Captain of the sailing yacht, Professor Dmitry Repin

Dmitry Repin is the organizer of the BIT competition and the StartInGarage educational program, the head of the business incubator of the Higher School of Economics , a professor and teacher of the course “Behavioral Finance”. He is also a certified yacht captain and organizer of the eXtrepreneurship program, whose participants study entrepreneurship while sailing on a modern sailing yacht or catamaran.

Techhh! , thanks to friends from the investment agency StartupIndex , managed to get acquainted with Dmitry more closely and conducted an interview, during which he found out everything about eXtrepreneurship and about other, as it turned out, no less interesting projects, as well as why we still do not have in Russia Google, where to start making silicone valleys and how domestic business angels differ from American ones.

What is the main motivation of the project teams to participate in the BIT - besides getting 20 thousand dollars for the first place?
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If you ask the winners, no one will say that this money somehow radically changed his business. It even happened that this money was taken for a very long time - almost a year. First of all, for projects this is a kind of PR. They get into a certain spotlight, everyone will find out about them, everyone wants to interview them, investors resort to them with suggestions. As part of the BIT projects are growing. You come, and you have the opportunity to participate in parties and communicate with experienced people and experts. And through this participation you grow, you gain professionalism, you understand how you better structure your business, you find people and resources.

There you convince yourself and other people that this is a worthwhile business. That is, the task is to bring the project to such a state that it will be attractive to third parties who will be willing to share resources with you. Of course, the most beautiful business is built without attracting external money. Because external money is pretty hard. Another question is that now it is very difficult to build a serious business without them. And the motto of BIT, which has been preserved from the very first competition, is “make the investor believe in you”.

The question of Extrepreneurship ...

Yes, this is my favorite topic.

A very interesting format for teaching entrepreneurship is on yachts. Tell me how it all goes?

We recruit a small group - due to the fact that the yacht does not allow a lot of people to be dragged there. Maximum of 6 people plus two instructors. And for the week we conduct training in the format of live cases - that is, we put people in different situations: sometimes unexpected, sometimes modeled, where certain qualities manifest (or do not manifest). And in the process of such a game often the necessary skills are even beginning to be developed. In general, for me it is a kind of lifestyle. I myself love yachts, so I manage to combine business with pleasure.

Do people find you or do you collect them?

I do not do big advertising. Before the new program, I made two small mailings for 30 people - those who had previously been interested in the program and those who joined the group in contact . The next group is in the beginning of June and now it is almost complete. As a rule, we select people who are quite entrepreneurial-minded, that is, they themselves do, have already done, or are going to do some projects.

How do you plan to develop it further?

Probably, the obvious development is a program for “adults”, because now it is positioned for senior students and recent graduates. It is called “101”, and the new one will be “301”. The program is for such more serious people, professionals who also see entrepreneurship as an opportunity to develop their careers. It will differ primarily in the elements of training.

I also plan this summer to take part in organizing a summer school on entrepreneurship in St. Petersburg. And, if everything goes according to plan, then there will also be yachts for entrepreneurs. I hope that there it will be possible to take at least a couple of yachts, drive around the Gulf of Finland.

And there was also an idea to rent Kruzenshtern and make an educational program on entrepreneurship on it.

Yes, ambitious ... And how difficult is it to drag foreign experts to such events?

I thought about it. Some people ask me, why don't we go to a multinational team to, for example, drag someone from MIT. Of course, this is possible, but logistics is much more complicated. There is still a language barrier. According to the experience of yacht trips, the lack of a common language, with which everyone feels comfortable, greatly interferes. Therefore, so far at this stage there are no such plans.

In Russia, there is money, there are educational programs, there are minds and ideas. Why do you think we still don't have our own Google or Microsoft?

We have both ideas and programs, and people who are trying to build money, but all this is very fragmentary, and there is no environment or community such as Harvard, MIT or Silicon Valley, where there are a lot of these people and they are all professional. Now, if we try in our country to count people who made 1-2 startups and successfully sold them, then there will be a few.

If you look at the American ecosystem, you will see a lot of experts and literate people there, a huge amount of money, universities and everything else. There are more people and each specific element of the ecosystem is more professional.
Speaking of silicone valleys. When will we have our Palo Alto?

In most cases, we are trying to create silicone valleys at all from the wrong side. Everyone starts from the beautiful walls and offices, and you have to start from the head.

Actually, our incubator at the HSE is a vivid example. We have the smallest incubator of all: we live in two rooms, we have only 10 jobs. We have visited three teams, and they are all successful.

That is the main thing - exactly what side you come from. If you build the right principles, motivate people correctly, give them some guidelines, then they start to create a good company. If you promote some controversial values, establish strict rules and operate with stereotypes, then good people will not go there.

As an entrepreneur, I have experience in dealing with investors, and I got the (possibly erroneous) impression that they often simply do not own their investment technology.

Of course not, she has nowhere to take it easy.

In the West, most venture capitalists "grow out" of venture capital entrepreneurs. In Russia, as a rule, investors are the owners of traditional businesses, which bring them regular income and generate free funds. Maybe because of this, people think in completely different ways?

Yes, they think dumb in other categories. Our angels are very different from the angels of American, European or, for example, Kuwaiti. They are very involved in business management, because they simply do not see an entrepreneur with whom they would feel comfortable trusting their money.

That is, an investor does not always believe that a person who is quite competent in terms of business management can calmly manage money, grow a company, and at the same time the investor will not have to get into this business. In America, just the opposite is true. An angel is such a passive investor who gave money and went on to go about his interesting business.

- From here