Captain of a sailing yacht, professor Dmitry Repin

    Dmitry Repin is the organizer of the BIT contest and the StartInGarage educational program , the head of the business incubator of the Higher School of Economics , professor and teacher of the Behavioral Finance course. He is also a certified yacht captain and organizer of the eXtrepreneurship program , whose participants learn entrepreneurship right while sailing on a modern sailing yacht or catamaran.

    Techhh! , thanks to friends from StartupIndex Investment Agency, managed to get to know Dmitry better and conducted an interview, during which he found out everything about eXtrepreneurship and other, as it turned out, equally interesting projects, as well as why we still do not have our own Google in Russia, from which place start making silicone valleys and how domestic business angels differ from American ones.

    What is the main motivation of the project teams to participate in BIT - in addition to receiving $ 20 thousand for the first place?

    If you ask the winners, no one will say that this money somehow radically changed his business. It even happened that this money was taken for a very long time - almost a year. First of all, for projects it is a kind of PR. They fall into a kind of spotlight, they all learn about them, everyone wants to interview them, investors resort to them with offers. Within BIT, projects are growing. You come, and you have the opportunity to participate in parties and communicate with experienced people and experts. And through this participation you grow, gain professionalism, understand how you better structure your business, find people and resources.

    There you convince yourself and other people that this is a worthwhile business. That is, the task is to bring the project to such a state that it will be attractive to third parties who will be ready to share resources with you. Of course, the most beautiful business is built without attracting external money. Because external money is pretty hard. Another question is that it is now very difficult to build a serious business without them. And the motto of BIT, which has been preserved from the very first competition, is "make the investor believe in you."

    Question about Extrepreneurship ...

    Yes, this is my favorite topic.

    A very interesting format of entrepreneurship training is on yachts. Tell me how it all goes.

    We are recruiting a small group - due to the fact that the yacht does not allow to drag a lot of people there. Maximum 6 people plus two instructors. And for a week we conduct training in the format of live cases - that is, we put people in different situations: sometimes unexpected, sometimes modeled, where certain qualities appear (or do not manifest). And in the process of such a game, the necessary skills often even begin to be developed. In general, for me it is a kind of lifestyle. I myself love yachts, so I manage to combine business with pleasure.

    Do people find you or do you collect them?

    I don’t do a lot of advertising. Before the new program, I made two small mailings of 30 people - those who were previously interested in the program and those who signed up for the group in contact. The next group is at the beginning of June and now it is almost staffed. As a rule, we select people who are quite entrepreneurially inclined, that is, they themselves do, have already done or are going to do some kind of projects.

    Do you plan to develop this further?

    Probably, the obvious development is a program for "adults", because now it is positioned for senior students and recent graduates. It is called "101", and the new one will be "301". A program for those already more serious people, professionals who also consider entrepreneurship as an opportunity to develop their careers. It will differ primarily in the elements of training.

    I also plan to participate in the organization of a summer entrepreneurship school in St. Petersburg this summer. And, if everything goes according to plan, then there will also be yachts for entrepreneurs. I hope that there it will be possible to take at least a couple of yachts and drive along the Gulf of Finland.

    There was also an idea to rent Kruzenshtern and make an educational program on entrepreneurship on it.

    Yes, ambitious ... And how difficult is it to drag foreign specialists to such events?

    I thought about it. Some people ask me why we should not become a multinational team, for example, to drag someone from MIT. Of course, this is possible, but the logistics are much more complicated. There is still a language barrier. According to the experience of yachting trips, the lack of a common language, with which everyone feels comfortable, hampers greatly. Therefore, so far at this stage there are no such plans.

    In Russia there is money, there are educational programs, there are minds and ideas. Why do you think we still do not have our own Google or Microsoft?

    We have ideas, programs, and people who are trying to build money, but this is very fragmented, and there is no environment or community like Harvard, MIT or Silicon Valley, where there are a lot of these people and they are all professional. Now if we try in our country to count the people who made 1-2 startups and successfully sold them, then there will be only a few.

    If you look at the American ecosystem, you will see many experts and literate people, a huge amount of money, universities and everything else. There are more people and each specific element of the ecosystem is more professional.
    Speaking of silicone valleys. When will we have our Palo Alto?

    In most cases, they try to create silicone valleys on the completely wrong side. Everyone starts with beautiful walls and offices, but you need to start from the head.

    Actually, our incubator at the HSE is a vivid example of this. We have the smallest incubator of all: we huddle in two rooms, we have only 10 jobs. We have been visited by three teams, and all of them are successful.

    That is, the main thing is exactly which side you are coming from. If you build the right principles, motivate people correctly, give them some guidelines, then they begin to create a good company. If you promote some controversial values, establish strict rules and operate on stereotypes, then good people will not go there.

    As an entrepreneur, I have experience with investors, and I have the (possibly erroneous) impression that they often simply do not own their investment technology.

    Of course not, she has nowhere to get it from.

    In the West, most venture capitalists “grow out” of venture capitalists. In Russia, as a rule, investors are the owners of a traditional business, which brings them constant income and generates free funds. Perhaps because of this, people think completely differently?

    Yes, they think silently in other categories. Our angels are very different from the angels of American, European or, for example, Kuwaiti. They get into business management very much, because they simply don’t see an entrepreneur in front of them, with whom they would feel comfortable trusting him with their money.

    That is, the investor will not always believe that in front of him is a person who is quite competent in terms of business management, who can easily manage money, grow a company, and at the same time, the investor will not have to get into this business. In America, just the opposite is true. An angel is such a passive investor who gave money and went on to pursue his interesting business.

    - from here

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