24 February 2022
The air-raid sirens woke him between 4 and 5 in the morning. Explosions on the horizon, the roar of military aircraft, a phone flooded with messages: “Are you safe?” In those first hours the first criterion, before everything else, was safety. “Only as time passed did we arrive at a different understanding: you can’t flee forever, and in any case fleeing isn’t a solution.”
By the autumn of 2022, the systematic attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure were bringing blackouts that lasted entire days. Working from home or from traditional offices was becoming impossible. A drastic solution was needed.
From Nightclub to Hub
Back in 2012, Alex lived a hundred meters from the nightclub ranked number one on TripAdvisor in Lviv; techno pulsed through his windows until four in the morning. Closed for COVID and never reopened, the club had oversized electrical systems, spacious rooms and a central location. Its bunker, used to store old sofas, was brought back to life as a shelter.
“And that bet turned out to be the most important of my entrepreneurial life. Because BRAVE didn’t just become a place to work during blackouts — it became the incubator where Faktorist was born in its fully realized form.”
BRAVE opened on 1 December 2022, with the office practically full from the very first day. In the language of chapter 11, it is strategic resilience made physical: “when necessary, we build ourselves a fortress.”
A Working Day That Winter
Team meeting in the morning, calls during the day, lunch delivered for all the residents. During blackouts, the procedure: unplug everything that draws too much power, top up the generator, keep working. On Fridays, as far as possible, BBQ and wine. One rule number one: no hardship must interfere with the normal cycle of life and work.
Many pages of Everything Will Be OK were written there. In June 2023, Faktorist had its first public presentation before an international audience, in a keynote at the Future of Ukraine Summit in Berlin.