Adam Torres and Mark McNamee discuss The Ukraine Business Network.
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Show Notes:
The Ukraine Business Network was created with the goal of aiding foreign investors operating in the country and ultimately contributing to the nation’s reconstruction. In this episode, Adam Torres and Mark McNamee, Co-Founder & CEO of The Ukraine Business Network, explore The Ukraine Business Network and its plans for the future.
About Mark McNamee
Mark has developed extensive experience in political, economic, and security risk analysis obtained in nearly 20 years of work and study in the US, Russia, Italy, Czech Republic, Brazil, the UK, and now Ukraine. His academic study, teaching experience, publications, and professional work has focused primarily on Russia, Ukraine & CIS, Western Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. Moreover, my analytical work has been cited in television and print by the BBC, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and Intellinews.
Mark McNamee and Andrew Pryma has launched Ukraine Business Network here in Kyiv, Ukraine, bringing together the nation’s top executives, industry leaders, and officials to help businesses navigate the complex market developments of Ukraine, while planning for the nation’s robust future.
About The Ukraine Business Network
UBN Network is a private business community that includes industry leaders, business owners, and the top management of domestic and international companies doing business in Ukraine. By offering quarterly business events, analytical reports and forecasts, private briefings, and benchmarking surveys, we are providing investors with the tools they need to effectively navigate the Ukrainian market, revive the economy, and prepare for the robust growth ahead.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Mark McNamee and he is CEO over at the Ukraine Business Network.
Mark. Thanks for having me, Adam. All right, Mark. So when the Ukraine business network kind of in this concept and idea first came on my radar, I was like, okay, I gotta have Mark on the show. So, I mean, first off, like, how did you come up with this like, tell us a little bit more about it and how you came up with this concept.
Sure. So I’ll try to keep that to less than an hour explanation here, but So in short, have experience doing this type of business prior to moving to Ukraine. moved here in October of last year and co founded the business, in fact, with my business partner, Andrew Prima, who had been running for several years, what’s called Ukraine Business News.
So he already had a medium platform. Dedicated to the business community foreign investors right here, in Ukraine. And essentially I had had contact with Andrew for the previous several years. And I had been doing a similar business model this building a network community and helping facilitate foreign investment in countries.
I’ve been doing that elsewhere in Europe prior to moving here at the end of last year. So but then the, the idea really originated because really from a personal professional, been linked to Eastern Europe throughout my entire personal life. My grandmother’s from Western Ukraine, so my grandfather’s from Eastern Poland.
But then also academically, I studied this region in university, focused on Eastern European, Russian Empire history, Ukrainian history in university. And then my graduate studies, I focused on Russia, Ukraine, former Soviet Union, Eastern New Europe history. So that’s, that’s my academic personal background.
And then professionally working on this region for basically over 15 years now but then more specifically for setting up Ukraine business network really felt compelled to do something, however small part we’re playing, but do something to help. contributes to Ukraine’s recovery and help encourage investment, help, you know, help companies retain jobs hopefully expand their businesses, increase investments, hire more people you know, Ukrainian economy more resilient in advance, you know, during this recovery in advance of ultimately, you know, Ukraine’s reconstruction after the war.
So yeah, that’s, that’s basically where it comes from. I mean, professionally having a Skill sets, a demonstrated skill set, ability to do this and then applying it. Specifically to this market, considering really the, the transformational historical moments that we’re going through. I mean, the world is going through it, whether we recognize this in the Western going through A transition and it’s centered on Ukraine.
And so the future of the world really hinges currently on what happens here in Ukraine. So really felt that I needed to be sort of a part of it, considering, you know, my, my background. What’s it like starting a business right now in Ukraine? Like boots on the ground, you’re there. Like, what’s that like?
Ooh Well, look, starting a business anytime, any place is always challenging. That’s what I’m thinking. When you say that, I’m like, Hey, Mark, like now you got these other, I mean, you know, we, complain in the U S sometimes about things, but then I’m thinking about like, you added a whole nother layer here for me.
So what’s that? Hard enough already. Right. Yeah. No, it’s under normal circumstances, right? Yeah. And it’s, and there’s so many externalities that obviously we can’t control. I mean, what’s going through Putin’s head. Decisions will he make, you know, it’s not a non negligible possibility that he uses some sort of unconventional weapon, chemical, biological, nuclear weapon under certain circumstances at some point.
I mean, so these types of things are always kind of in the back of your mind. I mean, and then, I mean, literally we’re, you know, geopolitical events, which rarely do we actually see them on a day to day basis impact our daily lives. But it does here, right? I mean, air raid sirens decisions in us Congress, we’re seeing it here on the ground, you know, there’s less air defense, more things have gotten destroyed.
More civilians have been killed the last few months. And I can tell you, I mean, you know, building a business here, we’re of course trying to gain members and so reaching out to the business community here and, and frankly, it’s, it’s been going well, going positively, but there’s been, you know, a palpable.
Deterioration in the business community in the sentiment the last several months related to geopolitics related to, you know, the lack of us funding the delay, at least for these last several months, that it really does curtail, you know, willingness to invest. And then, of course, it has. repercussions on our ability to sort of operate and drive a business here.
So that’s sort of the first thing is that, you know, and these things, you know, we can’t control what Speaker Johnson does in the house, you know, knock on wood, actually things look encouraging as of quite literally today. But it, you know, two weeks ago, it wasn’t so encouraging, right. And let’s see what happens in the coming days and then what is Putin going to decide and, you know, You know, what is Germany, France, you know, uk.
So all these big picture things, really having a direct and immediate impact on, on building a business. So that, yeah, in short, I, I would say that’s kind of the unique feature of, talk to me about the resiliency of the business community now that you’re there. I mean, you’ve been there for, not just there, but you’ve worked in the region for a while, so I know you’re.
But talk to me about the resiliency of like, what it’s like as you’re getting out there and you’re talking to these business owners. And cause I mean, obviously to gain membership and to grow this network you know, it’s going to take a lot of people, a lot of people participating and believing in the idea and the dream and the rebuilding, right?
That’s a given. So, I mean, talk to me about that. Yeah. I mean, the resilience, I mean, that’s like, it’s almost become a cliche word because it’s not a cliche. It’s real. We see it all day. It’s cliche for us in the US where we’re sitting here and we’re not like thinking about an air raid right now. that’s when it becomes cliche.
But if you’re thinking about that, or you’re thinking about all the things you mentioned, it sure isn’t cliche. Go ahead, please. Right. No, no, you’re exactly right. that perfect example. I mean, I can’t tell you how many, we have meetings every day with businesses. Most days, there’s an air raid, oftentimes in the middle of the night on a Tuesday, let’s say, what happens, these people have families, they’re living their lives, they have to get to work by 9am.
you know, everybody’s awake in the middle of the night, they slept in the bathroom that night or whatever it might, they went down to the air raid shelter, whatever it might have been. You wouldn’t know it, you wake up, it’s Wednesday morning, 9am, they took the kids to school. I meet them for a meeting at their office at 10am.
And everybody just, you just kind of keep going, right? What are you going to do? Basically, and to be perfectly honest, you know, moving here and Ukrainians have been dealing with this. So they’ve acclimated to it, of course, but I can even say moving here, you know, I remember the first night. You know, air raids watching the Patriot systems, intercepting the Kindle missiles being sent, you know, saving our lives over the city.
And of course the first night being very scared second night, kind of, okay, well, this is kind of how it is third, fourth night, as strange as it seems, you just kind of turn back over and go back to bed. Right. Not to downplay it. Of course. But mentally, psychologically, you sort of start adjusting and now it just becomes normalized.
now you just deal with their daily air raid alerts and you just, you keep moving. And that, I mean, Adam, if you were here and you walked around with me when I’m walking to my meeting at 9am in the morning on a random Wednesday. You would think nothing happened last night, not, you know, the world’s second largest military launching hypersonic missiles at the city that are being intercepted and swarms of 30 drones and all that you’d have no idea that that just occurred four or five hours ago, right?
Yeah. the only little mini, mini as semblance of something that I’ve ever gone through that was even close to that. it’s not even close actually, but even just, you just brought the memory up as being in Israel once, and I remember we, and I was younger and I’m in a club or something, bar or whatever, and they closed the doors and you couldn’t leave and everybody’s dancing.
I was going to leave. Like, well, you can’t leave right now. And I’m like, okay. And, but everybody’s dancing, like nothing stopped. If you do, if I wasn’t going to leave, I wouldn’t even know. And they had like the robots out there because somebody left a backpack. So maybe it was a bomb or something. I was in Israel and I’m like, and I was talking, I go back to talk to the bartender and I’m like, Hey, we can’t leave because of this, this, this.
And he’s like, Oh yeah, whatever. He says, Oh yeah, he’s American. Take a shot. And I’m like, And I’m like, Oh, okay. I said, does everybody know? And he’s like, Oh yeah, you know, you keep going. common. This is, and I was like, wow, that’s the first time it like, I realized kind of what.
The American privilege side of like, you know, what I have, right. Cause I didn’t know you read about this, but when you’re there, you see it and you see, and I was just, then I was just sitting there after that and I’m looking at my house, everybody dancing. I’m the only person that’s kind of a little worried or scared out.
Yes. Yes. Everybody’s just hanging out. And if anything, the people at the door, they’re not upset because they can’t go out other than because they wanted to smoke. Like a cigarette. So that’s why they’re annoyed. They come back and the girls come in next to me and they’re like, they’re annoyed.
They’re like, Oh, I can’t even go out. I want to smoke a cigarette and whatever. And I’m like, okay, nobody cares about the backpack or that they have a robot. If there’s all these people out there and like the year, but you want to go smoke a cigarette, so you’re really annoyed. human nature.
we can revert to our petty instincts pretty quickly. So, tell me about, tell me about the vision of, like growing this and also, and also how long you’ve been doing it. I know you’re, it’s newer, you’re moving there, but like, tell me about the vision for growing this and like, really just the, like, let’s, we’re entrepreneurs here.
We’re, you know, let’s dream. What’s the vision? it’s ultimately based upon a broader vision. I mean, look, the business at the end of the day, and my background is political economic security risk analysis. And so our value added, right, would be offering our analysis, right, of the external environments to major Western multinational corporations and assisting them in their investments, helping them understand what’s, you know, everything that has happened.
Where are we today? What does this mean? For the investment environment in a month, in six months, in a year, in three years. So obviously in the context of Ukraine, that gets enormously complicated given the different war scenarios and how Putin could react under this scenario or that U S E Ukraine, all the dynamics, right.
And that is shaping ultimately naturally the business environment here. So the vision being. I’m a deep believer just genuinely and having studied this region I’m just a deep believer in Ukraine’s ultimate victory. I can’t put a date on that, of course, but I did move here at the end of last year, basically setting the groundwork, the foundation.
Being sort of the first mover in the market in anticipation of Ukraine’s eventual, and what I believe is an inevitable victory. That being the case, right? We are basically taking the first, what I think will be, you know, a year, year and a half, two years to set the foundation for this business, help Ukraine’s current recovery during the war.
And then with Ukraine’s eventual victory then that’s when you have reconstruction money coming in. And then that’s when. Since we already have a foothold in the market being really the first mover in this specific field, you know, helping facilitating investment and helping Western companies navigate the investment environment here and make the right connections.
And you know, within our business network, understand the external environment to help them plan strategically, communicate with corporate, et cetera get in touch with the right government officials, the whole, nine yards. Right. in doing that currently, then we believe it sets us up obviously in a very good way when that reconstruction starts coming through and, and that reconstruction, I mean, these, these are going to be monumental levels of, aid flows into the country you know, from the private sector, but also from governments likely, I believe eventually taking Russia’s foreign exchange reserves as sort of a foundation for that reconstruction.
And, and you’re gonna have more money than what the Marshall plan. Gave, you know, after World War Two, what, what the U. S. gave to Europe. So it’s, it’s really going to be a huge task, and they’re going to need companies like us to help them sort of navigate the investment environment. And so that’s, that’s why we’re here.
We want to, I mean, there’s really it feels like, oh, look, the title of your podcast mission matters, right? This work colleague of mine right before I was moving here, actually, he said, you’re not going there to start a business. You’re going there on a mission. Yeah. I’m like, actually, it’s a, that’s a good way of putting it, right?
I mean, it is, you know, at a personal level, at a professional level, it really does feel like a mission to. Really achieve something, you know, this isn’t just about obviously revenues and profits. This is, more, you know, contributing to something really greater. Which is at the end of the day, I mean, talking about the mission, that’s far, far more inspiring you know, every day to keep at it and to see the resilience around me.
and then it. It just encourages me to be resilient. I mean, how can I sit here and complain when I’m watching every day and hearing the endless stories from the front lines and from families struggling through things and hearing from clients, you know, what they’re going through at a personal level. And so, yeah, so it’s just, it’s super invigorating, just, you know, very inspiring and, and getting back to the resilience that you mentioned.
Right. I mean, we just see this every day in the companies, the collaborative spirits. top down, it just feels like it’s just sort of less hierarchical because everybody feels that they’re in this together. So much attention and sensitivity to people’s needs, their mental health needs you know, just a lot of work workforce development and corporate culture development.
You know, it’s really, to give credits. You know, aside from just the, the greatness of the Ukrainian spirit giving credits to the Western companies. I mean, you know, you and I both know, I mean, Western multinational corporations, you know, have engendered a bit of a negative you know, reputation over the years, lot of times unfairly, but I can tell you here that the dedication, the commitments to their workers here in Ukraine and the willingness to To continue to support the business, keeping a long term vision, staying optimistic you know, for the business over the long term not just abandoning the investment, taking resources from elsewhere, you know, maybe their Asia team that’s doing very well, taking money from Asia and, and helping support the business.
The Ukraine business. And so different things like that. It’s really encouraging to see these Western corporations acting really so responsibly and, it is a business at the day, it’s a smart move. They retain really strong talent and they build strong employee loyalty by, by, you know, by and large, I mean, not every single company, but from what I’m seeing in the companies we’re speaking with every day nearly all of them really strongly supporting the team.
So it’s, it’s really just very encouraging to Businesses. You know, acting like this at this difficult moment. Do you speak Ukrainian or Russian or do you speak any of these languages? I’m just curious. Yeah. studied Russian years ago, so I speak Russian. And then I’ve just since moving here, I started taking Ukrainian.
Yeah. I was just thinking that I’m like, man, felt you had some, you had to have, you’ve been in an area for a while, so you have some, but I’m like, man, so now let’s add some layers there. You’re going there in the middle of a war zone, unfortunately, obviously. And then the language side of things, and then now you’re trying to, Pioneer and be a visionary really in advance of what we hope is coming next.
Right. So there’s a, there’s a lot of moving pieces there. So what’s next, like what’s next in your rollout plan, like for this year, let’s say for 2024. Right. So the rest of this year basically this year is about brand building, getting our name out there, getting the major players in the business community, both public, you know, the officials and government advisors and business associations and, you know, various embassies Getting them aware of what we do and building credibility, building value, showing that value right to them because we understand this year.
Companies don’t necessarily have disposable financing for sure to be jumping into. So, and we appreciate that. And but we want to keep continue to want to help them naturally assist them where possible. And then. Just showcase our value which we just continue to demonstrate. And so just in short, the core of the business are four quarterly events, which we hold it really the primary events venue here in, in downtown Keeve.
And then those events giving macroeconomic political war risk analysis presentations on that, and then linking it to, you know, macroeconomic forecast, what this means for the Ukraine’s economy. And then. The business community and basically I’m hearing every day the stories from businesses, what they’re struggling with, what the opportunities are, what they’re excited about, what they’re worried about and so relaying those stories and really helping connect the community and the business community and helping them understand the overall business sentiment.
And then we write analytical reports, so monthly reports, so quick updates on everything that’s impacted the business community in the past month, quarterly reports and then also surveys on business sentiment and, also executive commentary in those reports so that companies can get a really strong picture of the market, both sort of the external environment, but also the business sentiment, how sectors are performing and the outlook critically, I mean, making critical part about this is making those predictions of what’s going to happen, you know, in three months and six months and a year, it’s such, extremely uncertain environment.
that’s obviously a major value added for. for the company. So, short, to answer your question again, this year is about, it’s about brand building you know, and, and we’ve gotten several members already. So that’s, we’re really achieving that goal. And frankly, we’re ahead of where we had anticipated when my business partner and I started the company.
And that’s what we want to do for the rest of this year. We have a couple of sponsors and members keep building that up this year. And then next year, we do believe that Again, based on our outlook for the war that Western investors will start getting a little bit more sense of urgency and start bringing some, some capital back and investing further in the market.
And then I think moving into 2026, most definitely we’ll see a pretty significant flow investment into the country. So that’s basically the long term plan here is to, yeah, build up the business this year and And integrity and brand recognition. if somebody wants to get, and I think that’s a great way to end it if somebody wants to get in touch or learn more or connect and learn more about the project, the Ukraine business network what’s the best way for them to do that?
Sure. So we have our website Ukraine Business Network. So UBN so that’s UBN is the parent company, Ukraine Business News. So obviously that website UBN and then UBN, Ukraine Business Network. So UBN network is based off of that. So I would say, please of course go to both of those websites and subscribe for the Ukraine Business newsletter, which is a daily newsletter of all the major events that impact the business environment.
So that’s the best way to follow us. We’re of course on LinkedIn, Andrew Prima and I, Mark McNamee, we’re both on LinkedIn. So following us, and then of course, emailing us. So my email happy to receive email from anyone, of course, interested would be M dot McNamee. So M C N A M E E at UBN.
news. Amazing. And for everybody listening, we’ll put that in the show notes. So you can just click on the link and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters, this is a daily show each and every day. We’re putting out new content, new episodes, bringing on new entrepreneurs and new ideas.
If that sounds interesting, hit that subscribe button. We don’t want you to miss any of the upcoming stories. We got a whole lot more planned for you. So again, hit that subscribe button. If you’re a long time listener and you haven’t left us a review yet. Hey, hit. That review button because well, more reviews on Apple podcasts, the more stories we get to do for you.
So we definitely appreciate those. And Mark, I’m really excited to have you on the show today and to bring this story to our audience. And I’m wishing you, you know, the best of luck out there. And I don’t think you need it, but I’m wishing it to you anyway. and really staying safe out there and helping to work with and help the local business community as well.
So I think it’s great work and thank you for coming on today. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the time, Adam. I’m glad we could have this discussion.