A presentation of Elon Musk’s headline-grabbing vacuum train, a drone race and business leadership tips from a Shaolin monk are among the highlights of this year’s Startup Village, the annual open-air large-scale conference for tech entrepreneurs held at the Skolkovo Innovation Centre on June 2-3.
Participants of last year's Startup Village taking a break in the sunshine near the Skolkovo pond. Photo: Sk.ru.
The startups themselves will be competing for prizes of up to 3 million rubles ($46,000) in categories ranging from breakthrough technologies in oncology, space technologies and robots to Internet of Things, precision agriculture and cybersecurity.
As well as the companies taking part in the competition, more than 100 innovative projects will demonstrate their technology and inventions at the Startup Bazaar.
The Startup Village is one of the Skolkovo Foundation’s biggest events of the year. Now in its fourth year, Eastern Europe’s biggest tech festival is expecting 2,000 startups and more than 700 investors from 20 countries this year, as well as leading tech entrepreneurs from around the world who will take to the stage to share their wisdom.
This year’s speakers include Knut Sauer, vice president of Hyperloop One, the U.S. company working to turn Elon Musk’s high-speed vacuum train dream into a reality. Knut will speak at a session titled “Transport of the Future” on the first day of the conference.
One of the opening sessions on June 2 titled “Tomorrow Came Today: 4th Industrial Revolution” will feature a panel of experts including Sberbank CEO German Gref, the prominent Russian-Armenian entrepreneur and philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan, and Philipp Rösler, managing director of the World Economic Forum and a former German vice-chancellor. The session will be moderated by Pekka Viljakainen, the Finnish entrepreneur who as advisor to Skolkovo president Viktor Vekselberg is the brains behind the Startup Village.
The subject of women in innovation will be addressed by Pocket Sun, who at the age of 24 heads the venture capital firm SoGal Ventures, in a session titled “Womennovation.”
The following day, the conference resumes with a session devoted to the National Technology Initiative, the government’s programme to create new markets and enable Russia to become a global tech leader by 2025. Titled “National Technology Initiative: Markets of the Future,” the session will feature Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich – a member of the Skolkovo Foundation board of trustees – and Andrei Belousov, a presidential aide and former Economic Development Minister.
Skolkovo Foundation president Viktor Vekselberg speaking at the opening of last year's event. Photo: Sk.ru
Later that day, Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of the leading cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, and Derrick Xiong, the co-founder of EHang – the world’s first self-flying taxi – will take part in a session titled “World-Changing Technologies” moderated by Mike Butcher, chief editor of TechCrunch.
While leading international tech gurus are just what visitors to a startup conference might expect to find, an appearance by a Shaolin monk is hardly standard. But Shi Xing Mi, who will deliver a talk on June 2 titled “Business in the Kung Fu style. Leadership lessons from a Shaolin monk” knows what he is talking about: he used to head up the Australian energy company CBD Energy. Now he devotes his time to teaching – including representatives of major companies like Google, BMW Group and Johnson & Johnson – combining Shaolin philosophy with Western business management approaches.
The Startup Village offers tech entrepreneurs an informal environment in which to meet and talk to successful industry leaders, investors, officials and like-minded people.
“The event is open for everyone,” says Viljakainen. “It’s nothing about politics, it’s nothing about bureaucracy; it’s all about business and how to make money together and how to make fun together.”
Viljakainen spent the last six months travelling across Russia at the helm of the Skolkovo Foundation’s Startup Tour, a roving quest for talented startups. In all of the 13 cities visited by this year’s event, three projects were selected in each of five categories: IT, energy and energy-efficient technologies, biological and medical technologies, industrial technologies and materials, and biotechnologies in agriculture and industry.
These winners will now convene at the Startup Village to take part in the competition in four areas: IT, energy, space and biomed & agrobiotech. The finalists will be announced first thing on June 3, and the teams will battle it out in the final in the afternoon, with an awards ceremony held at 6 p.m.
In addition to the conference, competition and exhibition, visitors to the Startup Village can watch – and take part in – the Formula Drone racing championship, which is open to all owners of multicopters and promises to be a visual feast.
As part of Art & Science Day on June 2, there will be an entire pavilion devoted to the interaction between the two areas. There will also be a dedicated augmented and virtual reality (ARVR) zone.
On June 3, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) will hold an Open Doors Day, where anyone interested in seeing what some of the world’s top scientific brains are currently working on can listen to lectures by Skoltech professors and tour the international institute’s labs.
The Startup Village will take place on June 2-3 at the Skolkovo Innovation Centre. Visitors must register in advance. All the day’s events will be held in both English and Russian. A detailed programme and list of speakers and participants are available on the event’s website.