Accelerator QIWI Universe. Start

    Hello, Habr! We are the QIWI Universe team. Our project is a joint acceleration program of QIWI and the Business Incubator of Moscow State University. For a long time it was necessary to do this, but hands reached only now, so let's get acquainted.

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    Once we thought: how can we make the world a better place? The answer was beautiful in its simplicity: to improve the world, you need to improve yourself and help others grow. So we determined our goal - to find first-class innovative projects in the field of IT and help them in development. We have assembled a team of enthusiastic specialists and have taken decisive action. This was not the first acceleration set for the MSU Business Incubator, they have been producing excellent startups for several years now. But for QIWI - this is a completely new interesting format of work.

    Most of all, we were interested in projects from Big Data, financial technologies, e-Commerce and m-Commerce, services for user identification, virtual and augmented reality. However, we were pleased with any other IT projects. The most important condition for participation was the presence of a breakthrough and captivating idea together with a desire to bring it to life.

    There were two ways to get into the program: by participating in a hackathon or by applying directly. The first method was more suitable for those who had great ideas, but did not have like-minded people, the second - for the existing teams. In early summer, we held a series of regional hackathons in Moscow, Minsk, Kazan and Novosibirsk. The events were attended by about 600 participants who presented more than 180 projects. Then, during the direct selection, we watched more than 300. After the winners of the hackathons and those who presented a successful idea directly, they got into the finals with pitches, meetings and other fun.

    As a result, we selected twelve winning projects. 4 of them are already mature and are kept a big secret by us, but we will talk about the rest in our blog here. They all have an incredibly complex but interesting way to realize their ideas. And teachers and mentors from among experts and experienced entrepreneurs of the Russian and foreign IT markets help them in this entertaining process.

    What about the buns, you ask? We tell! In addition to expertise, mentors and development assistance, each accelerator participating project received an investment of $ 20,000 and the opportunity to work productively in the QIWI Universe Loft coworking program specially created for Nagatinskaya.

    Work on projects is in full swing: classes on the Lean Startup concept and business models, Agile development, product metrics, as well as training on design, SMM, contextual advertising and networking have already been completed. In all these activities, the involvement of teams is important to us, therefore we only call practitioners, and all cases are sorted out directly on the projects of our participants. Each week, the accelerator hosts meetings with top managers of QIWI and large Russian IT companies, which share experience and increase the motivation of residents. And also every Thursday and Friday the guys have reporting sessions in the course of work, where curators from the MSU Business Incubator correct, consult and direct, being actually part of the team of each project.

    Here we will talk about how the gradual transformation of cool ideas into a real and effective working business. The children will share the joys and difficulties that the newly-minted startup faces, as well as how to overcome them and how to draw valuable experience out of difficulties. Go!

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