Digital startups. Interview with Gaidar Magdanurov

Today, the concept of "startup" is familiar to many, if not all. This happened thanks to a number of startups that thundered to the whole world and made their creators famous and rich. Most of these startups were created in the western market. Nevertheless, the number of startups is also growing rapidly in the Russian market. What are the specifics of Russian digital startups compared to Western ones? What is the secret of startup success? What trends have emerged in the field of web startups in Russia? Expert Gaidar Magdanurov , Managing Director of the Microsoft Seed Fund, answered these and other questions.

WebProfessionals.ru: What, in your opinion, are the main differences between startups in Russian e-commerce and web development from Western ones?

Gaidar Magdanurov: Difference of any IT start-ups in Russia from Western ones in a very narrow spectrum of original ideas. This is explained primarily by the fact that the number of start-ups and ideas is relatively small - here there is a historical factor of the lack of analogues of the “silicon valley”, and the factor of the lack of an adequate level of business knowledge, and the factor of the “fears” of entrepreneurs to share ideas. In order for original ideas to be born, examples of successful businesses and examples of people who are not afraid to take risks are needed. In addition, the copyicat model, which implies the cloning of Western projects, works perfectly due to the language barrier, and therefore there is no particular incentive to generate original ideas.

WebProfessionals.ru: Which startups from your practice are the most memorable? Which have achieved the most significant success, and what is the reason for their success?
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Gaidar Magdanurov: I would not want to single out any start-ups, so I’d like to mention the latest start-up to date, which received a grant from our Seed Fund. The ClipClock project, which allows you to refer to a specific part of a video and comment on this particular part. The success of this startup is predetermined, so to speak, by the fact that video content is becoming more and more popular. Users of social networks are no longer enough texts and pictures, they want interactive. ClipClock allows you to conveniently refer to fragments, which is important for long clips and, in fact, promotes a new type of content - fragments of video.

WebProfessionals.ru: How do you see the vector of development of web startups? What are the trends and opportunities?

Gaidar Magdanurov: There are a lot of trends, it is worth reading analytical articles, as the head begins to swell from the abundance of information. I would single out the two most important trends: sociality and electronic commerce. The sites and projects themselves become more social and are built around the user. Agree, it's nice not to tell anything to the next web project separately, because this project gets all the necessary information from social networks. For example, an online store adjusts its "showcase" to the user based on his "likes" and comments on the social network. From here and self-study of projects - the user places "likes", and projects adapt to his preferences. In the case of e-commerce, virtual goods take up an increasing share of payment transactions - users buy domestic currency in games, buy statuses on projects, buy virtual gifts.

WebProfessionals.ru: Advise our audience sources of startup inspiration and external experience.

Gaidar Magdanurov: The best source of inspiration is your own head, which is worth scoring with various interesting ideas, reading projects like TechCrunch, attending events like StartupWeekend, attending seminars and training sessions on start-ups. In the “Silicon Valley”, the steady expression “Ideasarehavingsex” has long appeared - new ideas are born from a set of ideas. A good way to structure your thinking is to record all the ideas that come to your head, interesting projects and business models found on the web, in order to periodically look at these records and think about creating new ideas. The success of the "silicon valley" in the United States is largely due to the fact that a large number of ideas are concentrated there, and people are actively sharing them, creating more and more new ideas.

WebProfessionals.ru: Over the past year, web start-ups have begun to appear more frequently in large companies (for example, Enter - the Svyaznoy project, e5 - Crossroads). Should we expect more mass attention to the topic of a new online business?

Gaidar Magdanurov: New products often give rise to large companies - either the team leaves the company and goes into business, or a spin-off is created within the company itself, eventually becoming a separate company. This is a natural process - a lot of smart people with good experience can not create new ideas. In the light of the popularization of the start-up movement and the desire of companies to diversify their business, this trend will only increase. At the same time, the success of such projects and the very possibility of their appearance depends on the openness of the views of management, and management in our country is increasingly opening up to new ideas.

WebProfessionals.ru: Share your experience, what parameter should a startup correspond to in order to reach a return on investment and generate profit in the planned period?

Gaidar Magdanurov: No silver bullets and ready-made guides. Perhaps, all conclusions can be drawn from one single criterion - a startup creates a product that solves the user's need and is aimed at solving problems that arise for a particular user. Having firmly remembered that the user is the basis of the business, the creators of the startup will work out the right strategy. A huge amount of sensible, though obvious advice, can be found in the book ReWork , which I recommend to all startups who are confused while defining their own strategy.