24: War-Time Lessons Every Startup Leader Must Know with Roman Labunsky

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Roman Labunsky is the co-founder and CTO of an early-stage cybersecurity startup based in Israel.

In this episode, you're going to learn how Roman's experience leading a military tech unit during wartime shaped his approach to building resilient teams and processes. You will discover strategies for managing onboarding and handovers under extreme constraints, the value of starting simple to scale effectively, and why clear communication and adaptability are key to succeeding in high-pressure environments.

Roman is the CTO and co-founder of a cybersecurity startup specializing in third-party risk management. He is 40 years old, married and a father to a 2-year-old girl. Roman lives in Israel with his family and two dogs.

He has been in the tech industry for over two decades, holding various engineering roles including software developer, team lead and software architect in both startups and enterprises across the security space. Between 2017 and 2023, he served as VP of R&D for a startup in the Kubernetes security space, where he led the company through growth and eventual closure when funding ran out.

Over the past year, Roman co-founded and served as CTO of a technological military unit in the Israeli Defense Force. With the unit now firmly established, he is focusing on his startup.



Timestamps:

[03:00] Roman’s journey into tech leadership

[05:20] Building a new military tech unit

[07:35] Early challenges in a high-stakes environment

[09:56] Adapting to military operations during wartime

[12:10] Overcoming bureaucratic barriers for faster delivery

[14:54] Managing short-term volunteers effectively

[17:07] Why traditional onboarding didn’t work

[18:13] The role of documentation in smooth transitions

[20:07] Setting a two-day onboarding goal

[22:23] Standardizing processes for efficiency

[24:18] The importance of automation for rapid delivery

[26:30] Navigating bureaucracy as the war progressed

[27:54] Conducting offboarding interviews for improvements

[30:37] Challenges of leading large-scale projects

[31:54] Starting simple with team structures

[34:24] Avoiding imported processes and frameworks

[35:10] The reality of rewriting code in early startups

[36:58] Streamlining recruitment for large-scale hiring

[39:26] Balancing risk and speed in recruitment

[42:33] Choosing tools that teams will actually use

[45:07] Delegating decisions to the teams

[46:43] Fixing breakages instead of overplanning

[48:12] Importance of communication for alignment

Connect with Roman on LinkedIn.

Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube and check out Adam's CTO coaching company Synova Tech.