December 16, 2010 at 12:16Impressions from TechCrunch Moscow
December 13 I happened to be the first Russian conference Techcrunch - TechCrunch Moscow 2010 .
The main topic of the conference was a discussion of the attractiveness of domestic IT products for investors and the specifics of the Russian Internet market as a whole.
The format of the event was very original - an interview. All the guests on the stage answered the questions of the hosts, Mike Butcher and Emma Barnett , thereby replacing the usual reports with lively discussion in the “question-answer” mode.
In addition, it is worth noting that the official language of the event was English, which some speakers wanted to neglect. I will tell about this and many other things under a cat.
The Moscow conference was distinguished from its European counterparts by the presence of high-ranking officials - Presidential Advisor Arkady Dvorkovich and Communications Minister Igor Shchegolev, who behaved very naturally and were happy to answer questions from participants.
The first to answer the questions of the inimitable Emma Barnett was honored by Arkady Volozh - the general director of Yandex .
From an interesting story, Arkady said that Yandex is starting to look for startups. So, on September 1, with the help of Glavstart, they bought a metro map for the iPhone. The next such joint event they are going to hold in December.
When asked if Yandex is going to make its own social network (like Orcutat Google ), Arkady answered in the negative, adding that this is not necessary, since they are friends with all existing ones and this is enough.
The main priorities of Yandex for 2011:
Next, developers from ZeptoLab were invited to create Cut The Rope .
Semen and Efim Voinovy are a digital graphics artist and programmer, respectively. The brothers worked in different companies and came together to create their popular project. So was born Cut The Rope .
After developing graphics and sound, Semyon, Efim, and other ZeptoLab employees chose a publisher - one of the most successful Chillingo companies in the App Store. In the first week, more than a million users downloaded their game, and at the time of the conference, the number exceeded 3 million.
The guys showed a very cool video of their game using a fan song about the game:
When asked about the popularity of the game, the guys answered: “ Most iPhone and iPad users are absolutely indifferent to what kind of graphics the game has: two- or three-dimensional. The main thing is to play fun . ”
The next invited guests were Damian Doberstein from KupiVIP.ru (who came from Germany to conquer the Runet) and Kirill Makharinsky from Ostrovok.ru (who returned to Russia after studying at Oxford and creating YouNoodle ), who were interviewed, attention, Anton Borisovich Nosik!
Anton Borisovich began with the words: “ I'm speaking from my heart ”, quoting the latest “successes”our sports minister, and in the end joked that he lives in the suburbs and on the opposite side of Moscow from Skolkovo.
Both respondents explained why creating startups and starting a business is better in Russia. Damian said that in Germany everyone wants to work in a big company (Nosik jokes about socialism), and in Russia to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial sentiment is very strong in Russia. Elena Masolova ( addventure , darberry ), Pavel Durov *, Dmitry Stavinsky ( EverNote ) discussed the
topic “What do Russia need - clones or original startups?” * Of course, one of the main disappointments of the conference is the absence of Pavel Durov. Many came to listen to him, but alas.
Without exception, everyone should remember the bright and very energetic speech of Elena Masolova. In her opinion, there is nothing wrong with copying successful projects. Her Darberry project, which is known to be an exact copy of the Groupon website, was cited as an example .
Dmitry Stavisky did not agree with Elena, saying that creating a clone could result in a struggle with his prototype, where the balance of power will most likely not be in your favor.
Emma Barnett was already bored, it was time to interview Dmitry Grishin, with its "success story of Mail.ru ». In my opinion, this was the most interesting discussion in the entire conference.
Dmitry made the whole audience smile, describing one popular game, the principle of which is conflict: “ You were killed in the game, you go and buy powerful weapons and complete revenge. Your opponent buys an even more powerful weapon and again kills you. Then you call your friends ... ”
Speaking about Mail.ru , it was said that the main goal now is to make an integrated communicator by combining mail, messenger and social network. And in the future - to add more entertainment to this mix. The main competitors of Mail.ru, Grishin considers Facebook and Yandex abroad and in Russia, respectively.
Successful IPOs on the London Stock Exchange were also not ignored. This is an excellent move to attract the attention of foreign investors to the Runet and an opportunity to increase Russia's authority in the eyes of specialists who treat us with distrust.
Dmitry ended his interview with plans for social networks, which at least slightly offset the absence of Vkontakte No. 1. Mail.ru owns 50% of Odnoklassnikov and 25% of VKontakte . Now the market is growing, and all networks (including My World ) are developing well and gaining users. In the future , Mail.ru will unite these networks, making it possible to communicate with Odnoklassniki through Vkontakte , for example.
Toward the end of the conference, an interesting incident occurred. Anatoly Karachinsky, speaking with Demyan Kudryavtsev on the topic “What to expect from online media?” , Spoke Russian, and, asking how many people do not know Russian in the hall, he asked those two unfortunates who responded to give headphones so that they don’t spend time translating. Ten minutes later, the presenter, Mike, recalled that hundreds of foreigners are watching the broadcast online and still asked me to translate them in a live broadcast. As a result, Anatoly became the hero of all the jokes and jokes on Twitter.
Toward the close of the event Arkady Moreynis ( Glavstart ) in his extravagant manner held the “ Startup Battle". The main prize was boxing gloves signed by Morenis himself, Arkady Volozh and Mike Butcher and Dmitry Grishin. It is worth saying that all startups went through a tough selection and there were definitely no “leftists” in this battle.
1. Glavbot ( www.glavbot.ru ) - a project dedicated to the implementation of augmented reality technologies in web games.
Great presentation. The guys even brought a typewriter to demonstrate.
2. Yam ( www.yamlabs.com ) - a platform for collecting information during rallies to record the progress and decisions made.
Through open protocols integrates with Outlook and Google calendar. They plan to take over the world through integration into existing successful tools such as skype.
3. Speak to it ( www.speaktoit.com ) - an open and flexible platform that allows you to accept requests, while answering in a natural language.
Normal presentation. I don’t remember anything.
4. ActioTV ( www.actio.tv ) - interactive video. You can click on the elements, which leads to a branching plot and user involvement.
The main theme of the presentation is Evolution vs Revolution. While hypertext (html) was a text revolution, ActioTV is a video revolution.
They offered a free editor for creating interactive video with support for Flash, SilverLight and HTML5.
They had the most “adult” presentation, excellent slide design. The guys have existed for a long time and it is strange to position them as a startup. They didn’t meet the time and really didn’t want to leave the stage, “One more slide ...”.
5. Social Catcher ( www.socialcatcher.com ) - a service that automatically builds a wish-list for accounts on social networks.
Service was developed a year. Already have a website and application on Facebook. Soon they will finish the widget for online stores, which will prompt you what you want to buy.
Mike Butcher checked the service after the presentation and he was shown the book "How to make good presentations." The speaker said that this is rather what he himself needs :)
6. Zingaya ( www.zingaya.com ) - a button on the site for customers. By clicking on it, they can call the support service from the browser for free. The call is broadcast to skype / phone / sip.
They claim that they are better than competitors because of the quality of sound transmission. A chip in using the hidden features of Flash.
7. Speech cloud ( speechcloud.com, launch in 2011) - building a text index on video and audio files. Later you can search for any textual, information and the system will find in which file and in what place they talked about it.
The guys keep the team of major developers a secret so that they are not lured :)
8. Goozzy ( www.goozzy.com ) - a meta-Internet project that was written about in Habré.
At the beginning of the speech, the speaker tweeted from the stage.
Energy did not leave anyone indifferent, and all of the jury expressed their opinion. Mike Butcher said sarcastically that this is more a feature than a company.
9. Mixxmuse ( www.mixxmuse.com) - iPad application for creating mixes from samples with an original interface.
Half of the presentation was taken by a video of how they made a hip-hop mix with this thing. The guys claim that they are going to create a new way to sell music, break it into pieces and sell it as tracks.
According to the results of the vote, the jury defeated MixxMuse .
In conclusion, I want to say that the first international conference TechCrunch Moscow 2010 was held at a very high level. Among the advantages I want to note:
Who else was with Habr? How do you like it?
The main topic of the conference was a discussion of the attractiveness of domestic IT products for investors and the specifics of the Russian Internet market as a whole.
The format of the event was very original - an interview. All the guests on the stage answered the questions of the hosts, Mike Butcher and Emma Barnett , thereby replacing the usual reports with lively discussion in the “question-answer” mode.
In addition, it is worth noting that the official language of the event was English, which some speakers wanted to neglect. I will tell about this and many other things under a cat.
The Moscow conference was distinguished from its European counterparts by the presence of high-ranking officials - Presidential Advisor Arkady Dvorkovich and Communications Minister Igor Shchegolev, who behaved very naturally and were happy to answer questions from participants.
The first to answer the questions of the inimitable Emma Barnett was honored by Arkady Volozh - the general director of Yandex .
From an interesting story, Arkady said that Yandex is starting to look for startups. So, on September 1, with the help of Glavstart, they bought a metro map for the iPhone. The next such joint event they are going to hold in December.
When asked if Yandex is going to make its own social network (like Orcutat Google ), Arkady answered in the negative, adding that this is not necessary, since they are friends with all existing ones and this is enough.
The main priorities of Yandex for 2011:
- Search Improvement;
- Search personalization (query history);
- Capture of the Ukrainian and Belarusian markets.
Next, developers from ZeptoLab were invited to create Cut The Rope .
Semen and Efim Voinovy are a digital graphics artist and programmer, respectively. The brothers worked in different companies and came together to create their popular project. So was born Cut The Rope .
After developing graphics and sound, Semyon, Efim, and other ZeptoLab employees chose a publisher - one of the most successful Chillingo companies in the App Store. In the first week, more than a million users downloaded their game, and at the time of the conference, the number exceeded 3 million.
The guys showed a very cool video of their game using a fan song about the game:
When asked about the popularity of the game, the guys answered: “ Most iPhone and iPad users are absolutely indifferent to what kind of graphics the game has: two- or three-dimensional. The main thing is to play fun . ”
The next invited guests were Damian Doberstein from KupiVIP.ru (who came from Germany to conquer the Runet) and Kirill Makharinsky from Ostrovok.ru (who returned to Russia after studying at Oxford and creating YouNoodle ), who were interviewed, attention, Anton Borisovich Nosik!
Anton Borisovich began with the words: “ I'm speaking from my heart ”, quoting the latest “successes”our sports minister, and in the end joked that he lives in the suburbs and on the opposite side of Moscow from Skolkovo.
Both respondents explained why creating startups and starting a business is better in Russia. Damian said that in Germany everyone wants to work in a big company (Nosik jokes about socialism), and in Russia to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial sentiment is very strong in Russia. Elena Masolova ( addventure , darberry ), Pavel Durov *, Dmitry Stavinsky ( EverNote ) discussed the
topic “What do Russia need - clones or original startups?” * Of course, one of the main disappointments of the conference is the absence of Pavel Durov. Many came to listen to him, but alas.
Without exception, everyone should remember the bright and very energetic speech of Elena Masolova. In her opinion, there is nothing wrong with copying successful projects. Her Darberry project, which is known to be an exact copy of the Groupon website, was cited as an example .
Dmitry Stavisky did not agree with Elena, saying that creating a clone could result in a struggle with his prototype, where the balance of power will most likely not be in your favor.
Emma Barnett was already bored, it was time to interview Dmitry Grishin, with its "success story of Mail.ru ». In my opinion, this was the most interesting discussion in the entire conference.
Dmitry made the whole audience smile, describing one popular game, the principle of which is conflict: “ You were killed in the game, you go and buy powerful weapons and complete revenge. Your opponent buys an even more powerful weapon and again kills you. Then you call your friends ... ”
Speaking about Mail.ru , it was said that the main goal now is to make an integrated communicator by combining mail, messenger and social network. And in the future - to add more entertainment to this mix. The main competitors of Mail.ru, Grishin considers Facebook and Yandex abroad and in Russia, respectively.
Successful IPOs on the London Stock Exchange were also not ignored. This is an excellent move to attract the attention of foreign investors to the Runet and an opportunity to increase Russia's authority in the eyes of specialists who treat us with distrust.
Dmitry ended his interview with plans for social networks, which at least slightly offset the absence of Vkontakte No. 1. Mail.ru owns 50% of Odnoklassnikov and 25% of VKontakte . Now the market is growing, and all networks (including My World ) are developing well and gaining users. In the future , Mail.ru will unite these networks, making it possible to communicate with Odnoklassniki through Vkontakte , for example.
Toward the end of the conference, an interesting incident occurred. Anatoly Karachinsky, speaking with Demyan Kudryavtsev on the topic “What to expect from online media?” , Spoke Russian, and, asking how many people do not know Russian in the hall, he asked those two unfortunates who responded to give headphones so that they don’t spend time translating. Ten minutes later, the presenter, Mike, recalled that hundreds of foreigners are watching the broadcast online and still asked me to translate them in a live broadcast. As a result, Anatoly became the hero of all the jokes and jokes on Twitter.
Toward the close of the event Arkady Moreynis ( Glavstart ) in his extravagant manner held the “ Startup Battle". The main prize was boxing gloves signed by Morenis himself, Arkady Volozh and Mike Butcher and Dmitry Grishin. It is worth saying that all startups went through a tough selection and there were definitely no “leftists” in this battle.
1. Glavbot ( www.glavbot.ru ) - a project dedicated to the implementation of augmented reality technologies in web games.
Great presentation. The guys even brought a typewriter to demonstrate.
2. Yam ( www.yamlabs.com ) - a platform for collecting information during rallies to record the progress and decisions made.
Through open protocols integrates with Outlook and Google calendar. They plan to take over the world through integration into existing successful tools such as skype.
3. Speak to it ( www.speaktoit.com ) - an open and flexible platform that allows you to accept requests, while answering in a natural language.
Normal presentation. I don’t remember anything.
4. ActioTV ( www.actio.tv ) - interactive video. You can click on the elements, which leads to a branching plot and user involvement.
The main theme of the presentation is Evolution vs Revolution. While hypertext (html) was a text revolution, ActioTV is a video revolution.
They offered a free editor for creating interactive video with support for Flash, SilverLight and HTML5.
They had the most “adult” presentation, excellent slide design. The guys have existed for a long time and it is strange to position them as a startup. They didn’t meet the time and really didn’t want to leave the stage, “One more slide ...”.
5. Social Catcher ( www.socialcatcher.com ) - a service that automatically builds a wish-list for accounts on social networks.
Service was developed a year. Already have a website and application on Facebook. Soon they will finish the widget for online stores, which will prompt you what you want to buy.
Mike Butcher checked the service after the presentation and he was shown the book "How to make good presentations." The speaker said that this is rather what he himself needs :)
6. Zingaya ( www.zingaya.com ) - a button on the site for customers. By clicking on it, they can call the support service from the browser for free. The call is broadcast to skype / phone / sip.
They claim that they are better than competitors because of the quality of sound transmission. A chip in using the hidden features of Flash.
7. Speech cloud ( speechcloud.com, launch in 2011) - building a text index on video and audio files. Later you can search for any textual, information and the system will find in which file and in what place they talked about it.
The guys keep the team of major developers a secret so that they are not lured :)
8. Goozzy ( www.goozzy.com ) - a meta-Internet project that was written about in Habré.
At the beginning of the speech, the speaker tweeted from the stage.
Energy did not leave anyone indifferent, and all of the jury expressed their opinion. Mike Butcher said sarcastically that this is more a feature than a company.
9. Mixxmuse ( www.mixxmuse.com) - iPad application for creating mixes from samples with an original interface.
Half of the presentation was taken by a video of how they made a hip-hop mix with this thing. The guys claim that they are going to create a new way to sell music, break it into pieces and sell it as tracks.
According to the results of the vote, the jury defeated MixxMuse .
In conclusion, I want to say that the first international conference TechCrunch Moscow 2010 was held at a very high level. Among the advantages I want to note:
- Venue . The Digital October technology park, which has invested about $ 10 million, has become a great venue for a conference of this magnitude.
- Great organization . No queues for registration, delicious food and no problems with accommodation.
- Leading . Mike Butcher and Emma Barnett made up a very organic tandem.
- The public . As Damian Doberstein said in his interview, “In Germany everyone wants to work in a big company, and in Russia to be an entrepreneur.” TechCrunch Moscow was visited by just such Russians.
Who else was with Habr? How do you like it?