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Short manual on participation in the program "Start" (1 mln. RUR for your project)





Probably many of the participants in the habr-community have heard about the competition "START", held by the Foundation for Assistance to the Development of Small Forms of Enterprises in the Scientific and Technical Sphere (according to the people's, by the Bortnik Foundation).



The essence of the competition is gratuitous subsidization of startups in various industries (IT, medicine, engineering, etc.) of 1 million. rubles in the first, with the possibility of continuing and receiving 2 million. in the second and 3 mln. in the third year. In the first year, approximately 20% of the money is given to projects that submitted an application (more precisely, 107 out of 515 projects in 2010).

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To obtain financing, you need to pass a competitive selection in your region, spend the money received in accordance with the obligations under the state contract, submit a report on work once a month and a half, and most importantly, it is free of charge (no need to return). But, despite the significance of the event, there is very little information about this competition, participants and program winners often come from universities, while many IT start-ups could try their hand at it (talking about those who are very necessary, since the process of participation in the program is quite time-consuming).



In this article I would like to share my experience of participation in the program "START-10", it will be useful both for those who submit an application, and for those who will be the winner and continue to work with the Fund. Little information, it is scattered, and, unaccustomed to, all the paperwork strains and leads to delays and problems.



How is everything going and how to start



To be brief, all the work on the program during the year passes through the following stages.

Application and participation in the competition:



Further work on the state contract:



The text turned out to be quite large, so I decided to divide it into two parts, to highlight in the first everything related to your application and the selection procedure, and make work tips in the second.



Application and participation in the competition



The commencement of the submission of applications starts after the next annual announcement, so in 2009 the START-10 was announced, and not so long ago, on November 2, the “START-11” was announced . The deadline for submitting applications for IT is February 1, 2011, the winners will be known on March 22, and in the interval between these two numbers you will need to present your project live before the regional commission.



It is important - the competition is announced once a year, so if you steamed for any reason, you will have to wait for the next year (but there will be time to prepare a good prototype). A certain number of places for starters was allocated at Seliger, but there our selection through the program "UMNIK", and for example, we would not get there. Actually, we learned about this competition in 2009, at the time of the end of the call for applications, we became very interested in the “million for free”, we saw that the money was given not only for science, but also for classic startups and decided to try our strength in 2010 ( in participants of START-09 timepad.ru was noticed, and in START-10 insales.ru).



Our project - website builder for small business http://www.altedit.ru - is some analogue of the same insales, but is directed to its area. That is, the project is clearly not science-intensive, although it is labor-intensive (at one point they decided to try to write their product and came to this idea and their understanding of SaaS-tools for creating websites that they would like to develop, replicate into different niches and languages).



Now in more detail how it was, what the application is, where to fill it, what to write.

An application is in fact an expanded business plan that includes:



Filled everything in a rigid form in the specialized system "Foundation" . The system is old, uncomfortable, the main thing - it works. It is a bunch of formulators for entering data in a strictly defined format, so even if you have some sketches of a business plan, then finalizing them and putting them into the system is not easy and takes time.



Important:

If you pass the competitive selection, then all your writings (work plan, amounts, terms) will be automatically used to conclude a government contract for which you will have to report. Therefore, it is better to make a real and viable plan and plan your expenses in advance.



We immediately decided to write all the documents and make calculations for the business plan on our own. Now, looking from the side, I see “collective farm” of all these documents, but it gave great confidence - I could defend the numbers and phrases in this business plan, feel confident on the project’s defense before the regional commission, therefore I recommend doing the documents independently and you .



Registration of Intellectual Property (IP)



To participate in the contest, you must apply for registration of intellectual property.

In the case of IT projects, as a rule, a computer program (PC) or database is registered, which is noticeably simpler than patenting and by and large, is merely a formality. Moreover, in order to submit an application, you simply need to assemble a package of documents for registering a computer, pay the fee, send everything by mail to Rospatent and simply receive the incoming registration number. The application itself can be considered a month or two (although there are duties that speed up the process), but to participate in the START you only need the incoming registration number, which is assigned almost immediately and which can be obtained by phone.



The IP can be registered both on the company and on you as an individual, but in the second case, if you win the START, then to conclude a government contract you will have to transfer the rights (alienation of copyright) from you as from the individuals. the company. Again, this is an extra piece of paper, long and dreary, I’ll have to pay a fee, so I recommend to issue it directly to the company.



Once again, the registration of a computer program is just a formality; you do not need to have a working program, it’s enough to fill out an application and attach a few dozen pages of code (yes, it smells like some insanity - print out questionable pieces of code on A4 and send them by mail).



Project evaluation by experts



After submitting your application, your project will be evaluated by two experts, with the promise of sensible experts from your industry. Evaluation occurs on the Internet directly through the application system, several criteria are evaluated (scientific and technical substantiation, novelty, market and commercialization, team), the assessment is summarized.



The result of the evaluation of online experts and their comments will not be available to you (only the final assessment and the list of winners will be published later), but it will play an important role in the future when the project is presented to the regional commission.



I recommend to see what projects were on START-10 and how they were evaluated.



Project justification, business plan, team



I don’t really want to give instructions on how to write business plans (I myself do not know how). The main thing to understand is that the project should have some scientific novelty, have a thought-out monetization plan and you were able to clearly state it. Our project was very far from innovation and science, and this was clearly a weak point in the application, but we tried to at least somehow close this gap with prepared medical treatment and it worked.



I also recommend to take into account that if you submit an application, then at least on paper your project should bring you money no less than you ask from the state (and you ask 6 million for three years, respectively, the project should repel them) - the moment is obvious but in the course of live presentations I was once again convinced that some show such a predictable level of income, which simply will not discourage public investment, others too overestimated figures that immediately raise additional questions.



As in the classic seed investment, a large role in the evaluation of the project is played by the team, its practical work experience, and even such things as the age of employees and their marital status. IMHO, here it is worth spending a couple of extra hours and in a clear, competent language to describe why you are well suited for the project. If you do not have a fully formed team, then how will you recruit people, how will you solve current problems.



Costings



You have a task to paint how to spend a million rubles for the year ahead, and there are quite a lot of restrictions. The first is that money is given only for R & D (research and development). You can not buy them furniture and office equipment, hire a sales manager.

But, for example, you can spend on fixed assets of production (for IT projects, I would try to drag through server equipment) and pay for subcontractors, office rent, account maintenance and communications.



In addition to the restrictions on what to spend, there are also restrictions on the amounts:



For most IT projects, 1 mln. Rubles is a relatively small amount of expenses for stuff like an office and everything that remains for staff salaries, which will be official and with which you will pay taxes. Let me remind you that since January 1, 2011, we are waiting for a tax increase, and if earlier we, as simplified taxpayers, paid wages of 27.2% (13% of personal income tax, 14% of contributions to the Pension Fund for accumulative and insurance parts, 0.2% - payments to the FSS for insurance against accidents), now it will be more sad 39.2% (13 + 26 + 0.2). Draw your own conclusions, but if you correctly write subcontractors, the purchase of necessary equipment or software (as means of production), you can reduce the taxable base.



All other expenses need to be allocated in advance - for example, banking services - 5,000 rubles per year, Internet - 20,000 rubles, telephone - 8,000 rubles.



When we filled out the documents, we didn’t know that all the numbers would go to the state contract, but nevertheless tried to make a real business plan (and the work plan itself and cost estimates), got quite accurate and this significantly facilitated life in the future. A million rubles is not so much (considering that we spend about 250 rubles on taxes at the current rate), but it gives a good impetus to start - it allows you to rent a small office, buy minimal equipment, furniture (though we took everything from home at first) and pay a salary in 15t.r. three employees to maintain pants.



Good advice, checked out on its own skin - in the last days before submitting applications, from the influx of sufferers, the Foundation server can start to slow down wildly or even fall for an indefinite period of time - it is better to keep in mind, but this did not prevent us from sending an application a couple of hours before their end reception “Jump into the outgoing train” is my life credo, which, unfortunately, I can’t get rid of :)



Presentation of the project before the regional commission



We had it at the Novosibirsk Academgorodok, at the Institute of Computational Technologies of the SB RAS - teams from all over the Siberian Federal (Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Kemerovo, Tomsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, etc.) districts were to send their representatives. In the SFD, there were a total of 35 projects, 10 became winners (there were 515 applications in total, 107 winners). The presentation took place in two days, according to the established schedule, we got to the end of the first one. As with the application, they made everything up to the last hour - they wrote docks, filmed a video, as a result, not having slept, I got behind the wheel (since Tomsk didn’t have to drive for as long as 4 hours, but the street was almost -30, and it was a problem :)).



We arrived just before the performance, the remaining minutes spent on completing the presentation on someone else's laptop and polishing the performance, and unfortunately, we did not have time to meet other participants. Along the way, we were whispered in our ears that our application had a good t assessment from online experts - I don’t know how true it was, but it was a little encouraging.



For each project, 10-15 minutes were allocated - about 5 minutes for the presentation itself and the rest - answers to the questions of commission members. The expert commission is mainly scholars, 50-60 years old (there were a couple of young cadres), of course, they are quite far from many projects, but they certainly have enough life experience and are able to weed out inadequate. We immediately understood that the weakest point in our application, according to which we will be driven for a long time, is a matter of science and novelty, but since there is little real science and novelty, everything had to be sucked out of the finger.



A lively interest in the project from the jury was shown by a couple of people, with one we had a long discussion about whether the LAMP bundle is free software (in the business plan we didn’t have software development costs), and with another there are on the Russian market identical solutions. In general, the presentation was crumpled and mediocre, from the pros - I was charged, and I think it left a good impression. As a result, we exceeded the established time limit by half and with incomprehensible feelings “go on horseback,” we went home to work on the project further.



The results were announced almost a month later, this news was sent by SMS friends, and found us in the same Novosibirsk. We were very pleased with the fact and the fact that our efforts were not in vain, made plans, but a lot of changes, work and a lot of papers were waiting for us.



Another moment, if I am not mistaken, then already on START-10, part of the regions organized a video broadcast of the presentations to the Foundation, IMHO, this is the right idea that will improve the quality of project evaluation.



Advantages and disadvantages



pros



Minuses



useful links





Conclusion and conclusions



Despite the abundance of text, it is not so difficult to take part in the START program. The program itself is built quite sensibly and money can be a good help for young projects. By my own example, I can say that government money allowed us to refuse to work at an outsourcing through elance (I sometimes indulge, but very rarely) and to work on a project full-time, except to work with the whole team in the office, which significantly increases productivity.



But despite this, if you have a sensible project and have the opportunity to find a good core investor, then I recommend this way. Going through it you will get more money, mentoring, experience, communication. In addition, working with an investor, or even more so bootstrapping, is much more focused on results, and government money is detached from market realities and makes it possible for some time to live in a “house”, developing an ephemeral product that may not withstand collisions with market realities.



In any case, trying to create your product / company is very interesting and worth it to try and get experience of such work. Good luck!



PS:

The article was written a year after the events, so I could miss some nuances, and on the whole it was hard enough to structure the information and make a readable text, but I hope that it will be useful.



I wanted to publish a month ago to help those who prepared applications for START-11, but inadvertently killed a draft and my hands just dropped.



I will be glad to any additions and clarifications.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/110703/

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