Following the success of the annual Startup Village in Moscow in June, the Skolkovo Foundation is planning a spinoff event – Startup Village by the Sea – to be held on September 8 in Russia’s Far Eastern port of Vladivostok.
The Startup Village by the Sea will take place in the Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok. Photo: Wikipedia.
Like its Moscow namesake, the tech event, aimed at startups from Russia’s Far East and from Southeast Asia, will comprise both a competition section and a series of mentoring sessions and discussions aimed at boosting the local culture of innovation. Key topics will include technologies for monitoring and preventing marine pollution, as well as the development of Russia’s Far East region over the next 100 years.
“Continuing the tradition of the Startup Village conference, we will hold a competition among Far East startups with the participation of a team of the best European mentors from the Startup Sauna accelerator [for startups from the Nordic countries, Eastern Europe and Russia] who will offer their expert advice,” said Yury Sibirsky, deputy head of Skolkovo’s Far East office, which opened last year.
Startup Village by the Sea comes hot on the heels of the Eastern Economic Forum, which will take place in Vladivostok on September 2-3. Skolkovo’s Far East office is co-organising a strategic session at the economic forum devoted to the innovative development of the region. The session will include presentations of local Skolkovo residents, of which there are now about 30 – twice as many as the office’s staff expected to have by now when it opened its doors in April 2015.
“Back then we forecast that 15 Far East startups would have swelled the ranks of the Skolkovo Foundation by the end of 2015,” said Sibirsky. “In fact, there turned out to be twice as many.
“Among our residents there are both startups in the traditional understanding of the term, and also spinoffs of medium-sized businesses, as well as small innovative enterprises based at local universities and the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences,” he said.
“Throughout 2015, we were putting together a pool of these companies, and by the end of the year, they had virtually all received [Skolkovo] residency status.”
Yury Sibirsky, deputy head of Skolkovo's Far East office. Photo: Sk.ru.
While the number of startups in the Far East branch is dwarfed by the overall number curated by the Moscow-based Skolkovo Foundation, which is approaching 1,500, this is in fact their advantage, says Sibirsky.
“Because there are relatively few of them, we are able to draw up an individual plan for nearly all of them, taking into account the stage of their development and the company’s requirements, and then work according to that plan,” he said.
“For example, we help companies that are at the stage of actively seeking investment to do so via the mechanisms provided by the Skolkovo Foundation. One of our residents is currently reaching a deal with investors that the company met at a meeting of the Skolkovo business angels club in Moscow. In another example, one of the Russian Venture Company [a state investment vehicle] funds has invested in a group of companies that includes a Skolkovo resident. As far as I know, that’s the first investment by a part of RVC in a Far East company,” said Sibirsky.
One of the ways in which the office supports its regional startups – other than the upcoming Startup Village by the Sea – is by funding their participation in international conferences and exhibitions via mini-grants of up to 1.5 million rubles ($23,000) available from the foundation. Several residents are expected to attend the Slush Shanghai entrepreneurship conference at the end of October.
“Taking into account the fact that many of our projects have a significant international component, including elements related to the markets of Asia Pacific, we think the teams’ trip to China for Slush will be extremely useful for them,” said Sibirsky.
Skolkovo’s Far East office works in close cooperation with the Moscow office to make sure its residents have the same access to the support mechanisms offered by the foundation, from centres for collective use to the intellectual property centre, despite the seven-hour time difference and 6,500 kilometres between the branches.
“As people in Vladivostok like to say, ‘it’s not we who are far from Moscow, but Moscow that is far from us,’” said Sibirsky.
“Thanks to our colleagues [in Moscow], we and our teams don’t feel like we are far from anyone.”