My name is Dasha, and this is the second funeral of my business. A canceled funeral.
It May sound sad, right? Today I will share a story of how we are managing to survive through the biggest crises of our lives and remain growing, no matter what.
As you may already know, I have a startup, Effa. As an entrepreneur, I have chosen this hard path in my life, considering all the pros and cons, the sleepless nights, unmeasurable stress, and level of responsibilities, that are connected with this brave title “CEO”. But I have never thought that I will meet the two biggest international crises on my way to success: a COVID-19 and a Russian-Ukrainian war. Now I can definitely tell, which one is worse.
We have founded Effa together with my husband, Ilya. He told me about his idea of making a toothbrush from the paper on our first date. Fun fact: we’ve met on Tinder, so I think I have to charge them already :)
So we have decided to start a business together, being a couple…risky, ha? We have applied for a couple of international startup competitions, and we won some of them, which brought us first PR, networking, and first tiny knowledge of what to do next. But the main thing: this first tiny success gave us a clear understanding, that we will never give up Effa. Effa became our first child and the biggest dream of our lives.
So step by step, we have started our business building and development. In 2018 we were accepted to our first acceleration program in New York, we packed our bags and moved to the USA for the following 6 months. There we’ve made our first sales and met our first investors. Many more things happened after that, I got pregnant and in 2019 we have added one more amazing person to this world, a baby Lukas. So we were as happy, as we could ever imagine.
At the beginning of 2020, we went to California to participate in the Startup Grind. We were fundraising at that time. In Feb 2020 people just started talking about some strange virus from China, but nobody really believed, that it could ever impact our lives so much. During 3 days of Startup Grind, we became one of the most talked-about startups at the exhibition, we had this whole line of people near our booth, wanting to see and try out a first-ever made paper toothbrush. We have met our investor there. A representative of the family business from North America wanted to sign a 500K USD check right ahead, on the table of our booth, but we have decided to come back home and do our due diligence in a proper way. We came back to Kyiv, and within a week a Global pandemic started. I can not describe my emotions during that time. All of the deals we had before were frozen or postponed, including the investment one. We were left alone, without sales, money, and any hope for survival, with a newborn in our hands.
I think I have cried out the new Pacific Ocean in 2020. We were barely surviving. My husband had to leave Effa and find a “normal” job in order to earn at least, some money to keep us alive. We paid our rent and bought some food, and that is all. One evening we sat at our kitchen table and had a serious talk about giving up Effa. We were talking about closing our business, and I was sure that this is the right thing to do, but the same second I pronounced this phrase, I began to cry. “NO! NO!”, my brain was screaming, “DON’T DO THAT!”, and we listened to our inner voices and decided to give Effa a second chance for survival. And the magic happened :)
We have applied for another EU Accelerator, Startup Wise Guys, who have just opened their sustainability batch, and we’ve made it. We got there, we got a small investment from them, which allowed us to pay our bills and salaries, and we began our journey, from the very beginning once again. After that, we have fundraised again, right before the Demo Day, we have signed a check for 500K USD with a private Angel investor from Ukraine. Oh, how happy we were. That was a real moment of glory. We had money, all the media was writing about us, we had people willing to join our team, clients, willing to buy our product, we had dozens of business trips to the USA, Dubai, Sweden, and many more countries and conferences to visit.
And here we go, getting back to the worst day of my life once again. 24 of February 2022. Sirens, bombs, and my mom's voice screaming the horrible word “WAR”. The war has started. I got recovered from the first shock and scare on the third day. And I immediately thought about Effa. I had to bury my business once again. I opened my email and saw hundreds of emails from our partners and clients, telling me their words of support, but saying that unfortunately, we have to cancel or postpone our previous deal. “Unfortunately this, Unfortunately, that…” the whole inbox of “Unfortunately” emails. And I did not even cry, because I have already gone through this. And this time we did not even think about closing our business. No, we immediately started thinking of how to do things differently, how to correct our mistakes, and how to keep our baby Effa growing, no matter what.
Within a couple of weeks, we have found a bit of financial support for survival and paying salaries, we have reworked our website, and we have reworked our business strategy and our goals. We are starting from the blank page, once again…But we are living, we are operating, negotiating, emailing, and having business calls. WE ARE SURVIVING.
Yep, that is a really long story, and I’ve tried to make it as short as possible, so I will not terrify my readers with those tons of words in this long read, but my main point is never to give up. Never-never-never give up on your dreams. Your dream has chosen you as her executor, considered you as a person, strong enough to bring her to life.
When you think that it is impossible, that external conditions are much stronger than you, give yourself a minute to think, breathe and reflect on all the thoughts in your head. Ask yourself: do you really want to give up your dream? Do you really believe, that someone or somewhat is stronger than you and your willing to survive? You are the strongest person in this whole Universe. Yes, that’s a cliche, but I will say it: You are the ONE building your life. You are the ONE responsible for the quality of life you will have in the future, and no one will decide for you, whether you will achieve your dreams or not.
I am writing that in my bathroom that I use as a bombshell in my apartment under the screaming of sirens. And I have no doubt that we will go through this once again. And will move on, from the blanc page, once again, from the very beginning.
