WIN WIN NIGHT: An offline meeting of the business reality show took place at UNIT.City

The first offline meeting of the YouTube show of the founder of the UFuture Vasyl Khmelytsky took place at the UNIT.City Innovation Park on March 11. At the largest UNIT.City conference room, over 300 entrepreneurs discussed how to turn ideas into successful businesses.

At WIN WIN NIGHT could talk to WIN WIN SHOW mentors: Vasyl Khmelnytsky, UNIT.City managing partner Kostyantyn Yevtushenko and Vlad Nozdrachov, co-founder of Unit School of Business.

WIN WIN SHOW headliner Vasyl Khmelnytsky expressed confidence that the global crisis and the coronavirus epidemic would only be a call to find new vectors of small and medium-sized businesses development supported by the entrepreneur.

“WIN WIN — its about partnership in the first place. It’s an association that makes you earn more, lose less, get new opportunities, and implement them faster. I have partners in all but one of the projects – UNIT.City. I’m looking for him. I need a partner who has the knowledge and experience, because here we want to build the most innovative park in Europe. When I look for a partner, I follow several principles: the first principle is risk. I want my partner to invest money and take risks with me too. The second is the experience of the niche in which we do business, because my partner must have a good understanding of finance and accounting, and finally – he must be reputable,” Vasyl Khmelnytsky said.

Asked how participation in WIN WIN SHOW influenced the experience of UNIT.City managing partner Kostyantyn Yevtushenko, he assured that the main goals of his participation in the show was to test modern communication formats and enrich his experience with successful and unsuccessful, but demonstrative cases of young Ukrainian entrepreneurs.

“It’s no secret that one of the most important channels of information for Generation Z and X is YouTube, and we’re building UNIT.City for the next generation. This is a project of the future. So we decided to go to YouTube to test out a playground that is familiar and comfortable for our young audience. It was an attempt to understand how they communicate, what they respond to, and most importantly, what we should do at UNIT.City to make the next generation want to live and create here,” Kostyantyn Yevtushenko convinced.

Oleksandr Potapenko, CFO of UFuture and managing partner of the manufacturing accelerator INDAX, spoke about the most common financial mistakes made by businesses and how to avoid them.

“At INDAX, we invest every day in small and medium-sized businesses, ready to talk about the mistakes that a business makes and I want to share it with you. Entrepreneurship is always about the risks. It’s always about being able to take them on and make money from it. Finance helps you take risks consciously and understand the outcome you are going for. The result is the main thing in business, its about earnings and profit,” Oleksandr Potapenko said.

The CFO of UFuture also cited the most common financial mistakes that can turn a business into a charity:

• You need to really scale the business, compare margins and profit. There must be ready for adverse analysis and a mandatory alternative course of action.
• An important system for business is an organized system and error prevention, which is not forgiven by finances. Oleksandr’s tips include preparing a tactical scheme, testing and understanding the internal business system, and preparing ways to reach a strategic level.
• Lack of financial savings and reserves. The speaker advises having a financial pillow and thoughtful ways to survive the crisis.
• Loans and liabilities that are incapable of drawing business. Finance is largely about psychology. Credit is trust. Take care of your reputation and build trust with your creditors.
• Uncontrolled cost increase and bloated staff. It is worth remembering that business is first and foremost people.
• Going into non-core assets that do not add value to your business. Or those that are optional. You can be a successful football team but not have a stadium.
• Doing business without a plan. Plan your activity for months. It may be that your expenses in the perimeter of the year will be quite voluminous. A plan is a way of managing a business and shared/fixed responsibility.
• Treating the crisis as stunning. A crisis is an opportunity, but provided you are ready for it.

Sergiy Komberyanov, President of Lean Institute Ukraine, said in specific cases how a lean approach helps save millions.

“Stand in the middle of your production and see what you can optimize. You don’t need a big investment to implement lean. You just need to eliminate the losses. Tomorrow you can come to your production, your office and define them,” Sergiy Komberyanov advised.

Also, the President of Lean Institute Ukraine noted the main losses that can be encountered in the production or business. These include:

• unnecessary displacement;
• inappropriate transportation;
• surplus stocks;
• expectations and defects;
• unnecessary movement of employees;
• untapped potential of employees.

“Lean is ideally applied in times of crisis. Why Toyota (lean was born at Toyota factory – ed.)
became successful? Because they were in crisis, they did not have expensive equipment, big investments, they had destroyed the country, the production system was bombed. They needed to look for opportunities and they found them,” Sergiy Komberyanov said.

Artem Makeev, CEO of Unit School of Business, shared with the audience the main obstacles that entrepreneurs face and the principles of forming an effective company.

At the end of the event, among those who have submitted an application to present their business idea, five entrepreneurs participated in the WIN WIN PITCH and received candid feedback and guidance from Vasyl Khmelnytsky, Kostyantyn Yevtushenko and Vlad Nozdrachov. Subsequently, WIN WIN SHOW mentors plan to announce the second season, provided the channel gains 50,000 subscribers.