If it’s true that innovation thrives when economies start to buckle, then the timing couldn’t be better for Russia’s biggest innovations roadshow, says Skolkovo’s top startup guru Pekka Viljakainen.
Photo: sk.ru
The 2015 Russian Startup Tour, the third annual traveling business accelerator - organized by the Skolkovo Foundation - begins in the southern center of Rostov-on-Don on February 3, the first stop on a 12-city tour of Russia and, for the first time, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
And with the ruble’s plummeting value and sanctions squeezing the energy-dependent economy, the need for innovating has never been so sorely felt.
“If you look at the history of the global economy, it’s quite obvious that the best performing, richest companies were founded during the most difficult periods of time,” said Viljakainen, an advisor to Skolkovo president Victor Vekselberg, in an interview to sk.ru.
“You can check this statement against American, Chinese and Russian history – the best companies are created when the money is lacking, and people really feel the need to show what they’re capable of. It works the other way, too: When there is too much money around, people get lazy.”
Viljakainen, who has grown startups of his own and is a founding partner of Slush, Europe’s biggest tech conference, said he could personally testify to how tough times bring the best out of entrepreneurs.
“I started a company right on the eve of one of the biggest crises in Finland. It was in 1988, and in 1999 in Finland the most serious repressions in the history of the country began.”
In contrast to previous years, the tour will spend two days as opposed to one in each city, giving more time for mentorship and training sessions for regional startups, alongside the traditional pitch contest, which culminates at the Startup Village in June.
After Rostov, the tour travels to the Siberian city of Tomsk for February 11 and 12, before hitting Nizhny Novgorod the following week.
Stops in Kazan and Yekaterinburg precede the tour’s first foray outside Russia, to the Kazakh capital Astana on March 19-20. The following weeks take in the western and eastern extremes of St. Petersburg and Vladivostok, with Krasnoyarsk featuring before the trip to Belarusian capital, Minsk, on April 14-15.
It ends with Ufa and, finally, the Moscow region, on April 30.
The format is the same in each city: Day one is devoted to the training side, with master-classes for young innovators, while day two sees the pitch sessions, where fledgling companies present their products and services on stage and are judged by a panel of experts.
Invited to take part in the pitch competition are startups and projects at any stage of development: from abstract idea to finished prototype; from a legally registered company to a group of friends; from a bunch of classmates to individual scientists, entrepreneurs or researchers.
The top companies from around the regions may be invited to become Skolkovo residents, but that is not the final aim of the tour, said Viljakainen.
“My aim is not to vacuum up the best companies from the provinces. I will be happy if the most interesting startups from, say, Rostov-on-Don, come to the Startup Village (in Moscow), and then return to their city to develop further,” he said.
“The achievements of Skolkovo are not measured by how many companies become residents of the Foundation,” he added. “The philosophy of Skolkovo, which Victor Veskelberg and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev talk about, is to create new companies all over Russia,” Viljakainen said.
“The only point to the Startup Tour is to help startups. It’s not created for Skolkovo, for politicians or governors: It is done with the only thought and the only aim to help the startups. If this target is not met, it means we have screwed up.”
Last year saw 469 companies from 28 cities take part in the tour, which was oversubscribed nearly fourfold; this year, organizers are expecting even more interest.