This document provides advice on starting a research and development center in Ukraine. It recommends beginning with outsourcing small projects to test a Ukrainian team. As the relationship grows, the company can take more control over hiring, salaries, and culture to fully integrate the Ukrainian team. Establishing a legal entity in Ukraine introduces risks, so partnering with a local company provides support with offices, hiring, and compliance. Strong communication practices like video calls and travel are important to blend the remote culture. Overall, a Ukrainian R&D center can provide around-the-clock engineering support at a lower cost than domestic teams.

1. Easy start in Ukraine:
people.ai experience
Andrey Akselrod

2. Andrey Akselrod
CTO, People.ai
(SF, LA, NYC, London, Kyiv)
Co-founder, CTO Smartling
(NYC, London, Dublin, Kyiv, Dnipro)

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6. Easy Start in Ukraine

7. The evolution from “outsourcing” to “R&D Center”
1. Get a project done. All product requirements are driven by me.
2. Team that works on my projects full time.
3. More control over “my” team: hiring, salaries, motivation, retention, stock
options, corporate culture, sense of belonging to my company, fully
committed to my goals, not an outsourcing company
4. Promotion of your own brand in Ukraine
5. R&D Center: your own office and team

8. • Size matters - match your company
• Figure out the right engagement model
• A-la carte services help. You may need help with finding the right office,
recruiting people, accounting, legal, navigating the country,
• Use only “pay as you go” basis.
• Watch the contracts! Typical gotchas:
• Buy out clauses (you will want to do this, just trust me on this).
• Termination (you should reserve your right to stop any time and take hired people with
you or dismiss them with short notice without further obligations).
• IP and NDA clauses (you should fully control your Intellectual Property).
• GDPR clauses (to ensure compliance with the data protection regulations).
Finding the right partner

9. Navigating Ukraine by partnering vs. establishing legal
entity
Pros:
• Legal exposure protection
• Financial exposure protection
• Overall risk reduction
• Significant help navigating all aspects (hiring, office, etc.)
• Ability to promote your own brand in Ukraine without any risks
• Flexibility in outsourcing all back-office
• Quick start and no need in a large up-front investment
• B1 visa type may be easily obtained.
Cons:
• Challenges with L1 visa type (workarounds could be done)

10. Best Practices

11. • Engineering Leadership must know and understand remote teams and
preferably Ukrainian market
• Bring senior people over from Ukraine - preferrably project manager and
senior technical lead at least initially to help you setup the process
• For larger teams - hire country manager with whom you establish trust.
Their job is to hire and retain the right people, facilitate company culture
continuity across remote teams.
• Over-index on Communication. Enable remote decision making,
Your side

12. Structuring Teams (early + acceleration stages)
• Smaller teams are split across the ocean
• Reduces bottleneck in communications
• 24x7 wake time operational support
• Expertise in every time zone
• Support + Engineering pairing up
• Product lives with Engineering for B2C
• Prevents “second class citizens”

13. Communication!
• Slack channels
• Project channels
• Team channels
• Release channel
• General channels
• Have fun together!
• Video communication: Zoom. Video is a must!
• 1 hr a month in front of customers
• High visibility, includes what was discovered
• Feature remote teams in company-wide meetings

14. Travel
• SF folks traveling to Kyiv - not just engineers: product, sales, marketing
• Kyiv folks traveling to SF
• Face to face transforms communications
• Helps mix the culture, creates experiences & friends.
• Kyiv is an incredible city to visit

15. Challenges
• Amazing engineers in need of EQ education/soft skills
• Harder to find engineers with true “build product” mentality vs.
“outsourcing” mentality.
• Highly experienced technical leadership is hard to come by, but not
impossible.
• 21 candidates per hire in Kyiv vs. 15 in SF

16. andrey@people.ai