Why Russia has a lot of ideas, but few startups

Lack of knowledge, money, brain drain and restrictions on the part of the law: experts from Kazan IT Park, IIDF and Innopolis University - about the reasons for the low entrepreneurial activity of Russian IT people.



Universities do not teach to create business from the idea



Director of IT Park Anton Grachev: “We need to understand how to package the project, where to get the money, the principle of building a business, income and expenses. Russian young IT entrepreneurs do not have a clear picture of how things are going, since nobody teaches them about this. In universities, technology entrepreneurship courses are needed. ”

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Maxim Gashkov, Head of the Department for Work with Partners of Innopolis University: “To create a project and monetize it is two different competencies. You can master both of them if you instill in universities students understanding how an idea should grow into a business.



The curriculum should assume not just entrepreneurship courses, but give students the opportunity to create a product, test it on the hackathon on real clients, and that the results are taken into account in tests and exams. Thus, knowledge is acquired, a portfolio is developed and a reserve is created for one’s own business. ”



IT entrepreneurs more convenient to build a business abroad



Isidander Nurbekov, Legal Director of the IIDF on Legal Issues: “In Russia, a specific attitude to entrepreneurship among the scientific community is that scientists do not want to be businessmen. In America, on the contrary, the role of a professor in business development is emphasized. The university assumes the streaming patenting of inventions made within its walls, but at the same time the patents are renewed only if there is a license issued for this patent. Either the patent is renewed if the professor creates a startup and declares that he wants to take this patent for the creation of a business.



Customers and scientists speak different languages ​​and do not understand how they can work together. There are individual professionals within the university who interact with professionals in corporations. The latter have a KPI to find and implement these innovations. Abroad, there is the Association of University Technology Managers, an association of technology transfer managers, where there is a whole cohort of specialists who speak both the language of scientists and the language of business. ”



Anton Grachev: “We need competitive conditions so that specialists do not go abroad. There are no restraining factors in IT business, there is no logistics and production, so IT professionals can easily go to Singapore, Latin America or Ireland, where this sphere is developed much better.



An IT company appears when it has at least a developer. Every person in such a company is a machine tool, raw materials and the main production tool. The government will be helped to retain the cadres with orders, which will reduce the costs of foreign specialists, will give work to programmers and develop the domestic IT sphere. ”



Project authors lack positive examples.



Maxim Gashkov: “Many authors of projects do not have the desire to develop business and earn money on it. They live on grants and go to another project when this ends with funding. It is important to pump the skill of quick launch and product testing, the visibility of the result will encourage students to work for real ”.



Iskender Nurbekov: “It is necessary to create effective technology transfer centers that will help scientists translate their technical solutions into inventions, and then into business. It is necessary to fill existing centers of innovation and entrepreneurship with real content. Now their assessment is based on the number of patents that are registered, and not on the amount of money earned by the scientist and the university. And we need to promote positive examples. When researchers see that their colleagues have become successful entrepreneurs, earning on inventions, they will want to commercialize their ideas. ”



It's hard for developers to make a profit for their project.



Anton Grachev: “Under Russian law, investors are not protected. Because of what they are not in all cases able to return the money, so investors are not always ready to invest. And startups lack funding even when they receive grants - they can only be used to purchase equipment. The main item of expenditure at startup startup is marketing, real estate and salaries, but grant payments cannot be allocated for this. ”



Iskender Nurbekov: “The majority of Russian universities are state-owned and the system of distribution of remuneration is not built in them. If the professor sells a license for his new methodology, then at the state university all the money from this transaction will go to the accounts of the federal treasury. From these accounts it is difficult to allocate money from the general financial flow in a higher educational institution — to separate them from money for paid education, government subsidies, and rent of university premises by third-party organizations. Money is dissolved in the general budget and practically nothing comes to a specific laboratory and staff.



Abroad, in inter-university cooperation agreements and in the rules of innovation within the university, it is clearly stated what percentage goes to the university administration, which to the laboratory, and which to the employee if he took the rights from the university. ”



Legislative requirements take a lot of time from entrepreneurs



Iskender Nurbekov: “IT startups are confronted with questions about personal data. State corporation requirements for the safety and security of big data to which projects must comply are reasonable and justified. But startups are not ready and can not devote so much time and attention to the protection of personal data. For them, this is a waste of time that they would spend on product development and sales development. But we can't fix it and create a special mode for startups.



I recommend to focus on the standard free documents, which are many on the Internet. You can watch the documents that are published on the FRIA website especially for such young startups, which allow you to remove risks from personal data, by domain name, by copyright. ”