This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. As we await the heightening geopolitical tensions as a result of Russia's moves on Ukraine. Let's not forget that people actually live there and they are trying to figure out whether to stay to flee. Their future definitely can be at this kind of time, feel very much up in the air. And next guest has nearly three d employees in Ukraine. Uh and he's joining us with what are you seeing and
what they are doing? We welcome Andy Kurtzig. He's founder and c of Just Answer. It's a site that connects people with doctors, lawyers, vets, mechanics, all kinds of experts. Seven. He is with us on the phone from San Francisco. Andy, nice to have you here with Creedy and myself. How are you and how's your team doing? Who are on the ground in Ukraine. It's a nice to nice the secret here as well. It's a terrible situation in Ukraine. Our team is suffering, the people of Ukraine are suffering,
and it's a very difficult time right now. So what are you doing? To prepare walk us through that process. So, so that we've been in Ukraine's two thousand and ten and that was when Jennakovich was president, basically prudent control of Jennakovic we were, So we were there while it was under Russia's control. We were there during the made On Revolution in two thousand and fourteen, which was another
trying time. And then we've been there since then with Russia invading Crimea and fighting on the east, and so we've had some time to prepare and we've mambled to put together lots of plans that we are now implementing to keep our folks safe and to keep operations as stable as possible. So you meant you mentioned it's obviously
a difficult situation for your employees. I'd love to go back there, and can you can you drool down a little bit for us in terms of specifically what your team members in Ukraine are dealing with at this point of course, So, so Putin is a obviously bullying Ukraine and is a master of propaganda and misinformation, and and so the kinds of things that he's doing to our folks on the ground is that you probably saw that the bombing of the kindergarten about a week ago, and
since then he and his folks have been calling in bomb threats at schools all over Ukraine, including our employees kids schools. And you know, with that actually happening, right, that's a real threat and everybody has to drop everything and run to school and pick up their kids. And it's happened multiple times in the last couple of weeks.
So give us some an example, give us some numbers, maybe a little bit of time horizon on I think this it's just so rare to have someone actively kind of works out some of these logistics when it comes to the employees. What kind of time horizon are you kind of preparing for? Are you forecasting for? What does
it look like on the ground. Well, so what we've been able to do over the years has put together are at a large document was essentially desk con level one, two, three, four, five, and at each all the actions that we're going to take to keep our employees safe and to keep our operations as an intact as possible. And so, for example, one of the things that we're actively doing right now at the level level where we are is moving our employees from the east of Ukraine to the west of Ukraine,
and we've given them multiple options. We're putting them up in hotels, We're helping them rent apartments, we're giving them paid time off to to make those moves and to pack things up. And that's actively happening now as one example. So I'm also curious, Um, in terms of the situation that that your employees are dealing with. One of the stories we talked about UM earlier, Andy is the cyber
attacks that are happening. And we reported that Ukrainian government agencies and banks were hit by what's called a d d O S. I don't know if I'm saying it correctly, but it's a distributed denial of service attack, right, Um. And and a lot of this is to really kind of chip away at the sense of security among the
Ukrainian people. What signs are you folks specifically seeing of that. Absolutely, we called this DIDOS attacks and no problem And and yes, one of our our bank in Ukraine is was one of the banks that they took down with the details attack a week ago. And how does that affect us and our employees. Well, you know, one of the things we need to do is we need to protect them
and make sure we can pay them on time. And so if Russia were to continue to do that, we need alternative ways to pay our employees because they gotta pay for groceries and pay the rent and do whatever they need to do in order to live. And so that's the kind of thing that we worry about. The other thing, uh, and so we've got all kinds of
plans for that. We've got money that we put in a bank in Poland, we're thinking about even using crypto if if if there even starts to devalue in a major way and becomes useful with lots of different alternatives there.
So the other things we need to worry about, and and and very likely and I've already been happening frankly, are putin taking out communication systems, PUDEN taking out power systems and so you know, on the power system side, uh, we're getting diesel back of generators for our two offices there so that people can can can can have access
that for communications. Every time the Internet goes down and they are doing datas attacks on different I S T s. Can you imagine how that feels to live in Ukraine, Because you know that's one of the first steps. Right the minute war starts, Putin is going to take out your communications. And so if you're sitting there at home and all of a sudden your internet goes out, you
think wars started. Can you imagine that feeling of constantly sort of any moment your country is going to be invaded by Russia, And so we've got to do all kinds of things to combat that. We're getting satellite phones, We're getting multiple different I s p s, so if one goes down, we've got another one. We're using all kinds of different chat communication methods in case one goes down, with backs as to others. So these are the kinds
of things we're dealing with. Yeah, anecdotally, I've heard that a lot, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong. We and totally have heard that a lot of people have been trying to move their their funds, their savings out of Ukraine when it comes to um well, essentially their life savings, pulling it out of bank accounts, investing in real estate in Western Europe. You mentioned operating through a bank in Poland or even crypto. Are those kind
of things you're thinking about as well? Well, I mean, we were at US based company. We're based in Silicon Valley, so most of our assets are here and we don't have to worry about that where we sent money over in order to pay them, and then we paid them and then it's just reserves left in the bank account until the next time we need to pay them. So so that's not an issue for us as mine. But we've got to make sure we can pay them. Hey,
and you just got about twenty seconds left. Do you ultimately anticipate you might need to pull these people if they want to completely out of Ukraine, depending on how this plays out. I sure hope not, but you know that is an option for sir, depending on how how this plays out. We need to keep our employees safe and we're going to do whatever it takes to keep
them safe. And I just want to end with one quick thought, which is I don't think it will come to that, and we're certain planning for the worst, but we're hoping for the best. And our intention is to stay in Ukraine. We are committed to Ukraine, and in fact, we're going to try to grow in Ukraine. Alright. Gonna leave it on that note, Andy, Thank you, so much. I know this is a tough situation. I know you've got your your plateful, certainly taking care of your folks
on the ground in Ukraine. Andy Kurtzik, He's founder and chief executive officer of Just Answer, on the phone in San Francisco,