• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, February 13, 2025

I am writing this from Warsaw, a stopover on my way to Ukraine.

I am excited to spend time at my company’s offices in Kyiv and Lviv, meeting with teammates, talking strategy and discussing user and customer feedback from our most recent product launch -- basically, the same kinds of things I do with my team in New York.

But as I have during my past seven trips to Ukraine over the last 20 months, I will also be spending time with Ukrainian startups, fellow entrepreneurs, investors, trade groups, government officials and university leaders.

We will talk about how U.S. technologies and U.S. and free world entrepreneurs like me can help Ukraine as it courageously and incredibly resists Russia’s unprovoked and barbaric full-scale invasion of three years ago, which has left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dead or injured, and tens of thousands of their children kidnapped and “resettled” into Russia.

With headlines of the past days of purported peace negotiations, this trip is taking on some special significance to me and all of those who I will be meeting with. We all want peace, and none want it more than Ukrainians.

Politicians do what politicians do.

But business leaders operating from democratic, free countries governed by the rule of law have a part to play as well. The globalization and interdependence of today’s economy demands it, and Ukraine has a very, very promising future in that world. Its population is young, hard-working, have incredible educations, possess many of the world’s most important resources in everything from agriculture to rare earth minerals, and are world-renowned for their capabilities in the fields of technology.

Ukrainians will determine their future. They are not a bargaining chip. They are the most focused, resilient and committed people that I have ever met. You see that the first day you cross the border into their world.

They know that capitulation to Russian barbarism only invites more of the same.  But, to win the peaceful future and the preservation of their independent nation that they deserve, they need friends, allies and support.

The U.S. government has been there for Ukraine in an enormous way in the recent past, but that could change in the near future. European governments have been there, too, but now they need to be there in much stronger ways than before. And many tens of thousands of other U.S. and free world entrepreneurs and technologists continue to be here for Ukraine as well. We need to keep investing, partnering, incubating -- critically, we need to keep showing up.

Am I worried for Ukraine at this moment? Of course I am.

Am I pessimistic? Absolutely not. I am an entrepreneur. Everything in the start-up life is about meeting and overcoming challenges, no matter how scary they are.

In my view, Ukraine is at a similar point to the one described by Winston Churchill to the British people on Nov. 10, 1942, during one of the darkest moments in the Battle of Britain: “Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”