history of the company

    At the beginning there was a startup


    The story of Esprito began on February 28, 2009, when Vlad , Vanya and Misha gathered in an apartment converted into an office to discuss the creation of a social network for scientists. As befits the first endeavor, the project failed ...

    Firstly, we lacked technical training. I was the main developer and at the same time for the first time I learned about the existence of frameworks. Version control systems, tools for testing and automating application deployment - we came across all this for the first time and studied along the way. In the five months of the work of two or three programmers, we have done as much as I could now write in a few weeks of intensive work. However, my experience suggests that the technical component rarely becomes the main factor of failure. The team is learning, the company can always attract experienced specialists, the product can be rewritten from scratch and, most likely, it will have to be done at least once.

    Secondly, we lacked the involvement of one of the founders. We had a limited budget, so he was forced to devote part of his time to other work, and a startup is something that cannot be done half-heartedly.

    It is said that for start-ups, the only possible source of funding is “three F” (friends, family, and fools). In this case, these three Fs served us poorly. Due to the fact that relations with the investor were not strictly business and we did not have written agreements, he got the opportunity to influence us and, in the process, transformed our idea into a service for organizers of scientific conferences - not at all what we were going to do initially.

    Finally, we made the typical mistake of all novice entrepreneurs, we made many plans, thought through all kinds of improvements to our system, intending to reveal it to the world in all its splendor. But does the world need this? Steve Blank does not tire of repeating that the truth is not in your office, it is only outside the building, you need to go to your future users and customers and ask them what they need. You need to bring the product to the market as early as possible and see what users really want, and not in your head. Then we still did not know ...

    Summary


    In the first part I used a very big word - failure. In reality, the failure was only relative. Yes, we did not launch a social network for scientists, but we learned a lot, we got a team, the backbone of which is still preserved, and, most importantly, we understood what we want from work. We realized that we would never trade the spirit of working on our project for a job. Our friends counted the hours until the end of the working day, and we cursed with the guards of the business center for the right to work as much as we wanted. Acquaintances were surprised how so, you at all do not have a rest from work. But we chose a job from which we do not need to rest. We did what we liked, just like skiing, reading a book or going to the club. We did not work because we should, but because we wanted it.

    By the way, to understand how your work suits you is very simple. Ask yourself what would happen if you would be paid a salary every month without any obligations on your part. What would you do then? Unfortunately, too many would not have spent a minute on what they are doing forty hours a week.

    Sometimes they ask me incredulously that you never do what you don’t want? I do it. Sometimes I do something that would be better done on my own, without me. But I do it because it is necessary for my project, for the result that I want to see. And this is not at all the same as doing something in order to receive a salary at the end of the month.

    Innovation Club


    Having understood what we wanted to do, we did not want to remain isolated anymore, we wanted to communicate and share experiences with people who think like us. So the Club of Innovators appeared, which was supposed to bring together people interested in technology, entrepreneurship and innovation in a broad sense. By the way, we got great for innovation. For the majority, this word was abusive and was associated exclusively with officials telling on TV about the next grandiose project for cutting the budget.

    We held club meetings on our own, trying to find partners who would help us with the venue, coffee breaks or prizes. One of such partners was NRU ITMO and at some point we received an offer to move the whole team to the university.

    ITMO


    University means the state, and for many, one mention of any state structure immediately raises thoughts of a monstrous bureaucracy and a cut of money. I myself am a supporter of the diminution of the role of the state as an extremely inefficient system, and I am enthusiastically following various civic initiatives, for example, crowdfunding projects. At the same time, in a number of areas (eg basic science), the state remains the best source of financing. Since our activity was non-profit and aimed not at individual projects, but at the general development of infrastructure, public-private partnership seemed to us the best option.

    An important factor was the fact that ITMO is actively developing, and the disgrace that is happening at St. Petersburg State University, and which, as a university student, is painful to watch, is not happening there.

    Sumit


    Having received ITMO support, we first decided to organize SUMIT , which was then called the SumIT startup marathon, as an abbreviation for Summer and IT. We wanted to bring together programmers, designers, marketers and project managers, combine them into teams and provide fully equipped premises for two months, expecting that as a result of the event we will receive many new projects.

    As it is not difficult to guess, the idea turned out to be unviable. Projects do not arise out of nothing. It is necessary to work with existing and motivated teams, as well as to limit their number so that each can be given enough time. The next time the marathon turned into a startup school.

    Now


    Now we are preparing the next, for the fourth, school SUMIT. Each time, we increase its level and believe that this is the best program of its kind in St. Petersburg. However, there is still a lot of work ahead. We usually want to do a lot, but there are not enough resources, as a result, everything turns out somewhat messy, in a hurry and, as a result, the quality decreases. We are now focused on getting rid of this problem.

    SUMIT teaches not only our residents, but also ourselves. We constantly communicate with experts, investors and teams of new entrepreneurs. The accumulated knowledge allows us to effectively evaluate projects and serve as an intermediary between investors and projects. This is the second area of ​​our business.

    Watching the startup community in St. Petersburg, we noticed that he lacked thoroughness. We want to change this by introducing a scientific approach into the community. A scientific approach does not mean encyclopedic knowledge or complex formulas, it is rather a style of thinking. When a person asks questions, observes, makes assumptions, and then experiments and checks them to get a result. This approach is universal, whether it’s about biology, entrepreneurship or design: this is what Steve Blank will teach you in his Lean Startup course, and what Scott Klemer will talk about in Human-Computer Interaction.

    The second thing we want to focus on is diversity. A variety of people, ideas, projects. Therefore, we called the new project Scinergyas a compound of Science and Synergy. We will tell you more about the project in the near future.

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