History of Doxy.me and Ukrainian employees
Doxy.me CEO Brandon Welch recounts the story of his first hire in Ukraine, and how that initial relationship developed into a huge and passionate Ukrainian team.
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History of doxy.me with Ukraine Transcript
Mary Johnston:
So Brandon, let’s start off with just your memory of the first hire you made in Ukraine. How did that happen?
Brandon Welch:
It was actually working one of my other projects. It runs my family and we were working on some code called loop back. And my development team at the time was Pakistan and they were struggling with some aspect of the code. And so they were looking for some help on it. And I said, go to like an online form and find somebody that’s really good at doing backend this tech to help consult. And so they’re like, well, there’s this guy that’s, he’s American his teeth. And he’s been providing a lot of help and, you know, for free, essentially just volunteering on this form, providing information. And so I was like, great. Let’s bring them on as a consultant and we can help you guys. And so that’s how we got introduced to he, he does an American, he lives in Ukraine, very talented developer. And I, I said, I’d like to meet Heath.
Brandon Welch:
And so we chatted and we got to know each other and, you know, we, we, we kind of resonated as we started talking and, and, and as he got into the project and learn what we were doing and how we were using our, our building technology for healthcare and health and helping patients identify diseases in their family, he got really interested and said, you know what, I’m, I’m kinda like at the end of the, another gig that I’ve been working on and looking for my next opportunity, would you be interested in hiring a chief technology officer to lead this tech stuff? And I’m like, yeah, I would love to have somebody like you of your caliber to come and lead our tech. And so that was 2015 when I got introduced to Heath then, and he worked on that project. And from there we won, we built another tech cup product and the, this whole time doxy.me has been going on.
Brandon Welch:
And, and we, we doxyme, we finally got to the point where we needed to hire a chief technology officer to really lead it. And so we, we hired, we kind of brought all the products together and hired Heath full-time as a partner. And she tookdown jobs for doxyme in 2019 just before COVID hit. And so, so Heath was our first hire in Ukraine. He is American inUkraine, but he also introduced us to other Ukrainians. And so when w at doxyme, when we needed a developer a fewyears ago, he introduced us to one of his colleagues who worked closely with and isms, Victor and Victor came andworked for us. And, and, and from that, we always said, Hey know, the Ukrainian talent pool is good. They’re available. They speak English well, and there are about the third of the cost of developers in the U S. And so it had for a startup thathad limited resources. It was a way for us to get a lot of bang for our buck. And so that’s how we got into the Ukrainianmarket. And, and we’ve been happy with it over the years, and we’ve never had any serious issues like this until now.
Mary Johnston:
So the 48 that now work for doxy.me, did he find most of those people.
Brandon Welch:
Maybe not him directly, but he has a director of development who goes and does the hires and recruits and stuff like that. But yes, he it’s through his channels and his hires that have gone in subsequently hired everybody else. We also have, wehave direct hires, but we also have two other they’re essentially like tech staffing agencies where we, they go and sourcethe people and we pay them to pay their employees and they manage it. So it’s, it’s, we consider them all part of thedoxyme team, even though some, some of them get paid directly by us, some get paid through a third party, but from ourperspective, they’re all the same.
Mary Johnston:
So in the process of working with Heath and the other doxyme employees and your visits there, what have you learnedabout Ukraine?
Brandon Welch:
Yeah, you is interesting. Now I’ve visited three times now. And one of the interesting things that I saw about Ukrainewere these three diff very contrasted styles, all kind of all merged together, all right, next to each other. So you have thisold European style that you see maybe in like a, like a crack out Poland or Austria, just the old, old style. You’re verytraditional looking. And then you had these very like mid century Soviet style, like gray, plain buildings, pretty uglylooking. And that, that, that Soviet kind of impression style. And then you have these very modern, like very modernWestern buildings and they’re all right next to each other. So you’ll see a modern glass skyscraper next to an old Sovietbuilding next to this old European architecture right next to each other. And Keven it’s very, like, it’s very interesting tosee, to see all those different styles altogether.
Brandon Welch:
And the people there are very, they’re very happy and, and funny, like there, they’ve got a very positive attitude and theyare very, a lot of the young people who I’m around because they are developers, you know, men, men who grew up in thenineties and all they’ve known as freedom and democracy, they never rubbed her that during that Soviet era. And theyvery much see themselves as European. And, and they look towards the west, the Western Europeans, United States as theexample of what they want to be like. And so, you know, English is very speaking. English is a very important, they, that’s how you do business. And that’s how you engage in the modern, modern economy. And they very much looktowards the west for what they want to be like and who they want to be and become. And, and they, and the, the Russian, the Soviet that, that influences definitely not something that they aspire to or want to be like, but it’s very much present intheir society. Many of them speak Russian because it’s a very common language or they’re in similar to cranium. And so, so while many of them do speak Russian, it, they don’t necessarily want to be Russian. It’s just a common language it’sthere.
Mary Johnston:
So I’m just curious prior to the mounting tension about a possible invasion, did you get many vibes from Heath and theother employees about being nervous or anxious about the political situation?
Brandon Welch:
No, it was in fact the opposite. We had to push them to be nervous about it. Back in 2014, there was a revolution inUkraine where they ousted the government that was corrupt. And as essentially a puppet of Russia, they also thatgovernment, they brought in a new leader or president and the government at that time was weak and the Russia hadactually baited them. And that took Crimea and other parts of Ukraine. There’s not much that you could do about it thenbecause the government was weak. And so, and it’s always a looming threat that Russia is on the border and they couldalways take more. And it’s just, it’s always kind of been like that. And so it’s, it’s almost like the boy who cried Wolf, it’slike out, you know, that’s just Russia. They’re just typical Russia. And yeah, they don’t like it.
Brandon Welch:
They took Crimea, but they can’t really do anything about it because Russia is Russia. And so it’s been kind of thestalemate. And so, you know, it was always kind of like, and it was always like in the back of their minds, Russia’s alwaysthere, but it’s never really a serious like thing that they actually had to worry about to this extent when, when we started tosee troops building up on the border started about a year ago, you know, were on the American side. We understand, weunderstand our perspective of the world that’s different than, than others. And we definitely look at Putin and said, Hmm, what’s going on here. Right. And so we’re seeing the troops build up and we started asking questions. And again, thepeople on the ground, there are very much like, yeah, this is just Pooh and nothing to worry about.
Brandon Welch:
This is normal, right? So they kept reassuring us that this was nothing to worry about. And about in about November, itwas still happening. And, and it’s more than has ever happened before. And we, we brought up the issue again and say, what is going on here? Do we have to worry about this? Should we have a plan? We have 50 employees. What happens ifRussia doesn’t vape? Do we have a plant? Now? We don’t have a plan. We don’t, you don’t have to worry about it. Youknow? And it was about December that we all met as a team. And we, again, pressed teeth on this and said, we don’t havea plan in case of what happens. We should at least have a plan. And so he agreed at that time, I would say reluctantly tosay, all right, you know, you guys are not gonna let this go.
Brandon Welch:
Will I promise that I will sit down with the team, we’ll come up with a plan in case there’s a Russian invasion. Really. Itwas really to, I think, to appease us and, and, and, and he did it. So over the next month, he, and some of the leaders onthe tech team there and Ukraine put together a plan and they, they, they assess the situation again, that the military is stillbuilding up on the, on the borders. And they were still assessing everything. And through this analysis, they’re like, yeah, I mean, the reality of something happening is more so than it’s ever been up to this point. And this is something that ismore likely to happen now than anytime before, but they still didn’t expect it to happen. What was interesting about thisemergency response plan is that they detailed the w the Russian forces and how they would invade.
Brandon Welch:
And they detailed what the problems would be, what would be happening, refugees, where they would go, they had allthis detailed. And what’s amazing about this analysis is that they were spot on. If you look at this report that was done inJanuary by our team, that showed where the Russian forces would be invaded and its rate exactly what you see in thenews with how they invaded. And then subsequent hap subsequent result of refugees fleeing to the west, the Western partof the country, being safe, going in European. There’s the, you know, how they’ll respond to the, the shortages that willhappen, the currency, all that stuff, that, that analysis was pretty spot on. And that was in January. So we had thisemergency response plan set in January. Part of this was that is part of the plan is that we should set up an apartment, ahub in Levine, on the Western part of the country as a, a stopping point or as a place for employees to evacuate to wecouldn’t house all 50 employees, but to have an apartment with several bedrooms that they can stop and stay for a fewdays while they find their next stop was what we thought was a smart move.
Brandon Welch:
And so we got that apartment a month before the invasion, because trying to find her apartment now is almost impossiblethere. And so we w we had things set. We also had money essentially set aside or allocated for innovation like this, and, and really the credit to the, the team that puts together, everything was really set up. So when, when the, when we had toactivate that plan, the money was there. The, the, the communication network was there, the partners there, and peoplewere ready to go and make it happen a couple of weeks before. I mean, with the, the vision really looming at we, we, wedid evacuate a couple people beforehand. And so our, our director of dev ops is Canadian but lives in Ukraine. And hewent with his family to Abu Dhabi to get out of there. He had evacuated a week before, out of Kieve to the Vive to staythere.
Brandon Welch:
And some other people went to the west, to the Vive as well, to stay there as it became an imminent that this was about tohappen. And so we got ahead of it, and we were prepared. And from the sounds of it, there were a lot of people on theground who still didn’t believe it’s going to happen until bombs started falling. And they, at that point had to respondalong with everybody else. And so they were in a lot more difficult with the situation, but our team was prepared becauseof this emergency response plan.
Mary Johnston:
Wow. And what kind of communication have you been in since then, since February 24th?
Brandon Welch:
So we have a team communication platform called slack. So that’s how we communicate as a team. And this is everybodyon the team is able to communicate. So not just the people in Ukraine, but also the people in the U S and around theworld. And so we’ve been very active in communicating from the American side to them through slack, and they havetheir own channel. We have a channel called Ukraine assistance where we can talk about how it can help the people inUkraine. There’s a UN Ukraine channel for just Ukrainian people. And this, these things were part of the emergencyresponse plan and, and set up. So we, we communicate through that. There’s also an app on the mobile phones calledtelegram that they use in Ukraine. And there’s a channel just for the doxyme employees in Ukraine to send messages backand forth.
Brandon Welch:
I’m on that channel, but they’re all communicating and Ukrainian. So I don’t understand what they’re saying, butsometimes I’ll, I’ll copy a message and then translate it in Google. And I’m able to see what they’re saying, but, so there isa lot of communication going on. Also, we are keeping up with every employee. So we have point people on the groundin Ukraine who are in contact with every employee every day to make sure they and their families are okay. And we hadthe, the status to green, yellow, red status for where the employees were. So green zone is out of the country. Yellow zoneis in Ukraine, but in the safe part of Ukraine, let’s the yellow zone. I’m sorry. And then red zone, isn’t a place where there’shostilities, where there is close to enemy territory where bobbins, or they are, have signed up for the armed services andare serving their country.
Brandon Welch:
So they’re, they’re in the red zone. And I don’t know what the latest numbers are, but we were getting daily updates fromthe team. They’re saying, all right, we have 25% of the team is in a green zone. Four is in the yellow zone and, you know, whatever else is in the red zone. And then there was a period of time where some of the employees, we lost contact withsome of the employees, and that was nerve wracking for our, our point person was trying to keep up with everybody tosay, we don’t know, we haven’t been in contact with, to spend a couple of days. And so that was nervous, but fortunatelywe have been in contact with everybody and everybody is safe and accounted for everybody’s accounted for, I can’t sayreally saved because there are still people in red zones, but everybody’s account before we leave, takes them on a dailybasis and, or at least get a message from daily to know that they’re okay.
Mary Johnston:
While Brandon, so I w it sounds like your company in many ways has been uniquely positioned for this kind of crisis. Sofor a moment I’d like to just have you unpack why you think it was so successful, this, the preparation and the currentprotection it’s, it’s really quite remarkable.
Brandon Welch:
Yeah. I think the, I think it’s a unique mix of, we have Ukrainians on the team who understand how to make things happenon the ground. They understand the culture, the language, how to make things happen, who are really good. We have avery talented team and very effective and very organized. And so I think that’s a big piece because they’re able to getthings, get things done effectively, and, and we trust them. And then you have the Americans, and we tend to be a littlemore skeptical about Putin and, and potential hostilities there. And so we work pushing for these things. We were seeingthese things and saying, I wish, should probably worry about this. Right. And I think it was a combination of us beingworried about it and pushing them on it, and they fell it through. And, and so being prepared and having that foresight onone side, but also being organized and know the people on the ground and how to make things happen, putting those twoteams together to create the emergency plan was the key, because without one or the other one have happened at the time, or as effectively as it was.
Mary Johnston:
So it’s really a wonderful example of the strength of a bi-cultural effort Across two countries. Because having, havingpeople from outside of a war zone, helping the people who are vulnerable really is a tremendous,
Brandon Welch:
And, you know, we are in America, we’re safe and we’re trying to do as much as we can to help them. And, you know, it’sin many ways, it feels like our hands are tied behind our back because it’s like, we can’t really do anything. So, you know, but we’ve, we’ve, you know, we’ve sent money and resources and giving them everything that they need to feel secure andsafe from a financial perspective. And without actually most of us without actually going there and helping and doingthings, we’ve, we’ve tried to do as much as we can from a distance. And, but it is, it is, I think frustrating for some of ushere in the U S to feel like we can’t do more. We want to do more. And it’s tough because it’s, you know, we’re so faraway.