Market Prospects for Russian IT Startups

    Last week, a round table was held at the Rossiyskaya Gazeta press center to discuss such an urgent issue for market participants as to how good a way to copy successful Western projects is, or, to put it more broadly, what is the path of Russia's development in terms of innovative development and will we ever be able to get closer to the States in terms of creating new, not commodity and trading, but IT projects.

    From our company at the meeting was Tatyana Tsvetkova, we want to share her story about the event with you.

    Of course, at the meeting there were both those who defended the idea of ​​copying - for example, Wikimart, who completely repeats the idea of ​​Stanford University, and those who go their own way, and such an idea as copying is not relevant for them at all - 1C.

    The question was raised why in our country there are so few who are capable of creating their own project. And here a lot of criticism came primarily from the training system.

    According to Alexander Galitsky, in universities, incl. technical, the level of education is declining sharply, since there are no orders from the defense industry, which previously allowed to grow good personnel. In the absence of "techies" breakthroughs in terms of serious ideas, waiting is becoming increasingly difficult.

    Partially, the representatives of Skolkovo also see the problem in education, who, as you know, had their own solution - attracting the Massachusetts University of Technology. To attract Western teachers to keep abreast of trends - indeed, this can somewhat improve the situation.

    Our company is also fully aware of the importance of the problem that in Russia it’s not that there are very few entrepreneurs in spirit, but very few professional employees who are responsible for the result, are not lazy and are ready to work with full dedication to “raise” the startup - all these things not “vaccinated” at the institute level.
    To some extent, all new specialists have to be retrained: despite the fact that the market of Internet specialists is large, the quality of their training is very poor.
    The problem is especially obvious at events with startup presentations: there are good ideas, but there are no good teams at all.

    Another problem is that there is no access to Western, large investments. To get into the field of view of these investors, one must either be in that “party”, i.e. finish Stanford, or go directly to them with a great idea and team, which, obviously, is not entirely realistic.

    What to do? Here everyone had their own answer and it usually came down to "what we do."

    1C suggests developing your own product and growing local franchise entrepreneurs.

    It was also proposed to make Russia attractive to the “minds” —that it would be interesting to come to Western specialists.

    Nobody expects state support from the state (and this is not particularly necessary), but what is really needed is the wide coverage of success stories of Russian IT companies. A significant event for the entire industry - IPO Mail.Ru and Yandex - was covered in the media, but the top officials of the state did not "meet them at the airport with flowers", as is the case with athletes who won the competition. There is no propaganda for the mass audience that the Internet and IT are cool, but it really is!

    Express your opinion: what do you agree with and what are you ready to call into question? Or maybe you have your own thoughts on this?

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