Zelenskyy reportedly replied that he “had breakfast in Kyiv (before travelling to the conference), and will have dinner (back) in Kyiv” the same day.

Before the Feb. 24 invasion, most Western governments were certain Ukraine had little chance of effectively resisting a Russian invasion and regime change.

Read also: What Ukraine needs to win the war

Subsequent events have drastically changed the world’s attitude, Sybiha said. Commenting on the flow of Western weapons to Ukraine, the official stressed the need for modern anti-air defense systems.

“Securing our skies and establishing a solid air defense system would make us much more resilient,” he said.

Sybiha added that Kyiv also needs modern main battle tanks – something Ukraine’s partners have been reluctant to provide thus far.

“Those are the weapons we need to meet our objectives by winter,” said the official.

Read also: Ukraine’s army, politics, economy, and citizenry have all been transformed by six months of war

Sybiha warned that the coming winter will present a challenge to Ukraine and the resolve of its Western partners.

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

How someone starts their first day of work in a new office can set the tone for their ultimate success. How you offboard employees who are leaving matters tremendously in how they remember the experience of working at a company. But onboarding, supporting, and offboarding remote workers is exponentially more challenging than when workers are in an office .

And it’s not just the logistics that are important here, but safety. As companies go remote the risk that workers get injured due to not using the right equipment grows. Large companies, in particular, are concerned by the rising number of back pain complaints, repetitive strain injuries, and other ailments. Issues that have been well-managed in the office are now cropping up after employees spend eight hours a day on a bad chair at their kitchen table.

This is where Firstbase comes in. Firstbase handles all the setup, management, maintenance, and retrieval of all the physical equipment remote workers need to do great work at home.

How does this work? A new employee can login to Firstbase and see all the approved laptop and desk options available to them and select what they want, put in their address, and the equipment will be sent out. It can be tied to an employer’s existing HRIS system to automate the flow of information, manage all physical assets from a single place, track warranty needs, and more. Is an employee leaving who needs to return equipment? Firstbase will send out a laptop box with a return shipping label and everything is taken care of.

It sounds so simple, but there’s a lot of logistics and software under the hood making this all work. Successfully enabling remote workers requires software that ties into HR systems, IT provisioning systems, SaaS tools, and more. The Firstbase platform handles all of this for companies with just a few clicks, providing a seamless onboarding and offboarding experience for the company and employee.

I’m excited to announce that a16z is leading the Series A round for Maven, a platform for cohort-based courses. Maven works with the world’s leading creators to help them create online courses, organized into multi-week programs that bring a group of students together to increase participation and accountability. Since launch January 2021, instructors have already sold over $1 million worth of courses on Maven. The startup is already working with a diverse set of creators who have built courses on a widely ranging set of topics: How to become an influencer, how to find a new job, trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and much more. With this new investment, I’ll be joining the company’s board and working with its team of startup veterans, led by Gagan Biyani, a repeat entrepreneur who previously co-founded Udemy.

Maven is working on an important problem that resonates in a deeply personal way: I think of some of the most critical decisions and projects I’ve worked on over the years — from buying a house, picking a career, trying to make it in a new industry — and think about all the generous advisors and mentors who taught me their hard-won knowledge. I wish that this knowledge was even more universally available, with teachers and fellow students to join me on the journey. Many of these topics are important but either niche, too fast-changing, or not academic enough, and so they are never taught in university. Instead we all have to piece them together by searching online, reading hundreds of articles, and watching an endless number of videos. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience!

It’s the perfect time to take on this market. Maven taps into the huge number of online creators — these are people who are experts, creators, and practitioners that have valuable knowledge, and are motivated to share it with their audience. Yet for deep topics that require teaching, a disjointed set of videos aren’t enough. Nor are basic forums or chat groups. If you’re like me and have had to teach yourself a wide range of new things online, you know that the existing options are fragmented and weak. No wonder traditional approaches, like Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), have a 3-7% completion rate.

Here are a few of the reasons I like marketplace business:

• They can create magical value propositions for their users, be they two-sided (e.g., eBay connecting buyers to sellers) or three-sided networks (e.g., Instacart connecting shoppers to grocery stores and picking/delivery gig workers). If you’re looking for a hard-to-find item like a Playstation 5, check eBay (the seller will appreciate it). If you want groceries delivered to your home on demand in a very cost efficient manner, open the Instacart app (both the grocery store and the gig worker will appreciate it).

• They can provide economic empowerment at massive scale. eBay currently has annualized GMV of $100B globally, and AirBnB has annualized gross bookings of $41B globally. The strong majority of both figures end up being paid out to their community of sellers and hosts, respectively, helping millions of individuals around the world earn a better living.

• If they work, they tend to develop network effects. The more restaurants OpenTable added, the more valuable they became to consumers. And the more consumers used OpenTable, the easier it was to attract restaurants. These network effects drive increasing returns to scale and create defensibility barriers for the business.