK, so so Pete Guest it very much seems here in the studio that this is a company that is marketing and selling its products worldwide, but also at home part of the the war effort basically against Russia. 

00:17:13 Peter Guest 

I think all the guests would, would would agree this. It seems like almost everyone you meet in the Ukrainian tech ecosystem has a a side project or a pivot, which is basically fighting the Russians and 

00:17:24 Peter Guest 

you know, there’s this extraordinary level of innovation that you see. Everybody has a story of pivoting, oh, I was working on, I know optics for agricultural robots, but now I build drones. And I'm going to just put this out to to kind of back to the question you asked Andrey earlier about brand Ukraine. I mean, if you're in tech, do you want a developer who can pivot overnight from building websites to building drones. I mean, I think that's pretty pretty strong branding. 

00:17:48 Gareth Mitchell 

That's pretty agile. Yeah. Isn't that the case, Vira? Yeah. And I heard you agreeing Vira, with with Pete's point there as well. 

00:17:54 Vira Tkachenko  

Yeah, for sure. We we even launched like a new product just because to fight Russia, it's called SpyBuster and it's a free product you can use too, on your Mac or iOS and to scan all your applications and to see if it has Russian origin or if it's we monitor network traffic and just show you user whether it connects to Russian servers and we do some static analysis and check like if if it's safe to use application. And it's not just about Russia because we had requests from like other countries, let's say do you detect from China or other countries. So we just added you know this. You can add any rule and check you know, is government behind some application? Because sometimes, like all of us, know that application that can just steal your data and so we help users to check and uninstall apps. 

00:18:55 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, sure. Key key function. Vira. Thank you. That's Vira Tkachenko of MacPaw. So we're going to talk about bionics now, specifically Esper Bionics. It's a human augmentation startup that says it's working on the first bionic ecosystem in the world. The co-founder and CEO is Dima Gazda. 

00:19:19 Gareth Mitchell 

And Dima is also a medical doctor. He's launched four companies and was in the Times 100 Health List this year which all makes my LinkedIn profile seem rather lame in comparison. I have to say, welcome along to Somewhere on Earth. Dima. How you doing? 

00:19:33 Dima Gazda 

Doing great. Thank you for having me here today. 

00:19:35 Gareth Mitchell 

Well, thanks for joining us. Tell me what do we mean by human augmentation? 

00:19:40 Dima Gazda 

So humans have some functions today and in 10 years they will be more functional. We just add extra functions to our bodies. It includes longevity or people can live longer. We can sing faster, or we can have extra sensation. Etcetera. But first of all, right now, we're building robotic limbs for people who do not have hands or legs. 

00:20:08 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. So one of your main products is the Esper Hand, isn't it? And looking at it here, I have an image of it here on my laptop. And yeah, it kind of looks like a regular human hand, and yet this is a a bionic hand and it's one of your flagship products isn’t it? 

00:20:24 Dima Gazda 

Yes, this project it is literally robotic hands for people who do not have hands. It is on the market. It is controlled by muscle sensors. So you can activate muscles and move fingers or switch grips and it improves over time. It is on the market right now. It helps people in the US. And it helps Ukrainian soldiers. 

00:20:48 Gareth Mitchell 

Sure. Another example then of how your business since the fullscale invasion has, I suppose, taken on this other role, this this domestic role now in applying your technology to the war effort, in this case, helping amputees. 

00:21:02 Dima Gazda 

Yes, two months after the war started, we started initiative as per for Ukraine to help Ukrainian soldiers who lost limbs get back their hands, and the full functionality. We have right now near 100 soldiers and near 20 of them are in the front line again in very tough conditions. 

00:21:22 Gareth Mitchell 

And you mean they're back in the frontline having lost a limb? 

00:21:25 Dima Gazda 

Yes. So after they lost limb, they got bionic limbs and some of them want to come back to the frontline. 

00:21:32 Gareth Mitchell 

Wow. 

00:21:33 Gareth Mitchell 

They've gone back back to the frontline and what that, I mean it speaks of incredible courage for those individuals, but also to your technology. It needs to be very resilient. I mean there can be hardly a more harsh environment for proving technology than on the front line. How are the limbs coping? 

00:21:52 Dima Gazda 

Yeah. Agree. We started to deploy our devices near one year ago and back then devices had some problems and the first 100 users we called them users destroyers. Their task was to destroy the product. 

00:22:08 Dima Gazda 

Right now it is hard to destroy the product and it's reliable in tough conditions. Not afraid so much of wet environment or dirt. But first of all, it's precise in control and we have quite crazy stories. Many of other users, they started for example to build the drones just because they are capable again to do some precise work. And one week ago I've heard crazy story about one of our users that first of all he started to paint. He he lost two arms and he has now bionic arms and he started to paint and 

00:22:51 Dima Gazda 

in a month, he will have his exhibition in one gallery, but the main thing that he is taking right now, sniper course and he is going to become sniper in the front line. And he is proud that his bionic hands do not have heart vibration. You know, vibration of blood vessels. 

00:23:13 Gareth Mitchell 

I mean, it almost sounds and Pete Guest is listening to this like, not that you'd want anybody to lose a limb, but there might be advantages to having these, Pete. I suppose for one thing, in terms of harsh conditions that could be difficult with your flesh and blood, bones and hands and so on. And in the wet and the cold and what have you. And it's perhaps less of an issue when you have a bionic limb. 

00:23:35 Peter Guest 

I mean, I wouldn't speak to that, but I think what it does show is the kind of extraordinary ability to innovate in these extreme conditions and and the importance of of this innovation, not just during the war, but after it right, because this isn't just about about winning the war now, it's what happens in in the aftermath and and the the human cost of this war has been enormous in terms of death and injury and amputation in particular, so. 

00:23:59 Dima Gazda 

Agree, and I would add here that first of all, for us as a team, it's shown that we can't predict in advance where are the limits of these incredible people. They are extraordinary. 

00:24:14 Gareth Mitchell 

What other devices do you have? We've talked about the hand and the the limb augmentation. Just, just quickly before we finish. Just tell me about some of your other devices. 

00:24:23 Dima Gazda 

Yeah. So what we have built, it is an ecoystem. It consists of robotic devices, right now robotic hand is on the market. We are building robotic leg. We have also on surface sensors, EMG sensors that detect muscle activity and understand which muscle is activated right now in forearm or shoulder. And the last part of the ecosystem is the software platform that gets data from robotic hands, legs and some types of exoskeletons and improve control algorithms over time. If I take cup today from a table five times by robotic hand, system will see that in this position and acceleration I prefer to take cup from a table, so tomorrow's system will help me for this position and acceleration, choose the cup grip in advance so it adds intuition for the hand. 

00:25:15 Gareth Mitchell 

Incredible. Well, look, we will leave it there. It's been an absolute pleasure to speak to you Dima Gazda, and indeed all of our guests from Ukraine today in the run up to Ukrainian Independence Day. So we've also heard from Vira Tkachenko and Andrey Klen and and you Peter Guest as well. Thank you sir.  

00:25:40 Peter Guest 

Thanks a lot Gareth. 

Gareth Mitchell 

There we are. So do get in touch with us? Our e-mail is hello at Somewhere on Earth Co. And on WhatsApp we are code 447486329484 and on the socials just kind of look for us. We're we're quite findable and SOEPtech is usually a good starting point. SOEPtech. 

00:25:57 Gareth Mitchell 

The audio this week has been done again by the excellent Keziah Wenhan Kenyan here at Lansons Team Farner, the production manager, is Liz Tuohy, the editor and producer is Ania Lichtarowicz,  I’m Gareth Mitchell. See you next time. Bye bye.