“Do Your Best and Fate Will Do the Rest”: An Inspiring Conversation With A Ukrainian Entrepreneur

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Bronislav Gorbachev is a Ukrainian entrepreneur. When we spoke a few weeks ago, he was still living in Moscow. “It’s a challenging and dangerous place to be right now,” he said.

He also has a lot of people relying on him. There is his family, of course. But also his company: His employees live throughout Russia and Ukraine. So do his clients; he is the founder and CEO of Amadei, a platform that helps musicians grow. Now many of these musicians’ careers are disrupted.

I wanted to know: How does someone handle a situation like this? It is so big, so seemingly impossible, and yet an entrepreneur cannot simply give up. They must try to do… something.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the founders of Airbnb and DraftKings attack massive problems. Both faced existential threats to their businesses, and both treated them as simply a problem that, like any problem, required systematic solutions. After all, even the largest of problems are still just problems. They don’t morph into supernatural forces.

This is exactly how Bronislav thinks too. He’s an experienced entrepreneur who has launched multiple companies and lived around the world. Now he has set about systematically saving his business during wartime — first by taking care of his team, then his clients, and then identifying ways to grow his business despite it all. And of course, throughout all this, he must take care of himself and his family too.

I spoke to Bronislav for this episode of my Problem Solvers podcast, and want to share an edited version of our conversation below. I found his words and poise remarkable.

Here's our conversation.

Did you prepare your business for the war?

No one expected this. I remember it very clear. That night, it was 5 a.m. when I woke up. I don't know why, but I switched on my phone and I saw the news. They began to bomb Ukraine. My wife, my family, they were sleeping. I didn't want to wake them up, so I went to another room and called my mom to ask her if she's okay. She’s in Odessa; she didn’t know anything about this yet. I asked her to prepare herself, to go to a shelter as fast as possible. Then I began to make phone calls to my friends who have families in Ukraine.

The first two days, I kept saying I can't even believe that it's happening in my life. Because we have a plans. We have plans for business. We have commitments with the clients, with the investors, with the market, with my team. And suddenly it disappears.

You must be looking at this and thinking, Every single thing that I've built is now thrown up into the air.

Absolutely. But then I realized that my team is even more vulnerable than me, and they are seeking support. As a founder, as a leader, I should demonstrate confidence. So really, it took me about two days to get accustomed — if it's possible to get accustomed to such a situation — and to begin to think, not emotionally, but rationally.

I realized that it is very risky for my team to be in Russia, in Ukraine. So I did my best to relocate them to different countries. Currently they are in Bulgaria, Romania, Istanbul, everywhere. I’m the only one left in Russia right now.

Why are you still there?

I'm preparing to leave.

What was it like trying to get everybody out? How do you manage that as a company?

You know what? We were very attractive for investors, because we are a very sexy project. We are dealing with music, with very popular people, and we attracted another round of investments two weeks before this war. So we had this budget for marketing and for enlargement. But in this current situation, we use this budget to relocate and to refocus our marketing.

So after we relocated our people, we began to think that not only is my team frustrated, but so are my artists, my clients. I currently have more than 16,000 musicians on board in the whole world.

Is a lot of that concentrated in Russia and Ukraine?

Yeah, 1,300 people are from CIS countries. I realized that they are also frustrated. They cannot get their money from the royalties from streaming, because we are the company who is gathering the royalties from all the streaming platform and forwarding it to the artists. So we were thinking, how we can help them in such a tough times.

This is a sanctions issue, right? People are not able to get paid, because money cannot come into Russia?

Absolutely. But it hurt not only the Russian musicians, it hurts also the Ukrainian musicians, and the Armenian, Kazakhstan, and others. So we began to think, how can we support them with my team? And we created a plan that we should provide the distribution for free, totally for free for Ukrainians.

Which is a service people generally pay for?

Absolutely. Then we provide the free promotion with social. Then I began to enlarge our network of radio stations in the U.S. I have good relationships with the radio stations in the U.S. And they agreed that they will also support the Ukrainian artists and they will place the Ukrainian artists for free. And we also made agreements with online concert platforms, which provide online concerts, so musicians from Ukraine can give free online concerts.

Just to make sure I understand. You obviously can’t change the way that money flows into or out of the region, but what you can do is give these artists a greater voice.

Right. Because music is a vital tool in our life. Music unites people and makes them better. It motivates people — to achieve, to relax, maybe to fall in love. When you’re dealing with musicians, everything is very sensitive and emotional. You know, when I was doing the customer development, I talked to more than 12,000 musicians. And I figured out that the main point for them, the main focus for them, is not just to make money. It's another thing. The most vital thing for them is to be heard. Because they cannot stop creating.

These kinds of people will always create. Even if you forbid them from creating, they will create. They can't stop creating. So the vital thing for them is to be heard and to be supported. That's why this kind of support, when we promote their music, their concerts — it is very important.

What does this mean for your business? Are you just forgoing revenue right now?

It's not like that because my team is very motivated. They are very committed. And our initial goal was serving the U.S. market. We were approaching this goal, and we had an investment plan to reach the U.S. market. That's why we closed the round — just to grow our muscles and to be 100% ready to enter the U.S. market, which is very competitive.

So currently, we completely stopped our marketing program in CIS countries. All the budget, we forward it to the U.S. market. What does it mean for us? That within a week, we adapted all our landing pages, all our sales, all our advertising. We’re now more intensive in making collaborations with the radio stations, with the label music labels from U.S.

We did a very great and hard job within one week, and we already started selling in U.S. We had sales in U.S., but those sales were not systematic.

I see — so even as you’re working to serve the clients impacted by war, this disruption has also accelerated your plans to expand to a new market and grow the company.

Absolutely.

You’re trying to support lots people right now. But how are you doing?

Thank you for your question, really, but I'm not thinking about this right now. Yes, there are lots of things that I should think about. But I have more than 16 years in business, and all my businesses I raised from zero. At the peak, I had more than 1,000 people employed by me. So I get used to the pressure, and I get used to the risks. So I can take the risks, and I can evaluate this risk. I got trained for this.

I’m not saying I’m trained for a war situation. It’s a real disaster. But I got used to not paying attention to how it's hard, and rather than to find the opportunity.

Is there something you tell yourself? Some lesson that you fall back on in the hardest of these times?

You know what motivates me the most? Do your best and fate will do the rest. That’s very good. Because when you hesitate and are not sure about something, and you spent your energy and time and emotions, then you were thinking and you were not doing. But life is quite a short thing. You should think, but you should act. And when you act, you will see the new opportunities.

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Cover credit: Courtesy of Bronislav Gorbachev