Difficult START. History of one grant

In early 2011, we were advised to take part in the competition for a grant under the START program of the Foundation for Assistance to the Development of Small Enterprises in the Scientific and Technical Sphere (Bortnik Fund). The amount of the grant is 1 million rubles.

Having estimated our strength, we decided to give it a try, in January 2011 we prepared the documentation, were selected, got a grant for our startup Rizzoma.com . For 1.5 years, we received from the fund 875 thousand rubles, the last 125 on the way.


Analysis of the ratio of hemorrhoids and benefits of work under the grant under the program START 2011
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If Tomsk, there will be no money. Already sawn

The first condition of the competition was the registration of the application on the site www.fasie.ru , the application itself is filled in on a special section of the site: all.fasie-online.ru

Filling out an application includes filling in several hundred fields, including text descriptions and selection of categories to which the project belongs. After the application was sent, it was necessary to present the draft commission. We made a bet that all projects will bring Prezu in Power Point and will quickly bother them with the commission, which in the end will be dormant. Therefore, we decided to make a video. We showed this video here:



The idea worked, and we hit the list of winners. Next, in a magical way, we were awarded the application as a St. Petersburg startup, and under the budget we belonged to Tomsk. The fact is that in our application the address of the company, the address of the founder and the address where they submitted the application were in three different cities. In Tomsk, everything was already drunk, and we were removed from the list of winners.

We thought we lost the grant. But then suddenly it turns out that our project is very much in the soul of one of the commission members who watched the video. We got in touch with us and called for START 2011-2. It was necessary to re-arrange all documents, only in a slightly different format, with a large number of minor differences. Moreover, the format of the application was at least similar, but it was very different in particular. It was necessary to send it in the form of MS Word in several places at once and with each agree on different details of the application.

You can see one of the snapshots of our application in Google Docs. Please note that the rules have changed 10 times since then, so the application is more likely to have historical value.

Now to the question of intellectual property. If your startup is going to grow further, receive normal investments and enter the market, all the same it will be necessary to draw up intellectual property correctly, that is, to redo everything. It is possible to write all the questions of the fund, what will be done within three months, and then just get by with the order of “know-how” ( order template ) and nothing else is needed. By the way, RosPil appealed against the requirements of the Fund to the FAS and now nothing is needed . I wonder if they know about it in the Fund.

The signing of the state contract. Accounting dictatorship

In theory, the state contract should be made on the basis of the winning bid. In practice, we were given a bunch of comments on the wording, and the opinions of different coordinators often differed. The application had to be coordinated with three different people from the Foundation, each of whom had his own opinion on the correctness of the wording.

Constantly it was necessary to keep in touch by phone with the curator of the project. It is difficult to reach the curator, the curators do not like long conversations, often interrupt the conversation without resolving the issue. It was possible to spend half the working day to communicate with the curator. As a result, solving a minor issue could take up half a working day.

With further interaction, it became clear that among other bureaucrats, accountants play a key role in the fund. Signing a contract in hindsight is a good example of what the dictatorship of accountants turns into in practice. For them, it looks like a favor to us (as they say). And for us - the receipt of money on August 30, the requirement to report on them in July, as well as an application for postponement for "some reason", which they themselves cannot come up with. And we must coordinate this postponement with different departments of the Fund.

And there may be a transfer of the contract to another curator, who has his own comments on the project.


The Start Foundation, in our opinion, would have been an excellent fit for the continuation of “Monday begins on Saturday” by the Strugatsky or the less well-known “Tales of the Three”.

Reporting. Experience in minimizing hemorrhoids

Formally, the money is paid according to the results of the implemented stages, according to the state contract. Each stage is closed by a report. The Foundation does not have the slightest understanding of what a startup is. Therefore, if you happen to pass such a report, then do not even try to write that you have changed something in the plans. It is important to understand that the Foundation needs Kant reports in-itself. Just to be. Each report is written under the relevant paragraphs of the technical specifications for the contract. The key requirements of the fund are that reports must be ready for conversion into primary documentation for accounting entries.

In practice, the reporting ideology is very simple. See wording TK. An example of a possible formulation is: “Development of a technical assignment for assignment management tools”. Further, this name is taken and broken into pieces in some way, like this:

• development of the first part of the technical task: the main destination
• development of the second part of the technical assignment: additional appointments
• development of the third part of the technical task: black appointments (well, or green).

After the task is divided into several points, it should be filled in with various associations on the project topic and summarized in the title. Then add a few screenshots and pieces of code. When we handed over the report without pieces of code, it was coordinated longer. So do not be afraid of the code, you can shove several pages of code at once. In addition, there are pieces in the report: introduction and conclusion. They are best done after everything else is ready.

How to check reports? The subject area of ​​what your startup is doing is not interesting to anyone in the Fund. You should not expect any opinions or comments on this. In our experience: “Only the beginning and the end of the report are seriously checked, so after the report is ready, you need to pay attention to these points and write a related text there that will be well coordinated with the wording in the TOR”. You can see report 1.2 on our project (GDocs).

The next portion of money is transferred only after the reports for the period are handed over.

Net benefit from the grant - 25k rubles per month

The key point of the contract for IT-projects is that the main cost item should be salary. That is, it turns out that, taking into account all taxes out of a million rubles in cash, only 600 thousand.

The economy is as follows. The tranches are in portions of 125 thousand for two reports. Approximately at equal intervals. That is, 40 thousand of live money per month. If we take into account the costs of documentation (the schedule is higher), then the inflow of money can be estimated at 25 thousand per month.

In addition to money, there are no benefits from participating in the Start program. The points:

• as we noted earlier, the Fund does not have any adequate expertise in the IT sector.
• Start grant has zero value from the point of view of PR. Investors and brows do not lead at the mention of the Fund. The Fund itself does not promote its winners and does not promote it anywhere.
• The Foundation does not provide useful contacts and does not immerse in a useful environment.

The money received under the grant accounted for 3% of the total amount of financing attracted to the project.

Conclusion. You can apply to the Foundation if you have free time.

We have a lot of tasks related to writing texts. Therefore, start-up writers were engaged in Start-up reports instead of a trial period. And of course, Max, who somehow leads all administrative matters. In our team, work with the Start is perceived as a conscription.

So, if you have a whole project financing problem solved, there is someone to take over with texts + experience in dealing with accountants, then you may need to go and participate in this program. If the task of attracting investments to the project is not solved, then it is better to direct the forces to search for other sources.

The market around the Start is developing, and now there is a proposal to donate all work with the Start to an outsourcing, while the startup receives a little less than one fifth of the amount of the grant.


R & D participants in the Start competition: Maxim, Semyon, Daniel, and two Vladimir, Olya was somewhere in the main job, so she didn’t get into the screenshot.