There are a lot of programs and events to support startups! What can they give? Why participate in them? Many are trying to answer these questions, and we will deposit our five kopecks in this din. Just want to note that the article explains quite simple things that a person more or less immersed in the topic may seem commonplace. But we believe that there are a huge number of people for whom this information may be useful.
The startup has many opportunities to start and each of them has its advantages. You can just follow the steps of making a brilliant project, then jump out of the box like a little devil and blow up the market.
But not everyone is capable of this, many people periodically need a little emotional doping, which can be obtained at start-up parties. Some still need money, connections, smart advice or a team. So, what activities and programs can help a young IT entrepreneur?

1) Working weekend

( Startup Weekend , Harvest , HackDay )
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As the name implies, they usually go on weekends. Most often, in one place they collect as many intelligent people as possible, who are also called experts, and they listen to stories about your project and give their thoughts for two or three days. This usually takes place in a business incubator, in Moscow - Digital October or InCube, in Kazan, for example, an IT park or any other 200-room suitable for work. The result may be different. Some people understand that they are doing everything right and, winged, they start working twice as efficiently. Some experts, following the advice given by experts, turn the concept upside down and it turns out that this was the right thing to do from the very beginning. And some leave with the thought that the weekend was wasted, and all the experts do not understand anything. The last we sincerely wish good luck, they will need them.
Some projects are so popular with experts that they continue to communicate after a working session, and sometimes the expert generally becomes a partner (mentor) or employee of the company. In any case, such events are just the perfect place for networking, and communication, as you know, is everything.
In addition to the experts, there are often good specialists who drop by and are willing to exchange office crypts of large corporations for the fresh breeze of a startup. And the frames decide not less than the connection. In addition, an experienced team will be another trump card in obtaining investment.
At such events are often distributed not very useful, but extremely pleasant prizes: money (10-100 thousand dollars), certificates for some b2b service like "Megaplan" or "My business" or educational courses.
The disadvantages of such sessions are, firstly, that they take a lot of time, and secondly, this is the perfect option for a beginner project. Bulshiting is when you do secondary activities and postpone priorities (for example, finding your first clients or creating a prototype) because you are afraid to actually launch a project. A very convincing illusion of useful activity is created, but sooner or later people who go to all the events with the same project for half a year and have not yet gathered even a working prototype start looking around, and after a year they openly ignore it. So you shouldn’t forget about direct work either.

2) Project Show

( StartupPoint , Startup Crash Test , Startup Index , Startup Sauna Warmup , Feedback )

They are project, investment or startup sessions. Essentially presentations of pre-selected projects followed by discussion and criticism.
Come here for money and a headache. For the money, because at these events you can often see investors, even if they are not specifically invited. Therefore, it is imperative to prepare a high-quality presentation and learn to answer tricky questions such as market volume and the rationale for the amount of investment.
As for the headache, the audience is likely to criticize absolutely all the elements of your project from the main page of the site to the profit model. The main thing is to bravely restrain all blows, not to argue and try to isolate from the criticism the maximum amount of useful information. Not a single comment, even the most stupid, does not arise from scratch.

3) Contests of large IT companies

( Yandex.Start )

Yandex declares its desire to buy startups and even bought 3 . Apply directly through the website or through regional partners in.

4) Industry conferences

( RIF + KIB , Siberian Internet weeks , RIW , 404fest , iCamp - will be held on November 11 , by the way)

A lot of useful information and interesting people. The IT industry is not so big, so when you come to a large all-Russian conference, you can see almost all more or less noticeable people. And of course, get to know them! Only we exorcise, it is not necessary to approach gets acquainted to the person if you have nothing to say to him. Multi-page texts are written about networking at conferences, so take the trouble to read them at least diagonally.
Actually, now at absolutely any conference, if at least some sideways concerns a business, a startup session is taking place. But their quality can be very different, so before submitting your application, review the list of experts and think, maybe you should spend time working on a project? Most start-up sessions at such conferences are held by well-known market players, so the quality and focus can be assessed in advance simply by specifying the organizer.

5) Business Incubators

( BI "Ingria" , BI HSE , BI IT Park (Kazan) , Business Incubator of the Novosibirsk Academgorodok , InCube )

If you are a completely new project and most of your team does not have an impressive experience in the industry, then the incubator is the place for you. First, rallies, open lectures, seminars, get-togethers and coworkings that most business incubators represent, this is a great place to meet startups like you, who will be industry stars in the future, and connections, as we said three times decide everything. Secondly, information about any activity is collected in BI, so that in the incubator you can not be afraid that you can miss some interesting event, you just will not be allowed to do this. Thirdly, incubators usually have their own full-time experts on various issues who are ready to undertake part of the routine tasks the startup has to face. They will help you complete the business model, fill out an application for a grant or investment, and conduct market research for you. The downsides are that you can get used to such a good life, and at the end of the incubation program (1-3 years), it can be difficult for you to go to the real world.

6) Business accelerators

( Farminers , InCube )

Something in between a business incubator and a work session. Acceleration programs provide for the issuance of small money, usually up to $ 100 thousand, after which, with the participation of various gurus and experts, you spend 3-6 months (depending on the program) 16 hours a day, periodically reporting on progress. At the end of the acceleration program, you present your project to investors at a kind of graduation. Accelerators themselves for all these benefits usually take a small (3 ~ 5%) share in your project. If you can get into any well-known accelerator - do not hesitate for a minute, there are no cons, except that you have to really work a lot, no.
In addition to the accelerators, the possibility to go to your project for several months will also be given to you programs like Spanish Village (www.spanish-village.com) or “Intensive Vacations” from Glavstart, or Startup Sauna Intensive (http://startupsauna.com/) . They differ from ordinary accelerators in that they take you out of town (Intensive Vacations) or even to another country (Spanish Village, Startup Sauna). The importance of such experience is difficult to overestimate, especially if you are going to enter the international market.

7) Open lectures

( Theories and practices , BIO IT Park Meropritia , poSEEDelki , Events of the Higher School of Economics BI )

Almost all of the above activities are accompanied by some kind of educational process. Most often this is a master class of a famous specialist. Therefore, various events should be visited at least in order to learn something new and not allow very stupid mistakes when building your project.
In addition to lectures dedicated to larger events, frequent meetings and just gatherings on some interesting topics. In Moscow, the most famous are called poSEEDelki, in Kazan these are weekly “IT sit-ins in Business Incubator”, which take place in an IT park.

8) Startup sites

( Kulibin , Startup Afisha , WantedVC , Gov2people )

In addition to offline, there is a huge amount of Internet resources in one way or another helping startups. They pursue different goals, from simple information about events (http://startupafisha.ru) to assistance in finding investments (http://wanted.vc). Almost all of them you can put your project on the court of the community, and in some places and get an expert assessment. By the way, on the site Startup Posters (http://startupafisha.ru), you can find a complete list of organizations involved in supporting startups with division by region.

9) Start-up contests

( web-ready , HSE {10K} , BIT , Startup of the Year )

There is another interesting opportunity to "light up" - this is a start-up competition. Regional partners, transparent evaluation procedure and the participation of the right sponsors. Must have for what is to be measured pi .. to declare your successful project.

From time to time, attempts are made to “gather everyone” and create a hyper-event for startups, or vice versa - to declare all organizers scammers to be self-promoter, but the truth is in the middle. When there are a lot of events and they are different - the startup broth boils more actively!

In addition to specialized portals, you can try to place information on other resources, the subject of which is more or less suitable for your project. For example, on habrahabr.ru . But you should be careful with self-promotion, because you are most likely not alone so clever and an article like “Hey, see what a cool project I have!” Will be perceived negatively. So you will need to come up with some interesting topic for the whole community.
In addition to all of the above, participation in start-up events and programs can provide your project with excellent PR. When a journalist is going to write about IT startups, he will first draw attention to the winners of various competitions and residents of well-known business incubators. This is not to mention the fact that many of the organizations conducting events have their own blogs, which are often quite a large number of readers.
Well, in the end, a variety of weekends is just fun. As a fair in the village: look at people and show yourself. This party and communication, and communication, as you know, decide everything;)

By the way, all these events were checked by us personally as startups and during the test, none of us was hurt;).

PS The topic was written by Andrei Zheglov in collaboration with me.