history of the company

Initially, there was a startup

The Esprito story began on February 28, 2009, when Vlad , Vanya and Misha gathered in an apartment converted into an office to discuss the creation of a social network for scientists. As befits the first undertaking, the project failed ...

First, we lacked technical training. I was the main developer and at the same time for the first time I learned about the existence of frameworks. Version control systems, tools for testing and automating the development of an application — we came across all of this for the first time and studied along the way. In the five months of work of two or three programmers, we did as much as I could now write in a few weeks of intensive work. However, my experience suggests that the technical component rarely becomes the main factor of failure. The team is learning, the company can always attract experienced specialists, the product can be rewritten from scratch and, most likely, it will have to be done at least once.

Secondly, we lacked the involvement of one of the founders. We had a limited budget, so he was forced to devote part of his time to other work, and a startup is something that cannot be done halfway.
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It is said that for start-up entrepreneurs the only possible source of funding is “three F” (friends, family, and fools). In this case, these three F did us a disservice. Due to the fact that relations with the investor were not strictly businesslike and we did not have written agreements, he was able to influence us and in the process, transformed our idea into a service for organizers of scientific conferences - not at all what we were going to do. initially

Finally, we made a typical mistake of all start-up entrepreneurs, we made many plans, thought through all sorts of improvements to our system, going to show it to the world in all its glory. But does the world need this? Steve Blank does not get tired of repeating that there is no truth in your office, it is just outside the building, you need to go to your future users and clients and ask them what they need. You need as early as possible to bring the product to the market and see what users really want, and not in your head. Then we still did not know ...

Results

In the first part, I used a very big word - failure. In reality, failure was only relative. Yes, we have not launched a social network for scientists, but we have learned a lot, we have a team, the backbone of which still exists, and, most importantly, we understood what we want from work. We realized that we would never trade the spirit of working on our own project for employment. Our friends considered the hours until the end of the working day, and we quarreled with the guards of the business center for the right to work as much as we wanted. Familiar wondered how so, you do not rest from work. But we chose a job from which you do not need to rest. We did what we liked, just like we enjoyed skiing, reading a book or going to the club. We worked not because we had to, but because we wanted it.

By the way, to understand how your job suits you is very simple. Ask yourself what it would be if every month you were transferred to the salary account without any obligations on your part. What would you do then? Unfortunately, too many minutes would not have spent on what they are doing now forty hours a week.

Sometimes they ask me incredulously, why do you never do what you don’t want? I do. Sometimes I do something that would be better done by myself, without me. But I do it because it is necessary for my project, for the result that I want to see. And this is not at all the same thing as doing something in order to get a salary at the end of the month.

Club of Innovators

Having understood what we want to do, we didn’t want to stay in isolation anymore, we wanted to communicate and share experiences with people who think like us. This is how the Innovators Club appeared, which was supposed to bring together people interested in technology, entrepreneurship and innovation in a broad sense. By the way, for innovation we got great. For the majority, this word was abusive and was associated exclusively with officials telling on TV about the next grandiose project to cut the budget.

We held club meetings on our own, trying to find partners who would help us with a meeting place, coffee breaks or prizes. NRU ITMO became one of such partners, and at some point we received an offer to move the whole team to the university.

ITMO

A university means a state, and for many, the mere mention of any state structure immediately evokes thoughts of monstrous bureaucracy and cutting money. I myself am a supporter of reducing the role of the state as an extremely inefficient system, and I follow with enthusiasm various civil initiatives, for example, crowdfunding projects. At the same time, in a number of areas (eg, fundamental science), the state still remains the best source of funding. Since our activity was non-profit and not directed to individual projects, but to the general development of infrastructure, public-private partnership seemed to us the best option.

An important factor was the fact that ITMO is actively developing, and the disgrace that is happening at SPbU is not going on there, and that it is painful for me, as a student, to look at.

SUMIT

Having received ITMO support, we first decided to organize SUMIT , which was then called the start-up marathon SumIT, as an abbreviation for Summer and IT. We wanted to bring together programmers, designers, marketers and project managers, unite them into teams and provide fully equipped premises for two months, expecting that we will get many new projects as a result of the event.

As it is not difficult to guess, the idea was not viable. Projects do not arise from nothing. It is necessary to work with existing and motivated teams, as well as to limit their number, so that each can be given enough time. The next time the marathon turned into a startup school.

Now

Now we are preparing another, already the fourth, school SUMIT. Each time we raise its level and believe that this is the best program of its kind in St. Petersburg. However, there is still a lot of work ahead. We usually want to do a lot, but there are not enough resources, as a result, everything turns out somewhat messy, in a hurry and, as a result, quality falls. Now we are focused on getting rid of this problem.

SUMIT teaches not only our residents, but also ourselves. We constantly communicate with experts, investors and business start-up teams. Accumulated knowledge allows us to effectively evaluate projects and serve as an intermediary between investors and projects. This is the second direction of our activity.

Watching the startup community in St. Petersburg, we noticed that it lacked thoroughness. We want to change this by bringing a scientific approach to the community. A scientific approach does not mean encyclopedic knowledge or complex formulas; rather, it is a style of thinking. When a person asks questions, observes, builds assumptions, and then experiments and tests them to get the result. This approach is universal, whether it is biology, entrepreneurship or design: this is what Steve Blank will teach you in his Lean Startup course, and what Scott Klemer will tell you about in the Human-Computer Interaction course.

The second thing we want to focus on is diversity. A variety of people, ideas, projects. Therefore, we called Scinergy a new project, as a combination of Science and Synergy. More about the project itself, we will tell in the near future.