Difficult START. The story of one grant

    In early 2011, we were advised to take part in a competition for a grant under the START program of the Fund for Assistance to the Development of Small Forms of Enterprises in the Scientific and Technical Field (Bortnik Fund). The grant amount is 1 million rubles.

    Having estimated strength, we decided to try, in January 2011 we prepared the documentation, passed the selection, received a grant for our startup Rizzoma.com . Within 1.5 years, we received from the fund 875 thousand rubles, the last 125 on the way.

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    Analysis of the correlation of hemorrhoids and the benefits of work under the grant for the program START 2011



    If Tomsk, there will be no money. Already sawn

    The first condition of the competition was to fill out an application on the site www.fasie.ru , the application itself is filled out on a special section of the site: all.fasie-online.ru

    Filling out an application includes filling out several hundred fields, including text descriptions and a choice of categories to which the project belongs. After the application was sent, it was necessary to present the draft commission. We made a bet that all projects will bring precedence to Power Point and quickly bother them with the commission, which will eventually doze. Therefore, we decided to make a video. We showed this video here:



    The idea worked, and we were on the list of winners. Then, in a magical way, we were awarded an application as a St. Petersburg startup, and on the budget we belonged to Tomsk. The fact is that in our application the address of the company, the address of the founder and the address where the application was submitted were in three different cities. In Tomsk, everything was already cut, and we were removed from the list of winners.

    We thought we lost a grant. But then it suddenly turns out that our project really sunk into the soul of one of the commission members who watched the video. They contacted us and called for START 2011-2. It was necessary to re-execute all the documents, only in a slightly different format, with a lot of minor differences. Moreover, the application format was alike, but very different in particulars. It was necessary to send it in the form of MS Word to several places at once and with each agree on different details of the application.

    You can see one of the snapshots of our application in Google Docs. Please note that since then the rules have changed 10 times, so the application is more of historical value.

    Now to the issue of intellectual property. If your startup is going to grow further, receive normal investments and enter the market, then all the same, intellectual property will need to be correctly registered, that is, everything will be redone. You can write to all questions of the foundation what will be done within three months, and then you just have to do with an “know-how” order ( order template ) and you don’t need anything else. By the way, RosPil appealed the requirements of the fund to the FAS and now nothing of this is needed . I wonder if the Fund knows about it.

    The signing of the state contract. Dictatorship of Accountants

    In theory, a government contract should be based on the winning bid. In practice, we were presented with a bunch of comments regarding the wording, and the opinions of different coordinators often differed. The application had to be agreed with three different people from the Fund, each of whom had his own view on the correct wording.

    Constantly it was necessary to keep in touch by phone with the curator of the project. It is difficult to reach the curator, the curators do not like long conversations, they often interrupt the conversation without solving the issue. You could spend half a day working with a curator. As a result, the resolution of a minor issue could take half a working day.

    With further interaction, it became clear that among other bureaucrats, accountants play a key role in the fund. The retroactive signing of a contract is a good example of what the dictatorship of accountants turns into in practice. For them, it looks like a favor to us (they say so). And for us - the receipt of money on August 30, the requirement to report for them in July, as well as a statement to postpone the deadline for “some reason” that they themselves can’t come up with. And we must coordinate this postponement with different departments of the Fund.

    And there may also be a transfer of the contract to another curator, who has his own comments on the project.
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    The Start Fund, in our opinion, would be perfect for the continuation of "Monday begins on Saturday" by the Strugatsky or the lesser-known "Tales of the Three".

    Reporting The experience of minimizing hemorrhoids

    Formally, the money is paid according to the results of the implemented stages, according to the state contract. Each stage is closed by a report. The Foundation does not have the slightest understanding of what a startup is. Therefore, if you happen to pass such a report, then do not even try to write that something has changed in your plans. It is important to understand that the Fund needs Kantian reports-in-itself. Just to be. Each report is written under the relevant clauses of the terms of reference for the contract. The key requirement of the fund is that reports should be ready to be turned into primary documentation for accounting entries.

    In practice, the ideology of reporting is very simple. See wording of TK. An example of a possible wording is: "Development of technical specifications for appointment management tools." Next, this name is taken and broken into pieces in some way, for example like this:
    • development of the first part of the technical task: basic purposes
    • development of the second part of the technical specifications: additional purposes
    • development of the third part of the technical task: black assignments (well, or green).


    After the task is divided into several points, it needs to be filled in with various associations on the project topic and summarized in the title. Then add some screenshots and pieces of code. When we submitted the report without pieces of code, it agreed longer. So do not be afraid of code, you can put several pages of code at once. In addition, the report contains pieces: introduction and conclusion. They are best done after everything else is ready.

    How are reports checked? The subject area of ​​what your startup does is of no interest to the Fund. You should not expect any opinion or comments on this matter. In our experience: “Only the beginning and end of the report are seriously checked, therefore, after the report is ready, you need to pay attention to these points and write the related text there, which will be in good agreement with the wording in the statement of work.” Cansee report 1.2 on our project (GDocs).

    The next portion of money is transferred only after reports for the period have been submitted.

    The net benefit from the grant is 25k rubles per month

    The key point of the contract for IT projects is that the main cost item should be salary. That is, it turns out that, taking into account all taxes of a million rubles of living money, only 600 thousand.

    The economy here is as follows. Tranches go in portions of 125 thousand for two reports. At approximately equal intervals. That is, 40 thousand live money per month. If you take into account the costs of paperwork (the schedule is above), then the inflow of money can be estimated at 25 thousand per month.

    In addition to money, there are no benefits from participating in the Start program. The points:
    • as we have already noted, the Fund does not have any adequate expertise in the IT sector.
    • project start grant has zero value in terms of PR. Investors do not give an eyebrow at the mention of the Fund. The Foundation itself does not advertise its prize winners and does not promote it anywhere.
    • The fund does not provide useful contacts and does not immerse into a useful environment.


    The money received under the grant amounted to 3% of the total amount of financing attracted to the project.

    Conclusion. You can contact the Fund if you have free time

    We have a lot of tasks related to writing texts. Therefore, start-up writers were involved in start-up reports instead of a trial period. And of course Max, who somehow leads all administrative matters. In our team, work with Start is perceived as conscription.

    So if you have as a whole solved the problem of financing the project, there is someone to borrow texts + experience in communicating with accountants, then you may need to go and participate in this program. If the task of attracting investment to the project is not solved, then it is better to direct forces to search for other sources.

    The market around Start is developing, and now there is a proposal on it to outsource all work with Start, while the startup receives a little less than a fifth of the grant amount.

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    R&D participants in the Start competition: Maxim, Semyon, Daniil and two Vladimirs, Olya was walking at the main job somewhere , so I didn’t get into the screenshot.

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