YEES 2010 - Confederate Attack
New Hope
Last Saturday, April 17, two events occurred. The first is the ash clouds from a distant Icelandic volcano with an unpronounceable name that covered the business of European carriers, and the second, directly related to the IT industry, is the Russian Startup Challenge , where Finobox was one of the seven finalists . So, the scene is Moscow Business, the
Empire strikes back
On Habré hung a banner inviting web projects to attract investment. We received our invitation from the partners of the action - StartupPoint. The composition of the experts turned out to be quite interesting and paid special attention to Pavel Cherkashin, with whom we had already talked last fall. But in order to get into the Federation Tower of the Moscow City complex, one had to go through a selection. Filling out the application and sending it to the indicated address, we soon received a pleasant reply that the expert council chose Finobox and 6 more finalists from the 70 announced participants and we will be able to make a presentation before the Runet Guru.
After a couple of hours, on the evening of Tuesday, we received a call from the organizers who informed us that in order to participate in the final, we should undergo two trainings - “tomorrow and the day after tomorrow”. Given our remoteness from the center of the galaxy at 100 km, it was problematic to change all plans for the next two days. Everything was compounded by the uncertainty of the exact time. Doubts about the competence of the organizers began to creep in.
As a result, the organizers announced that the training on preparing the presentation will take place the day before the presentation - on Friday evening, at the Moscow School of Business.
The Return of the Jedi
The training was conducted by Andrey Zotov, already known to us by iCamp, held in the summer of 2009. In his report, he talked about the problem of startups and how to better build a presentation so that the project would interest investors. After that, taking into account the advice we received, we tweaked the presentation a bit. And since time was catastrophically short (Zotov logically noted that it was worth meeting much earlier), discussion and correction of the presentation went on the road.
Hidden threat
The pick-up time was set for 5 pm Saturday. Arriving at the place, we began to look for the entrance. At the pass office, the girl said that the guard has lists of participants around the corner. When we pronounced the name of the event, he made round eyes and tried to repeat what we said. He informed that only a certain forum “YEES” is being held here (you will never guess - {Your} Education Enables Success). The phone of one of the organizers monotonously reported that the subscriber was unavailable. By the second number we were informed that we were just on this “YES”. The guard, laughing and trying again to say "Startup Challenge", missed us.
We were not on the lists and the badges, of course, were signed by hand (looking ahead I’ll say that I didn’t see anyone with a printed badge). All this already caused an ironic smile.
After gliding around the empty corridors, enjoying the scenery of the filming pavilion of "our rush", we found ourselves in a conference room in which someone had already made his presentation.
Clone attack
Where to go, whom to give the presentation, what time we are speaking (what is going on) - there was no one to ask these questions. An hour later, at the time of the announcement that after the coffee break, the desired challenge would happen, we were still found by the girl to whom the presentation was given. We were the second.
The comments of Finobox experts have been quite controversial. And fighters for the purity of the Russian language could be torn apart on the spot by indignation (as during the whole event). I understand that sometimes you can use English words when it is appropriate and the audience is appropriate, but some statements by respected experts made me remember my sister, who has been living in Canada for more than 15 years and occasionally forgets Russian words. During the break (coffee break), the vice president of a Swiss bank approached us and quite successfully, although in a peculiar way, joked in Russian.
If we note the other projects, one of us was interested (we will use it ourselves), and the other, for example, caused a cultural shock - the idea of planting a bunch of people to recognize something was always perceived as an innovative Chinese joke. But jokes aside
But the most important thing is that I have a clear conviction that no one here even thought of investing in any project. And I can’t say that all projects were bad. These were still not bare ideas like “put a webcam in a birdhouse”. In general, our opinion was that the Russian Competition of Projects was like an appendage to fill the airtime.
Revenge of the Sith
Since a constructive conversation did not work out during the presentation, we decided to take the opportunity to socialize informally at an evening reception (aftepaaati) in the photo center. Lumiere brothers. And here we managed to make some interesting contacts with people who were interested in our project.
A glimpse of hope
In general, such events are probably quite useful. You can, of course, speculate about the unwillingness of a domestic investor to invest in IT projects and the profitability of driving oil tanks, but if you move in this (IT) direction, the results will certainly be.