Top managers of the Skolkovo Foundation sat on a jury that viewed pitches made at the Slush, the European startup mega-conference, which was held once again in Helsinki. After reviewing dozens of global startup projects, including those made by Skolkovo residents, they shared their opinions about these teams, and compared them to international projects.
Oleg Syutin, Vice President in charge of International Economic Activities of the Foundation, also participated as a jury member, and judged 20 projects that were being presented. “Of course, the ‘mature’ international teams, who had already taken their products through the ideas stage, had an advantage here,” was what he has to say in an interview with Sk.ru about the projects submitted to the Slush. The main challenge at such large conferences is to make the advantages of one’s project very clear, and do this in a foreign language, usually English. And for this, there is only two minutes allotted. “Those who succeeded, were those teams that could make a good presentation thanks to a real good quality working prototype, which they demonstrated on the stage – this changed the perceptions of the audience,” said Mr. Syutin. In the absence of such working models, it is very difficult to bring home one’s message to the audience, and so the vice president of the Foundation thinks that now Skolkovo teams need to think hard about solving that problem for future conferences.
Slush's Blue Stage and its audience (photo Slush)
“Even with my knowledge about Skolkovo residents and their projects, I had a difficult time, in some cases, of understanding the nature of their projects. At the same time, I know that their products are really of a very high quality, but, as a member of the jury, I could not give them high marks for their presentations, as I saw that many were not able to make resounding demonstrations of their projects, were not able to “sell” this quality, when making their speeches.”
Oleg Pertsovsky, Operational Director of the Foundation’s Energy Efficient Technologies Cluster, also believes that Skolkovo has excellent projects, and in some cases, these are much better than the projects from other countries, especially from the technological point of view. However, we need to learn to promote them. “I saw many presentations made by startups on the first day of the conference,” said Mr. Pertsovsky. “They are all very different, and perhaps this is a shortcoming of the Slush, as it is difficult to compare them effectively. However, I can say one thing for certain: the Skolkovo projects are high-tech, in contrast – with a few exceptions – to many other foreign startups presented in Helsinki.” Oleg Pertsovsky believes that the disadvantage of Skolkovo teams is that they are not always able to present their product that ‘cheerfully and smoothly’. “However, the essence of their developments is interesting and allows them to stand out from all the ones we saw and heard on the first day,” Mr. Pertsovsky concluded.
3D Bin at “DEMO” semi-finals, carefully watched by the jury experts and thousands of colleagues at Slush. Photo by sk.ru
Anton Voropayev, Manager of the Acceleration and Development Group of the Foundation, reviewed more than 70 pitches during the first day of the Slush. He had this to say about the first day of the Slush: “On the whole, the companies from the Skolkovo ecosystem are no worse and, perhaps, they are even better than the others. Skolkovo projects do represent very interesting ideas. They work on solving global problems and challenges. I believe that many foreign startups, which presented their pitches at the Slush, are trying to solve some problems, which in my opinion, are far-fetched and non-existent, while the Russians had very strongly presented practical projects. With such projects, we look interesting on the general background, and the audience showed a great interest in them at the conference. However, I would like to draw attention of Russian teams to the fact that they lack speaking skills in English. This really does harm to some Skolkovo startupers, especially when they are fielding questions from the audience after their speeches.”
Slush audience