Pekka Viljakainen, advisor to the president of the fund on work with start-ups, shared his thoughts and the main conclusions about the Russian StartUp Tour after the first 10 cities of Russia
Pekka, now that the Russian StartUp Tour has crossed the symbolic threshold of 10 cities, what conclusions can be drawn about the results and the quality of start-ups that have had a chance to see the team of experts from state development institutions? What, in your opinion, the main thing that has been achieved?
The main thing that we have done is to bring together a team of development institutions: the Skolkovo Foundation, ASI, the Fund for Innovation, RVC, the youth affairs agency, and others who are joining us. In such a respectable format, the team allows us to get the attention of the mass media, which is very important. And it's very nice to see that we have established a team of like-minded people: we all travel from town to town, and in that time have really become a very solid team. However, we have agreed between ourselves that we are not going to decide which of us is more important, who among us is the boss and who is not. And this, in my view, is an important cultural moment: anyone who is responsible for working for Russia must be in an appropriate position. I guess I look like a Russian patriot, when I say that, right?My personal and very interesting, and I must say pleasant discovery is also connected here with something else. I was warned we could meet "very bad" cities, so to speak, in terms of start-up maturity, with a low level of participation and a low quality of innovation in the projects. However, this did not happen. There was no disappointment on my part in any of the cities that we visited. It became clear that in each of these cities there are priority sectors for startups. For example, in the resource-rich regions, there were more innovative companies in the energy sector, and in cities with strong universities, in Tomsk, for example, there are more and more companies that are closely tied to the research programs of the university. I would also add that what I saw exceeded my personal expectations from the project, and I got a kind of "shock of positivity" to see how many people are interested in our tour. But I still think that the start-ups that we have seen in the regions would not be hurt by talking more with the international community and networking on an international scale. This would improve their English and help to make for more vibrant pitches and presentations.The regional innovation companies are at different stages of development, but I am sure that we will bring 5-10 start-ups from each of the cities where we have been, as planned, and they will prove to be a success in the StartUp Village in May at Skolkovo.P. Viljakaianen