General Director of Technopark "Skolkovo" spoke about the results of work and future plans

At the age of 19, in 1995, Renat Batyrov created the Pilot company. Her specialization was IT services. In 2012, he launched the private IT park Fabrika in Astrakhan. In February 2014, Batyrov took over as CEO of Skolkovo Technopark. The editors of Rusbase talked with Renat Batyrov about his past companies, about the results and prospects of Skolkovo.

"Megamind" leads the most interesting statements from the interview .

About the reasons for the transition to Skolkovo

I never had a resume in my life, and I never looked for a job. At 19, I had my own company, all my thoughts were devoted to her. Probably played the magic of the word "Skolkovo" or my love for technology parks. At that moment I was on a business trip in Moscow and was able to respond promptly, to come for an interview. After that there were 4 or 5 more stages. And each is all the more interesting. I learned what inspired me, bribed. This is not money, but those opportunities, ambitions of the project, which I did not even know about a year ago, although I was part of the crowd.
The key to my decision was that a lot of smart people now work around me - they are smarter than me and I learn from them. This was not enough for me in Astrakhan.
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Why did you choose me? I dont know. Probably because I managed to make my Astrakhan IT park successful. And the labor market in this area is small.

About his former company Pilot

I had to leave my business. I must say, it was not at all difficult to do. It was necessary even earlier. Already a few years ago I transferred the operational management to partners and acted for my colleagues as a manager, coach, mentor.

About IT Park "Factory" and its relationship with the "Pilot"

Our financial director predicted that the payback period for this project would come only after 248 years. The reality was better.
There were several goals. First, it was necessary to protect the already earned profits. Secondly, it was necessary to make this money bring money. And we began to rent this property, but not to anyone, but to friendly companies from the Astrakhan region. We combined marketing budgets, back office budgets with them, our accountants and lawyers began to serve them.

Then we learned that, it turns out, this could be called an IT park. We went and watched what was happening in Kazan. And we realized that we need startups, we need to grow new companies. So the incubator appeared.

After that we went to Silicon Valley and found out what an accelerator is. And they understood that in order for companies to grow quickly, they need to be helped in development, in commercialization, in entering the market, in attracting investments.

And then we realized that, it turns out, you can make an IT park, in which there is an incubator, accelerator, laboratories, residents, and all this can help the “Pilot”. Because now we don’t need to have our own project teams for one or another specialization. We can take residents to the project, and then return them.

About work at Skolkovo

The load has grown multiple times. The previous three years I worked in the “two weeks in Astarakhani, two weeks traveling the world” mode. I had free time, now it is not. There will be more laboratory capacity, almost none at the Factory.
There are a lot of differences. We had a focus on IT, there are many more areas here: biomed, energy efficiency, space technology and others. There is much more international cooperation here.

About interaction with regional technoparks

I saw not problems, but opportunities. In my opinion, one of the major opportunities that we have implemented is building relationships with regional technology parks. For this, they had to overcome the barrier - the myth that Skolkovo was a competitor for them, an enemy and a vacuum cleaner. At some point, every startup needs to enter the federal, and then the international market, to receive international expertise. At this moment, Skolkovo can help him.

Cooperation is ongoing. For example, we organize contests together with clusters on the basis of regional technoparks, and the winners of these contests become our residents. We understand that the whole company will not move. She will simply have an R & D office or promotion office here. Here revenue will be generated to maintain an office that will remain in the region.

About the attitude to Skolkovo abroad

Initially, they were treated with surprise and shock. They did not know about Skolkovo. Everyone had round eyes.
Today are treated well. Everyone wants to cooperate, share startups, use our resources when entering the Russian market or, conversely, provide opportunities for our startups when entering their markets.
At the mere mention of "Skolkovo" in negative connotations, I see 200 positive references. Of course, there will always be those who criticize us and often fair. But it does not happen that "like everyone."

About ways to go abroad

Now at any moment we have some Road-show of our companies, specially selected for the foreign market. Cooking road show in China. We have a very large international agenda. We drove about 40 of our companies on Slush. We are waiting here for representatives of several dozen countries at Startup Village, this is an opportunity to speak in front of foreign investors and technoparks. Today we have 400 technology parks in the partner network: American, Canadian, Dutch ... From Botswana to Japan, from Scandinavia to Brazil.

Brain Drain

She goes in two directions. And they leave, and they come to us. Our task is to make people come to us more than they leave. To do this, we have a special softland program: we offer foreign companies to come to us and stay for six months, try to live and enter the Russian market. By the end of the year, we are waiting for a dozen or more foreign companies.

About plans Technopark

Our task is to brew broth in which investors, entrepreneurs, startups, experts, scientists and specialists will cook. So they mixed and enriched each other. Russian, international ...
We learn what is needed at a gathering of technology parks. We communicate with startups without leaving the dining room. Colleagues from the clusters come and say: “But could you still do this for us?” We took over the function of calling and collecting reports. We act as one window for the whole fund. We see what is good in other technology parks in the world.

The technopark has grown 1.5 times in people. We now have more features than a year ago.

When the big technopark is completed, we will have to be ready to occupy it. To persuade several hundred companies to move there is not difficult, there is already a queue. The same applies to the laboratory: 24 laboratories should not be filled for public money. We attract operators who have their equipment on balance. For our part, we give traffic orders from our startups.
The next challenge is to attract investments from other countries, both Asian and European, to our site. Cooperation continues no matter what.

About the business climate in Russia

I think our business climate is great. And those people who talk about his deterioration - they just do much worse.
In 1998 and 2008, I had a serious crisis in the company. And I always came out with a profit, I earned on these crises. For someone sanctions, for someone - import substitution. For some, the decline in revenue in rubles, for whom - the possibility of developing IT outsourcing.
If you work for a foreign market, then you should be fine. Rent in Moscow fell by about 30% - class. You just need to understand where one of your possibilities.