Fifteen projects from Samara and Togliatti startups, including some from the "Zhigulevsky Valley” industrial park, were presented to experts of the Russian StartUp Tour today.
Sessions with experts were followed by consulting, and the startups from Samara and Togliatti quite literally rained down on the weatherbeaten experts with their torrrent of ideas and suggestions. Among the projects presented on March 28 in Samara's Holiday Inn, where the event was held, ideas were discussed for both social projects and entertainment projects. Among them, for example, was an application for active shoppers, “Adopt Innovation Inc.”, with discounts throughout a single city provided by just one click; a "cool" toy from Soneta called “Dress Up Your Avatar"; musical Pixel Piplz (a 3D visualization of music). There were also much more serious projects, including an "analyzer of multiphase flow in oil production" called the “AMP positioner;” and the social project “Zdravportal” from the Togliatt-based company “Ingoni." And the youth portal Student Employment CalmLi took it upon itself to solve problems of employment for students.
Vasily Belov, director of the energy efficiency cluster at the Skolkovo Fund, filled the audience in on support mechanisms for startups provided by Skolkovo, as well as the advantages and benefits of the Innovation Center. He urged young entrepreneurs not to be worried about making mistakes or hearing the word “no” on the often trying path of creating their own business. "At the beginning, you will hear this word often, but your mistakes will only make you stronger, more experienced and rational," he told the young entrepreneurs from Samara and Togliatti.
"Starting a business is always scary, in any country,” Pekka Vilyakainen echoed Belov's sentiments via video link from Silicon Valley. “But StartUp Tour will prove that there's really nothing all that scary about it," the adviser to the president of the fund and founder of the international “No Fear Community” said from the screen. Participants also listened with great interest to the presentation by development director Ivan Khlebnikov, who spoke about his own university, SkolTech, which is bound to make what he called "scientists without fear who know how to do business."
The holding of the StartUp Tour in the Samara region was realized as part of the first day of an important regional event called the "Infrastructure Forum." The forum was held by the region's Economic Development, Investment and Trade Ministry. The forum attracted quite a large audience: about 300 participants and more than 100 projects, mainly in the IT sector.