Interview with Denis Dovgopoliy: we need to deliver a message to all companies - "If you stay in Russia, it will hurt you".
To say that Denis Dovgopoliy is widely known in the Ukrainian startup community is an understatement. He is one of the organisers of iForum, the largest forum for technology companies in the country. Denis is also one of the most famous and public popularisers of the venture business, lecturing to entrepreneurs and startups who want to succeed in the technology business and build a unicorn company (that's how the venture business refers to companies with a valuation of 1 billion).
After February 24, 2022, he actively engaged in a new activity for himself - using his experience and connections in business abroad, Denis contributes to the economic weakening of russia and the exit of foreign companies from the russian market. Today, any company that remains to do business in russia is actually a sponsor of the war against Ukraine, paying the taxes of the aggressor country. He is an active Twitter user and still somehow finds time to keep his own Telegram channel.
Denis Dovhopoliy told the gg editorial what he has been doing for the last year and a half. And what anyone who wants to contribute to ending the war can do, even if there is nothing else at hand but a computer and the Internet.
gg: How was your team of like-minded people formed and what exactly do you do?
GG: Historically, we don't have a team. It's all a distributed system. It just happened very simply, when at the very beginning of the war about 15 000 people got involved in this whole thing, probably on a permanent basis, that's a huge number. It's not clear what was going on and at some point I decided to think about turning it all into a minimal management pyramid so that this whole thing could be managed somehow. And when I started trying to do this, in April 2022, lawyers from one of the companies came running to us and said "Oh, we are going to sue you all for libel against our client. Our client is crystal clear, and you're telling him that his hands are covered in blood." Then the idea came to develop a methodology, which was done in one post. It is actually very simple and consists of two parts.
The first is to explain that a company doesn't make a decision ever. Decisions are made in the company by specific people and when you say that there the company that sucks, this means nothing. And when you say otherwise - that this particular vice-president is to blame, yes, he is specifically in favour of making blood money and financing the murders of Kharkiv children, then you get a more suitable situation for further work.
The idea was to pressurise such decision-makers with all available methods and independent teams. And already by the summer of 2022 this whole topic has grown to 500-600 teams, numbering from 5 to 50 people. Each of which picked its own goal. We have developed a methodology on how to select such goals.
This is the main motive - to shift the responsibility of the company to specific people and to pressurise these specific people from all sides.
This has started to work, so when one of the activists says that it was me who kicked this company out of russia, it is a lie, because, in addition, our special services, American and European special services, regulators, independent lawyers, teams, and our Foreign Ministry are also actively involved in this whole activity. Separately, we should remember our marketing agencies, which helped us a lot. They boosted our traffic, media coverage, and so on. So this is always a cooperative work of a large number of people, including very creative people who picked up different keys to different companies.
There was a lot of enthusiasm at first. Although I was very sceptical that this could even be considered an achievement - when we were involved in getting more than 170 companies out of russia in one week. Although it was actually picking "low hanging fruit" because companies were quietly sitting back and thinking that if they weren't noticed, they wouldn't bother. And when first attention was drawn to them, they went out. And there were a lot of companies like that.
gg: Do you co-operate with special services?
The intelligence services are very helpful in all of this. There was a story when we were putting pressure on a large American IT company, and they were sitting tight and were not going to leave. Then one of our team said "I'll have a call with the State Department and I'll tell them for this company". So in 3 days after this conversation they were "flying" out of rf like a cork from a bottle of champagne. Again - this is a big uncoordinated activity of a huge huge number of volunteers.
It happens that all these volunteers push, push, push, and then Kuleba's tweet appears, an insider from the company writes that it was a low blow and they leave.
Although there have been times when our ambassadors have received notes for our mischief. We're " screwing around," and they get notes. And they don't even know what for.
We provide the Security Service of Ukraine with information about russian businesses operating in Ukraine, which is also an important element. But we don't focus on russian companies in Europe, there are a number of them there. We also sometimes collect information on them there. We pass it on. A couple of times we did mailings to their partners and said, "Guys, you are working with russians". And these Russian companies look like Italian or other companies.
gg: What has changed since last year?
The number of people has decreased dramatically over time and dropped by 3-4 times, probably. Somebody got tired, somebody got exhausted. At first it wasn't clear what was wrong with people's jobs, so they were quite active. Now people are already involved, so there are two categories of people left: those who are in excitement and go to the end. And the second category is the super pros who spend a little time on it, but spend it very effectively. Let's say we have some great lawyers who from time to time come in and say, "I've got a couple of days free right now. Let me see what I can do."
There are a lot of newcomers who have two motivations: the first motivation - they want to be involved for their internal self-realisation, and the second category of people who have done something wrong, got into some scandal. They need to wash themselves off a little or something. So they come and say, "Let us help you, and then you can say that we helped you". But the barrier to entry is already quite high. Because we don't have knowledge transfer within teams. So when newcomers come in, they are immediately demotivated for two reasons. One: you need a team. I can't sign anyone up. So in teams people somehow find friends and join. And when people come to me and say "I want to participate", it means they don't realise that you can't do it all alone. You need a minimum team of 5 people, and you need to have minimum competences. And it turns out that they start from scratch to be very inefficient. And the "low hanging fruit" is gone. Motivation used to be based on what? On the fact that you always have some small victory every day.
Also, some people are afraid to share information with newcomers, because there is a possibility that this newcomer may be a mole from Federal Security Service.
I have two posts from last summer: the first one is a methodology on how to squeeze out companies, and the second one is a post on how to pick a company. For the latter, there are 3 criteria: what kind of impact will it give that we will achieve to get the company to leave. How many resources we have to spend. And the third is "matching." If we have someone in our team who once worked in telecom, it will be easier to crush a telecom rather than some other company. This methodology came about when we realised how much efforts we had spent for one private companies, and it was ineffective. With the same efforts we could kick out about 200 public companies from the russian market.
The airlines and retailers started to reject also one more company. And it wasn't just a group of volunteers, but local guys who don't even speak English. So they were just pissed off that they were working in russian federation. They suffered great reputational losses, which in Scandinavian countries is critical. Well, even in Switzerland it's not as critical as in Scandinavian countries. Everyone in Scandinavia is so ecologically correct, but ecologically not about ecology, but more about ethics.
gg: How long does it take to work on one company?
At the moment, an average project takes us about 6-7 weeks. There are not so many companies working in Russia anymore, and we have different messages now.
We have two main messages:
- Firstly, "Guys, the Russian market is collapsing, what are you doing there? You are bearing reputational risks."
- The second thing is that we are now putting pressure on auditors. They have to point out risks in their reports and quarterly reports. So we are telling them that the risks for a company in russia are very high and you should consider that this is not sufficiently covered in the reports and the level of risks is incorrectly assessed. This means that investors in these companies may suffer. And you, as a regulator, have to keep an eye on this, and there are some serious developments in this direction.
Although we are getting into one of the most conservative niches and it will take a long time to break down. But now we are getting to the point where there is a possibility that everything will change there in the autumn. We say, "Imagine that tomorrow Prioghin comes to Moscow and a stray bullet kills the director of a representative office and your shares collapse by 10%. And you, as an auditor who assured us that these risks are controlled, will be crushed, because these risks were uncontrolled."
Archived photo © Facebook page of Denis Dovgopoliy
gg: What should we do with technical companies that do not leave the market?
You have to hit a valnarable spot - the warranty. If the company cancels its warranty service so that there is no supply of warranty spare parts, then the distributor will realise that it is easier for him to look for someone else than to deal with all this. You have to look at where the company has the most sales, then go to that market and say "dear Americans, they are sold in russia, let's look for an analogue that is not available in russia".
gg: There is an opinion that one should send letters of enquiry to the company, does that work?
The problem there is that the answer will be very ambiguous, it will be written by lawyers in such a way that you can't get to the bottom of it. What would help here is if you asked a short and closed question at a global press conference. Where the answer is either yes or no. And if they refuse to answer, then you write or say that the company is deliberately avoiding the question, and then you can dance from that. When this discussion is already in the public field, they are "hurt" and need to do something, something to answer. And a message needs to be delivered to all companies: If you stay in russia, you will be hurt.
gg: How can an ordinary person take part in getting companies to leave russia?
It's just that the Russians have a bit of a bone in their throat and they're resisting. So if you haven't found such a group, you can do some small thing every day.
You found an article about a company? - repost it, write an informed comment, voice your displeasure.
And it can work when a lot of people do it. Roughly speaking, if you see something - do not pass by, but act. It will take 5 minutes at most. And if there are 100 000 such people, the impact will be very big. And this is what both Ukrainians and Europeans can do.
Go Deeper:
Co-founder and editor-in-chief of gagadget.com. Graduated from the Journalism Department of Kyiv National University in 1998. I made my first publications in mass media in my school years (there were still newspapers then). Observed the evolution of smartphones in the front row since Nokia 7650 on Symbian. Since 2002 he has specialized in the topic of smartphones, mobile communications and analysis of the development of the consumer electronics market.
