How Microsoft participated in the 8-week hackathon "AlfaCamp 2.0"
This summer, Alfa-Bank held the second AlfaCamp, calling it “AlfaCamp 2.0” and inviting Microsoft, Visa and IIDF as partners. AlfaCamp 2.0 is eight weeks of intensive work of participating teams, free Microsoft software for development within the BizSpark program , including Azure cloud platform resources, Alfa-Bank technology and assistance of bank specialists to integrate these technologies into the products and services of developers.
Under the cut, you will find a story about how AlfaCamp passed and what was there.
The hackathon participants passed more than 60 hours of training in various areas: from marketing and economics to the technology of creating landings. Each team was assigned a curator - this was an employee of Alfa-Bank or an employee of a partner company who monitors the team's progress on a weekly basis. Once a week, everyone gathered on DemoDay and showed what was done.
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In addition, the program provided daily lectures and trainings, as well as meetings with experts from Visa, IIDF and Microsoft to help participants with different levels of project readiness show the maximum progress during AlfaCamp.
Where did they all live?
The organizers provided the teams with the opportunity to stay free of charge at a hostel in Moscow during the project, which was used by 12 participants. In the premises specially rented for the time of the hakaton, workplaces were equipped, where there was everything a startup needed - free wi-if, cookies, coffee / tea and water. Numerous lectures and seminars took place there. Of the wonderful ideas that we saw at the event, we especially want to point out a “pain board”, to which everyone could write about what he lacks from the point of view of the organization. The organizers examined the received questions daily and tried to solve them as far as possible, outweighing the stickers from the “pain” side to the “decided” side ... Something worked out, something didn't. Here in this photo you can see what worried the participants of the camp.
Selection of applications:
In a month and a half, more than 888 FINTECh projects submitted applications for participation in the project. Of these, 134 teams were selected, the pitch of which the organizers listened to at the Prekamp - qualifying event. Participants from all over the country, from Krasnodar to Khabarovsk, gathered at Pre-Camp. It was a ten-hour marathon of fintech presentations - more than 100 teams performed in one day.
Following the results, only 45 teams were selected for participation in AlfaCamp.
Camp:
On the first day of AlfaCamp, the teams managed to get comfortable in the room (spacious, light, two-story), get to know each other, talk with their curators from AlfaCamp and Visa and trackers from IIDF, learn about the technological support that Microsoft is ready to provide to the camp.
The AlfaCamp start-up training was opened by Dmitry Kalaev, director of acceleration and educational programs at the IIDF. At first, it was about why startups invest and when they are not needed, what a venture and non-venture startup is and for what reasons investors refuse. Then Dmitry spoke about the methodology that will be applied during training at the camp, recalled that the main advantage of a startup is a very quick hypothesis testing.
During the next master class, the head of the FIDA tracking team Artem Azevich reminded that a startup is not a small version of a large company and its development needs to be completely different. He showed the participants of the camp how to use the SPACE tool, with which you can understand the problems of a particular startup and how to solve them.
On a regular basis, the camp held individual consultations on customer development. Trackers and curators analyzed in detail the questions to test the business hypotheses of each particular startup.
For the first time, AlfaCamp this year has become Microsoft. Microsoft evangelists Alexander Belotserkovsky (technical) and Dmitry Butyanov (business) spoke about the Azure platform and options for implementing their projects using cloud services
Cooperation with Alfa-Bank
One of the main values of AlfaCamp was the opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs to communicate directly with the leaders and experts of Alfa-Bank and ask them their questions, get expertise and advice. Each team was assigned its curator from Alfa-Bank, who helped attract the project with the necessary resources and expertise from Alfa-Bank. Among those who advised projects during the camp were: Vladimir Urbansky, Head of the E-business Unit and Vladimir Bakulin, Head of the Monitoring Department of the Electronic Business Monitoring Directorate at Alfa-Bank.
The teams also had access to the Alpha Laboratories, located near the coworking, where they worked, the innovation center that creates electronic products and services for Alfa Bank clients.
This is what AlfaLab looks like:
Superheroes graffiti and inspirational quotes on openspace walls, a scattering of cozy talks, a veranda-balcony for outdoor work, a bicycle parking lot and showers for active lifestyle lovers - in this cool space everything contributes to the creative activity of employees.
Equator
The fourth demo day became the middle of AlfaCamp, its equator. For some projects, this moment, unfortunately, has become a point of no return, they have not advanced for various reasons in the development of their decision and should have left AlfaCamp. For others, the equator has become a decisive turnaround time - the path of the road has been passed, much has been done and now it is better to understand what remains to be done within the project.
Throughout the event, participants tested their projects, searched for their first clients, found ways to monetize and showed their supervisors how they could become their partners.
The final:
On August 31, Monday, the final Demo Day AlfaCamp was held. The participating teams demonstrated their projects, and their curators told how they see further cooperation ... 14 teams reached the final, with really very interesting and promising projects.
At the end of the day, everyone was able to communicate informally at the afterparty.
Dmitry Kozlov, head of Alfa-Bank’s e-commerce product development department, AlfaCamp organizer:
This year we decided to focus on m-commerce e-commerce and online projects. And in order to improve the quality of the projects adopted in our accelerator, we introduced strict selection rules. For example, when filling out the registration form, participants had to answer more than 70 questions relating to all aspects of their project. And to make sure that the guys really "burn eyes", we made a "Prekamp". One-day event where we listened to presentations of all interesting projects. And only after that the decision was made to enroll the project into the accelerator. It’s somewhat early to sum up the final results of AlfaCamp 2.0. But with confidence we can say that we have reached the expectations that we expected. On the development of projects - finalists can be found on the event page on Facebook.
Elena Bocharova, Head of E-Commerce Product Development, Alfa-Bank:
With the seven finalists, we sign cooperation agreements, the guys connect our P2P services and Internet equoring. With six, we continue the “pilot” to make a final decision on partnership. One team is enlisted in the correspondence accelerator of IIDF, in which it will continue its development and, possibly, will become our partner, but a little later. In addition to the excellent experience of interacting with projects, AlfaCamp 2.0 gave us a lot of information on how and where to go next. We began to understand perfectly what our strengths were and what we should work on. How best to search and interact with projects during the next acceleration program. Whether it will be called “AlfaCamp 2016” or we will change the format, while it is impossible to say for sure, but there’s no doubt about that.
Natalya Radosteva, head of Microsoft technology entrepreneurship development in Russia:
I would like to emphasize the importance of this 8-week hakaton: on the one hand, it demonstrates a deep and strong partnership between various companies that help start-ups to develop, which brings significant results in the development of entrepreneurship in Russia. On the other hand, it provides an opportunity for beginning IT entrepreneurs to get direct contact with future potential partners of their business and to get first-hand information that helps to create popular services and unique competitive advantages in the business segment where they start working .
Alexander Belotserkovsky, Microsoft Technology Evangelist, one of the curators of AlfaCamp:
The format of a long hackathon looks quite promising - in all this time it turns out to bring to the participants everything that in the traditional one or two days has to be offered in a very adapted and short form. During the communication over the course of many weeks, one can much better understand the essence of the project, its prospects, and develop a process of work and recommendations. In addition, we saw that the financial sector is a great opportunity for cloud computing.
AlfaCamp 2.0 in numbers:
Under the cut, you will find a story about how AlfaCamp passed and what was there.
The hackathon participants passed more than 60 hours of training in various areas: from marketing and economics to the technology of creating landings. Each team was assigned a curator - this was an employee of Alfa-Bank or an employee of a partner company who monitors the team's progress on a weekly basis. Once a week, everyone gathered on DemoDay and showed what was done.
')
In addition, the program provided daily lectures and trainings, as well as meetings with experts from Visa, IIDF and Microsoft to help participants with different levels of project readiness show the maximum progress during AlfaCamp.
Where did they all live?
The organizers provided the teams with the opportunity to stay free of charge at a hostel in Moscow during the project, which was used by 12 participants. In the premises specially rented for the time of the hakaton, workplaces were equipped, where there was everything a startup needed - free wi-if, cookies, coffee / tea and water. Numerous lectures and seminars took place there. Of the wonderful ideas that we saw at the event, we especially want to point out a “pain board”, to which everyone could write about what he lacks from the point of view of the organization. The organizers examined the received questions daily and tried to solve them as far as possible, outweighing the stickers from the “pain” side to the “decided” side ... Something worked out, something didn't. Here in this photo you can see what worried the participants of the camp.
How it was
Selection of applications:
In a month and a half, more than 888 FINTECh projects submitted applications for participation in the project. Of these, 134 teams were selected, the pitch of which the organizers listened to at the Prekamp - qualifying event. Participants from all over the country, from Krasnodar to Khabarovsk, gathered at Pre-Camp. It was a ten-hour marathon of fintech presentations - more than 100 teams performed in one day.
Following the results, only 45 teams were selected for participation in AlfaCamp.
Camp:
On the first day of AlfaCamp, the teams managed to get comfortable in the room (spacious, light, two-story), get to know each other, talk with their curators from AlfaCamp and Visa and trackers from IIDF, learn about the technological support that Microsoft is ready to provide to the camp.
The AlfaCamp start-up training was opened by Dmitry Kalaev, director of acceleration and educational programs at the IIDF. At first, it was about why startups invest and when they are not needed, what a venture and non-venture startup is and for what reasons investors refuse. Then Dmitry spoke about the methodology that will be applied during training at the camp, recalled that the main advantage of a startup is a very quick hypothesis testing.
During the next master class, the head of the FIDA tracking team Artem Azevich reminded that a startup is not a small version of a large company and its development needs to be completely different. He showed the participants of the camp how to use the SPACE tool, with which you can understand the problems of a particular startup and how to solve them.
On a regular basis, the camp held individual consultations on customer development. Trackers and curators analyzed in detail the questions to test the business hypotheses of each particular startup.
For the first time, AlfaCamp this year has become Microsoft. Microsoft evangelists Alexander Belotserkovsky (technical) and Dmitry Butyanov (business) spoke about the Azure platform and options for implementing their projects using cloud services
Cooperation with Alfa-Bank
One of the main values of AlfaCamp was the opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs to communicate directly with the leaders and experts of Alfa-Bank and ask them their questions, get expertise and advice. Each team was assigned its curator from Alfa-Bank, who helped attract the project with the necessary resources and expertise from Alfa-Bank. Among those who advised projects during the camp were: Vladimir Urbansky, Head of the E-business Unit and Vladimir Bakulin, Head of the Monitoring Department of the Electronic Business Monitoring Directorate at Alfa-Bank.
The teams also had access to the Alpha Laboratories, located near the coworking, where they worked, the innovation center that creates electronic products and services for Alfa Bank clients.
This is what AlfaLab looks like:
Superheroes graffiti and inspirational quotes on openspace walls, a scattering of cozy talks, a veranda-balcony for outdoor work, a bicycle parking lot and showers for active lifestyle lovers - in this cool space everything contributes to the creative activity of employees.
Equator
The fourth demo day became the middle of AlfaCamp, its equator. For some projects, this moment, unfortunately, has become a point of no return, they have not advanced for various reasons in the development of their decision and should have left AlfaCamp. For others, the equator has become a decisive turnaround time - the path of the road has been passed, much has been done and now it is better to understand what remains to be done within the project.
Throughout the event, participants tested their projects, searched for their first clients, found ways to monetize and showed their supervisors how they could become their partners.
The final:
On August 31, Monday, the final Demo Day AlfaCamp was held. The participating teams demonstrated their projects, and their curators told how they see further cooperation ... 14 teams reached the final, with really very interesting and promising projects.
At the end of the day, everyone was able to communicate informally at the afterparty.
Organizers comments:
Dmitry Kozlov, head of Alfa-Bank’s e-commerce product development department, AlfaCamp organizer:
This year we decided to focus on m-commerce e-commerce and online projects. And in order to improve the quality of the projects adopted in our accelerator, we introduced strict selection rules. For example, when filling out the registration form, participants had to answer more than 70 questions relating to all aspects of their project. And to make sure that the guys really "burn eyes", we made a "Prekamp". One-day event where we listened to presentations of all interesting projects. And only after that the decision was made to enroll the project into the accelerator. It’s somewhat early to sum up the final results of AlfaCamp 2.0. But with confidence we can say that we have reached the expectations that we expected. On the development of projects - finalists can be found on the event page on Facebook.
Elena Bocharova, Head of E-Commerce Product Development, Alfa-Bank:
With the seven finalists, we sign cooperation agreements, the guys connect our P2P services and Internet equoring. With six, we continue the “pilot” to make a final decision on partnership. One team is enlisted in the correspondence accelerator of IIDF, in which it will continue its development and, possibly, will become our partner, but a little later. In addition to the excellent experience of interacting with projects, AlfaCamp 2.0 gave us a lot of information on how and where to go next. We began to understand perfectly what our strengths were and what we should work on. How best to search and interact with projects during the next acceleration program. Whether it will be called “AlfaCamp 2016” or we will change the format, while it is impossible to say for sure, but there’s no doubt about that.
Natalya Radosteva, head of Microsoft technology entrepreneurship development in Russia:
I would like to emphasize the importance of this 8-week hakaton: on the one hand, it demonstrates a deep and strong partnership between various companies that help start-ups to develop, which brings significant results in the development of entrepreneurship in Russia. On the other hand, it provides an opportunity for beginning IT entrepreneurs to get direct contact with future potential partners of their business and to get first-hand information that helps to create popular services and unique competitive advantages in the business segment where they start working .
Alexander Belotserkovsky, Microsoft Technology Evangelist, one of the curators of AlfaCamp:
The format of a long hackathon looks quite promising - in all this time it turns out to bring to the participants everything that in the traditional one or two days has to be offered in a very adapted and short form. During the communication over the course of many weeks, one can much better understand the essence of the project, its prospects, and develop a process of work and recommendations. In addition, we saw that the financial sector is a great opportunity for cloud computing.
AlfaCamp 2.0 in numbers:
- The bank received 888 applications for participation
- Invited to percamp 134 projects
- Selected 45
- 14 teams reached the finish
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/271345/
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