A mega event is to take place in May this year in the Hypercube at Skolkovo and on the territory around the building
The Skolkovo Foundation residents along with other innovators are its main heroes. Organizers also plan that venture investors, particularly those, who take part in the Slush at Helsinki and the Pioneers Festival at Vienna (many of them are already known by members of the Skolkovo community) are also coming to the venue.
The Sk.ru website correspondent asked a well-known entrepreneur, adviser of the Skolkovo Foundation President Pekka Viljakainen (Bulldozer), who in fact inspired and organized the event, to comment on it and disclose details of the Startup Village in May.
P. Viljakainen: “The May event has a purpose not to replicate, let’s say, the St. Petersburg Economic Forum or event of a scale like this, but to make an another innovation forum, copying the best practices of a real startup event. The stars of the event are startuppers themselves. And before this, in March and April we’ll have seventeen events in seventeen cities across Russia, including such far-away ones as Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok”.
Pekka Viljakainen addresses the Slush audience
“We’ll make them in cooperation with such Russian state organizations as the Ministry of Science and Education, Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, Ministry of Economic Development, as well as key development institutions: the Strategic Development Agency and the Russian Venture Company. We don’t only invite Skolkovo residents, but from each regional city we welcome five -to fifteen companies and projects. So, this May event isn’t only for Skolkovo startups but for all potential residents of the Innovation Center”.
The Hypercube opening event at Skolkovo
“It’s is a two days event and it will be split for industries like energy, IT with a great number of pitching sessions, like at Slush in Helsinki, for example. Companies in different stages, those searching for money and those searching for customers and clients are welcome. Our target is to see about 2.500 people, 1.500 of them actual startups, and we’d like to see some 500 students there. Student, interested to know about entrepreneurship, are also important. And we also invite about 300 investors and, let’s say, around 200 other people – this is the split”.
“There won’t be so much of formal speeches, like big panel sessions with thousand people listening, but people will rather meet each other in pavilions built around the Hypercube. Only about 500 people will be insight, while an entire village of startuppers is to appear outside the building. And as far as it will take place in May, many will be outside. It will look like a big outdoor rock concert, a rock concert of startups.
the Pioneers Festival teams
Also, we expect that our partners from the Startup Sauna in Helsinki, which organizes Startup Sauna will bring a hundred people from there. And from Austria, from the Pioneers’ Festival another hundred will come. I can’t tell know how successful will the event be, but at least we’ll do a serious try on this.