Corporations and startups: successful cooperation models
Innovation Development Fund GoTech continues to talk about how corporations see successful cooperation with startups on a Russian and international scale.
Yury Vasilyev, Director of the Russian Technical Society
"The corporation is a ticket for" piloting "
If a startup collides with a market through a corporation, then the most important thing for it is the opportunity to get a pilot site with feedback from the market.
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For example, we were approached by a project on aeromonitoring construction sites. Neither we, nor they until the end at that time understood what the final technology would be. To provide them with a test site (a specific neighborhood), I had to go through five stages of coordination, up to the guards of the territory. It must be remembered that as soon as you come down, then nobody needs anything there. With innovative technologies, there is interference in the quiet life of a large corporation. And in this sense, the corporation with which you work is your ticket for “piloting”. At the entrance it is necessary to work out your semi-finished product with real experts, with the market, without any promises.
For three months of working with the project, we have provided savings of 22 million rubles. A joint venture has already been established with a view to the Middle East region.
Vartan Minasyan, head of investment and innovation at Kaspersky Lab
“We rarely communicate with startups who aim only at one country”
Kaspersky Lab, as one of the world's experts in the field of information security, is interested in seeing new products on the market in this area. Start-ups, for their part, it is important to understand what kind of product you need to create, how to do it properly, how to start your sales or strengthen them in the most efficient way possible. For each of these points, our company is ready to share experience with startups.
For us, the success of a startup is the moment when its sales have grown not only in Russia, but also abroad. We rarely communicate with those who target only one country.
There are several opportunities for a startup in our cooperation model - it will either sell to Lab customers, either with the help of partners, which we have several tens of thousands around the world, reach new markets and countries, or become a direct technological partner of Lab.
Rather, when working with startups, we are focused not so much on the financial result, but on building a new business. Even if we couldn’t agree with a startup for some reason, he still received feedback from us. And we are ready to meet with him further, to look at how the situation in its development is changing.
"Laboratory" does not want to be just an investor. When we plan to get something in return, we think about how it will fall on the startup strategy and ask for something that does not hinder business development. In our area, creating a product is an expensive process, so getting a large share in a startup can only hinder its development. Usually we start work with a startup, without taking a share, we ask it to make some pilots with our contact network. If he succeeds, then we enter the second stage of negotiations.
"Laboratory" takes the role of adviser - shares the experience from the inside. And, if a startup already has the feeling that he is a player in the corporate market, then he should initially think about how he sees his future success with the corporation.
Alexander Khanin, Founder and CEO of VisionLabs
“I recommend start-ups to speak the language of customers”
We had a very long way to the first contract. Now I can say that most projects have one common mistake - they focus on technology. But corporations, funds, and end customers are interested in something completely different - they want solutions to a specific problem. Therefore, when working with corporations, I recommend focusing on how a solution or a company's product can help either optimize internal processes within the corporation itself, or complement its product line.
Our first major sale took place after two years from the start of the company. We were interested in investors only when we had accumulated a critical mass of sales for corporate decisions.
At the first stage, Intel's accelerator helped us a lot. We passed it in 2013 at the University of Berkeley. There we were given a simple task - to conduct 100 interviews with customers from various customer segments that were mentioned in our presentation. We then said that we can recognize everything that moves. As a result, we conducted 120 interviews, tested several hypotheses, and chose the hottest segment - retail banks that suffer from a fraud problem. And based on this problem, they built a whole platform.
After the accelerator, the project went much better, they began to speak the same language with us. For example, we informed banks that we were ready to speed up the loan pipeline by so many percent.
Today we already have an experimental team that is engaged in completely new projects, and I would not be surprised if in a year they will generate half of the company's revenue.
Anna Shakirova, Sistema Venture Capital
“We are looking for stars, not sowing seeds that help grow”
The difference between our foundation and Kaspersky Lab is that we exist according to the rules of an independent venture capital fund with a separate strategy that is not based on the strategy of Sistema. The idea is not to develop a corporation's product line, but to find breakthrough niches and global growth points for it. But the corporation is not the customer of any specific solutions.
The key selection criterion for startups is the global nature of technology. But even if the company operates in the domestic market, we are looking for options for entering foreign markets. We pay special attention to a bright team that is able to conduct business independently. Rather, we are looking for stars than we sow seeds that help grow.
We have both technological and investment expertise developed at Sistema. We understand very well what success factors exist for businesses that have outgrown a certain scale. We understand how to build HR, how to look at finances, on business transparency. We use the connections that we have. But we are not ready to conduct a dialogue with an already established business.
We have a certain number of projects in our portfolio, where the founders are former corporate employees. Inside corporations, it is not worthwhile to give venture projects an opportunity, therefore, by the way, Sistema has decided that they should be implemented through a separate structure.
This publication is based on the video recording of speakers' speeches at the round table as part of the annual Forum of technological companies GoTech 2016, hosted in the official Gotech YouTube account.
Yury Vasilyev, Director of the Russian Technical Society
"The corporation is a ticket for" piloting "
If a startup collides with a market through a corporation, then the most important thing for it is the opportunity to get a pilot site with feedback from the market.
')
For example, we were approached by a project on aeromonitoring construction sites. Neither we, nor they until the end at that time understood what the final technology would be. To provide them with a test site (a specific neighborhood), I had to go through five stages of coordination, up to the guards of the territory. It must be remembered that as soon as you come down, then nobody needs anything there. With innovative technologies, there is interference in the quiet life of a large corporation. And in this sense, the corporation with which you work is your ticket for “piloting”. At the entrance it is necessary to work out your semi-finished product with real experts, with the market, without any promises.
For three months of working with the project, we have provided savings of 22 million rubles. A joint venture has already been established with a view to the Middle East region.
Vartan Minasyan, head of investment and innovation at Kaspersky Lab
“We rarely communicate with startups who aim only at one country”
Kaspersky Lab, as one of the world's experts in the field of information security, is interested in seeing new products on the market in this area. Start-ups, for their part, it is important to understand what kind of product you need to create, how to do it properly, how to start your sales or strengthen them in the most efficient way possible. For each of these points, our company is ready to share experience with startups.
For us, the success of a startup is the moment when its sales have grown not only in Russia, but also abroad. We rarely communicate with those who target only one country.
There are several opportunities for a startup in our cooperation model - it will either sell to Lab customers, either with the help of partners, which we have several tens of thousands around the world, reach new markets and countries, or become a direct technological partner of Lab.
Rather, when working with startups, we are focused not so much on the financial result, but on building a new business. Even if we couldn’t agree with a startup for some reason, he still received feedback from us. And we are ready to meet with him further, to look at how the situation in its development is changing.
"Laboratory" does not want to be just an investor. When we plan to get something in return, we think about how it will fall on the startup strategy and ask for something that does not hinder business development. In our area, creating a product is an expensive process, so getting a large share in a startup can only hinder its development. Usually we start work with a startup, without taking a share, we ask it to make some pilots with our contact network. If he succeeds, then we enter the second stage of negotiations.
"Laboratory" takes the role of adviser - shares the experience from the inside. And, if a startup already has the feeling that he is a player in the corporate market, then he should initially think about how he sees his future success with the corporation.
Alexander Khanin, Founder and CEO of VisionLabs
“I recommend start-ups to speak the language of customers”
We had a very long way to the first contract. Now I can say that most projects have one common mistake - they focus on technology. But corporations, funds, and end customers are interested in something completely different - they want solutions to a specific problem. Therefore, when working with corporations, I recommend focusing on how a solution or a company's product can help either optimize internal processes within the corporation itself, or complement its product line.
Our first major sale took place after two years from the start of the company. We were interested in investors only when we had accumulated a critical mass of sales for corporate decisions.
At the first stage, Intel's accelerator helped us a lot. We passed it in 2013 at the University of Berkeley. There we were given a simple task - to conduct 100 interviews with customers from various customer segments that were mentioned in our presentation. We then said that we can recognize everything that moves. As a result, we conducted 120 interviews, tested several hypotheses, and chose the hottest segment - retail banks that suffer from a fraud problem. And based on this problem, they built a whole platform.
After the accelerator, the project went much better, they began to speak the same language with us. For example, we informed banks that we were ready to speed up the loan pipeline by so many percent.
Today we already have an experimental team that is engaged in completely new projects, and I would not be surprised if in a year they will generate half of the company's revenue.
Anna Shakirova, Sistema Venture Capital
“We are looking for stars, not sowing seeds that help grow”
The difference between our foundation and Kaspersky Lab is that we exist according to the rules of an independent venture capital fund with a separate strategy that is not based on the strategy of Sistema. The idea is not to develop a corporation's product line, but to find breakthrough niches and global growth points for it. But the corporation is not the customer of any specific solutions.
The key selection criterion for startups is the global nature of technology. But even if the company operates in the domestic market, we are looking for options for entering foreign markets. We pay special attention to a bright team that is able to conduct business independently. Rather, we are looking for stars than we sow seeds that help grow.
We have both technological and investment expertise developed at Sistema. We understand very well what success factors exist for businesses that have outgrown a certain scale. We understand how to build HR, how to look at finances, on business transparency. We use the connections that we have. But we are not ready to conduct a dialogue with an already established business.
We have a certain number of projects in our portfolio, where the founders are former corporate employees. Inside corporations, it is not worthwhile to give venture projects an opportunity, therefore, by the way, Sistema has decided that they should be implemented through a separate structure.
This publication is based on the video recording of speakers' speeches at the round table as part of the annual Forum of technological companies GoTech 2016, hosted in the official Gotech YouTube account.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/321622/
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