On September 4, we hosted our quarterly FutureTech Meetup, this time focusing on international scaling for Ukrainian companies.
The event’s keynote was delivered by Viacheslav Klymov, co-founder of the NOVA group and a member of the Strategic Board of our Diia.City United Association.
NOVA Group’s unique experience of launching in foreign markets amidst a full-scale war made Viacheslav the ideal speaker for our FutureTech Meetup: Go Global.
Today, the international NOVA group is a powerhouse, encompassing logistics (Nova Poshta, Nova Post Europe, Nova Global), fintech (NovaPay), IT (Nova Digital), and even its own cargo airline (Supernova Airlines).
In less than three years, they have commenced operations in 17 European countries.
In a candid Hardtalk session titled Global Expansion: How We (Didn’t) Do It, Natalia Mykolska, our Executive Director, sat down with Viacheslav to uncover the story behind this rapid scaling and the crucial lessons the company learned along the way.
War as a Catalyst for Ambition
If you were to ask me the fundamental question — whether to expand abroad or not — there’s no suspense. Even if you don’t have the ambition, a plan, or a strategy, you have to go global, Viacheslav stated.
Viacheslav openly admits that while NOVA Group had global ambitions long before 2022, the full-scale war and the emotional demand from their customers provided the decisive push they needed to act resolutely.
When Ukrainians found themselves in absolutely horrific, stressful conditions in Poland and Germany, they started asking, «Wait, how are we supposed to get our belongings?» — and there was no Nova Poshta there. For us, that was a huge negative assessment. We saw it as a direct complaint.
The founders realized they had done nothing for a systematic international launch between 2015 and 2022, and now they had to «run with all their passion.»
You see, the decision itself — or the lack of a decision — to enter new markets is the main barrier to understanding what’s happening there, he shared.
A «Back-of-the-Napkin» Strategy and the Role of Founders
How do you make strategic decisions when you have neither time nor a dedicated management team?
In April 2022, amid a fuel crisis and devastating news from the front lines, the NOVA founders began discussing expansion. According to Viacheslav, there was hardly anyone to discuss it with:
We had management for Nova Poshta, we had management for the payment company, but there was simply no management responsible for international operations.
He and his business partner, Volodymyr Popereshniuk, made the decision to expand together, then built the team from the ground up, personally finding people for key positions.
For the founders, this meant a full return to operational work — back to their «younger years,» as Viacheslav recalls.
We constantly worked on the same floor as our management. There was no head office at that moment… And we returned with pleasure…
…We are full of energy for new projects, especially global expansion. That was something else. We had more than enough motivation.
The action plan was born «on a napkin» in a shared office of 7-8 square meters. This improvised command center became the birthplace of ambitious plans, which, however, were quickly corrected by reality:
We later threw almost 80% of all the desktop research we did in April and May 2022 into the trash… But if we hadn’t tried, we would never have understood what was happening there.
Even now, 2.5 years after starting the expansion, NOVA’s strategy is constantly being revised. And that, he insists, is perfectly normal, as reality is dynamic and demands flexibility:
The strategy is constantly being modernized, Viacheslav shared. — Because one of my conclusions is that nobody really knows how it will unfold during an international expansion.
Three Key Questions to Ask at the Start
Viacheslav Klymov is convinced that for most Ukrainian businesses, entering the international market is a necessary step. From his own experience, the entrepreneur formulated three main questions every founder must answer before expanding.
- Why?
The question isn’t ‘expand or not‘ — you absolutely must expand. But the worst thing that can happen is expanding just because Klymov said so from a stage… You have to answer for yourself what you want to get out of this project.
- With what?
Viacheslav confesses that NOVA’s first idea was to enter new markets with a «copy-paste» of their Ukrainian strategy — a move that proved to be a mistake.
It seemed obvious: you have success at home, you’re great, a market leader… But then it turned out that things were different. You can’t just copy-paste… There is at least one large country where we are still healing from that attempt to enter with a copy-paste model.
- How?
This question is about the action plan: will you do it alone or with partners? With what funding? With which team? The most important thing, Viacheslav emphasizes, is to start acting:
You can expand smartly, you can do it recklessly, you can make mistakes, or you can do everything right — but you must expand.
Not «Making Mistakes» — But «Accumulating Experience»
When Natalia asked about the biggest business mistake, Viacheslav joked:
As you know, we’re self-confident guys. So, of course, we don’t make any mistakes. The entire history of NOVA Group is an unbroken chain of ‘victory after victory’.
Jokes aside, Viacheslav resonates deeply with the philosophy of Thomas Edison, who said, «I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work».
The renowned Ukrainian entrepreneur lives by a similar principle:
An entrepreneur never makes mistakes — he accumulates experience and invests in future victories.
Key Lessons from NOVA Group’s Global Expansion
- Do not postpone your launch. Every day you delay an attempt — even if it turns out to be a mistake — is a day you will regret.
- Be prepared to revise your core business. Whenever you find a new home, after a period of adaptation, you realize you can no longer live in the old one.
- International experience forces you to look at established processes in your home market with fresh eyes. According to the co-founder, this is exactly what NOVA is doing in Ukraine right now: Europe is creating an impact for us to review processes here… It triggers a re-evaluation of your successes.
- Don’t try to copy-paste. Life is completely different from country to country… Consumers in Germany and Poland reveal significant differences. Even Ukrainians within Ukraine are different. Therefore, your model must be highly flexible and adaptable to strategic changes.
The success story of NOVA Group proves once again that Ukrainian entrepreneurs possess not only resilience but also the ambition and flexibility to enter global markets and win, even in conditions of total uncertainty. The most important thing is not to be afraid to take the first step. So, Go Global!
