War is the ultimate disruptor.
No matter where it happens, war immediately destabilizes every sector, industry, company, all the way to your dinner plans for the weekend. But what is its effect on the disruptors we all love: startups?
True pioneers are defined by their ability to refine operational procedures and navigate seemingly insurmountable difficulties. While it is easy to get lost in polished stories about what might have happened if things had gone differently, we have the insight to distinguish between genuine visionaries and those who simply rely on smooth rhetoric.
However, we don’t need to succumb to these methods of absolvement. If a founder’s objective is to disrupt a market, and whose primordial task is to adapt quickly, then war shouldn’t be allowed to affect the progress of a nation’s startup ecosystem.
al-Muwaten is offering a list of previous examples to prove that this is not wishful thinking, but rather a decision taken by the ecosystem’s stakeholders.
Ukraine (February 2022 – Present day)
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the latter suffered from incessant power outages, internet cuts, energy shortages and most importantly losing local talent due to war efforts. Nail in the coffin? Not for Ukraine’s tech and startup ecosystem.
“Bricollage Strategy”
When it comes to business ventures and innovation, the focus of Ukrainian founders shifted from profit-oriented to national survival. With resources such as electricity, hardware and even talent dwindling day after day, Ukrainians resorted to what they call “bricollage strategy”. This allows innovators to make do with what is at hand and readily available to them. It’s a collective refusal to be constrained by lack of “proper” hardware or even the perfect hire to solve some technical requirement. The mindset shifts from raising capital to access the right tools to “what is the best thing I can build right now with what I have in front of me”.
Planning makes perfect
This in turn prompted Ukrainians to exploit methods or permutation and recombination. When their factories were being destroyed by missiles, their capacity to mass-produce was hindered. However, a few forward-thinking individuals decided to leverage the cloud and create digital blueprints. They were referred to by manufacturers across 20 different locations who would then each produce a single 3D printed component rather before they are gathered into a final product. They were not perfect, but they worked. Most importantly, they allowed innovation to carry on instead of stalling.
Vertical Jumpers
Existing local startups also adapted to their local metamorphosed market. Typically, in a stable economy, a company will stick to its vertical line of operation. During war, the boundaries of that vertical get erased. A notable example of such shifts is Ajax Systems. Initially a consumer and commercial security company, famous for its smooth, high-end wireless alarm systems and motion sensors used in smart homes and offices. Ajax shifted their focus from protecting private property to creating a national-scale early warning system for incoming strikes and drones that has since been downloaded over 46 million times. Another example of vertical jumping is Uklon. Referred to as “Ukraine’s Uber”, Uklon launched “Uklon Evacuation” and “Uklon Volunteer” where users can use the app’s algorithms to coordinate long-distance evacuations or to plan military resupply runs. Uklon didn’t stay in its lane and shifted its adaptability into first gear.
Myanmar Junta (September 2021 – Present day)
Before the 2021 coup, Myanmar was one of the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia, rapidly integrating into the regional and global landscape. Today, it is arguably the most isolated nation in the region, facing a “polycrisis” of economic collapse, digital repression, and diplomatic friction. This meant financial isolation, operational handicap and market closure and isolation for burmese innovators and entrepreneurs. Even that wasn’t enough to stop them.
Mesh-Network
The schizophrenia that follows a military junta is used to justify hyper-control over movement of all sorts. This was a major issue for Myanmar’s top e-commerce Shop.com.mm, but not a fatal one. The company adopted mini-hubs, mainly consisting of mom-and-pop shops to relay parcels from one place to the other. This meant that a delivery changed hands at least 3-4 times before reaching its final destination. The data generated from the roads being used was turned into a real-live intelligence map that pinned military roadblocks and roads that were closed to the public due to random routine movements from the junta forces.
Offline Courses
Underserved regions of the country were benefiting from innovative education solutions through 360ed and MYEO’s initiatives. When the population was totally or even partially cut-off from the internet, they quickly moved to developing AR and VR learning tools that worked entirely offline. Both companies went back to basics and transferred the files manually through SD cards. They effectively went from being a SaaS to being a light-hardware company by instructing local learning hubs how to build their own “raspberry pi” (a cheap, tiny, fully functioning computer) devices and secure a private intranet network.
Lebanon (October 2019 – Present day)
We don’t necessarily need to look elsewhere for inspiration. What Lebanon went through in its series of consecutive tragedies (popular revolt, collapse of financial sector, COVID-19, port explosion, war) can hardly be compared to any other situation. And yet, founders, innovators, entrepreneurs and humanitarians successfully, through monetary or impact metrics, navigated through them all.
Lebanese Alternative Learning (LAL)
In 2014, long before digital classrooms and learning from home was a thing, LAL took it upon itself to digitize the entire Lebanese curriculum and make them interactive for learners. When the crisis hit, schools and the education sector were the first casualties. Learners couldn’t attend class for various reasons, so LAL took the classes to them. Using its flagship platform Tabshoura, it was able to reach more than 60,000 learners. For areas with little to no internet, a raspberry pi was deployed. For families with no electronics to connect to the intranet, LAL distributed tablets that can be passed around.
Food production
With the currency losing 99% of its value and payments being complicated by the absence of banks, Lebanon has to rely on locally grown or produced food. Local entrepreneurs were quick and successful in identifying the items that would be necessary and in demand, and rapidly established commercial relations with farmers and manufacturers to allow the country to rely on itself more by relying on imports less. This in turn created a new demand to optimize the limited agricultural land found in Lebanon, which in turn contributed to the emergence of the country’s sprawling Agritech sector. From clean and cheap energy to land management and private labelling, farmers sighed a breath of relief in the most dire of times without causing any price increase for the end consumer.
War is the ultimate disruptor, not the ultimate barrier.
Stagnation is a choice.