Anton Arnautov - about accelerators

Through the story about accelerators, Fintech Lab Anton Arnautov told us how the Russian start-up market differs from the world one, which way helps young projects to find investments in our country, and what features exist in working with financial companies - consumers of B2B projects.




- Tell us in a few words about yourself. What are you doing at the moment?
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Anton Arnautov: I am a media man, I worked in the media. Five or six years ago he began to be interested in FINTECH: he created his first site on FINTECH - Future Banking and held a forum FinNext , on which the first pitches of FINTECH start-ups were organized.

For several years, as I wrote about this topic and organized various kinds of events, the concept of how it would be possible in practice to help Fintech start-ups and, in a sense, develop Fintech as a whole, matured. And a year ago we created the company Fintech Lab, which organizes collaborative accelerators on the subject of Fintech.

We spent the first accelerator a little more than half a year ago together with the banking sector, and now the second acceleration program with insurance companies is underway - Insuretech Lab .

- Why was chosen such a form of practical assistance to the industry?

Anton Arnautov: During the years of market observation, I had the feeling that we in Russia do not have any venture capital industry as such. There are only a few attempts to do something in this direction, and there are some people who do it. There are even venture funds, but in general there is no market.

It is said that, in its final form, such a market exists in the only place in the world - in Silicon Valley. I think this is an exaggeration. In many countries there is a more or less developed market.

In our country, FINTECH start-ups (I will not say about other areas), which are created with the expectation of venture investment - for some kind of money injection and capitalization growth, either stagnate or close.

We have to look for some kind of development model of FINTECH start-ups, given the lack of venture financing. We are just trying to offer our option.

- What do you think, why is this the case with venture investments?

Anton Arnautov: I do not know. Culture is different, the law and horizons of business differ.
There are investments here, but they are few and hard to count on. The money will come, but then, after the creation of the business, when there will be a customer base and cashflow.

- Are there any similar programs abroad?

Anton Arnautov: Yes. For me personally, the impetus for creating the program was information about such collaborative accelerators, which began to appear in different countries around the world about five years ago. Among the sites where major financial market players (banks, insurance companies) work together with start-ups: Stone & Chalk (Sydney, Australia), Level 39 (London, UK) and The Floor (Tel Aviv, Israel). All these accelerators are not focused on venture investors and funds, but on consumers of services from the B2B segment.

There was a desire to make a similar story in Russia, especially, as I said above, for our startups this is the only way out.

We agreed with Accenture that they will act as strategic consultants for our first accelerator. We studied how it all worked out for them, and also got acquainted with the experience of other accelerators from Russia (it is different from what Accenture does in the West). As a result, we have a combined, one might say, own accelerator model.

- And how is it fundamentally different from the closest analogues (if in principle any analogs can be distinguished)?

Anton Arnautov: The principal point is that we have three components of the accelerator.

There are startups. There are customers or partners - these are financial institutions that work with us. It is important that they work directly with startups - there is a mentor at each site from financial institutions (Accenture accelerators are organized in the same way, which they have been spending for five years in different parts of the world - New York, London, Hong Kong, Dubai).

We have added professional trackers that accompany startups to this “classic” model. Similar people are in the projects of FRIA (Internet Initiatives Development Fund). The task of the tracker is to control the development of the team exactly as a business project.

- What tasks are assigned to this tracker? Is its need determined by the absence of any important skills from startup managers from Russia?

Anton Arnautov: I think that such a component would also be useful for Accenture accelerators.

The main KPI to evaluate the success of the program is a pilot project, which start-ups will have time to launch in three months together with our partners. Those. This story is not about agreements of intent and not about venture capital investments (although they may arise as a side effect), but about real pilots on real data. Many of our participants on the program for the first time start working with financial institutions. They are not adapted to the processes, they do not understand what it is. On the other hand, financial institutions themselves are not prepared to start a service in three months. They usually have a year for launching something. And the task of our trackers is not to let any one or the other side get stuck in the development of a pilot project.

- And who selects startups to participate in your accelerators?

Anton Arnautov: Our partners themselves not only choose start-ups, but also define those areas in which it would be interesting to choose.

Not that we did not know it or could not. But if we independently select startups, they will not consider the project as their own. Therefore, before the first accelerator banks watched all 120 applications. Then their representatives watched 26 pitches from morning to evening, after which we argued with them who we were taking and who we didn't. And they made the decision, not us. When the bank said that he wanted to take someone, it meant that he would deal with it later. He will have to spend at least an hour a week on this project.

- What principles did they follow when choosing startups? What solutions are financial institutions interested in right now?

Anton Arnautov: Selection criteria at this stage are still evolving.
When we did the first acceleration program, the banks approached this process purely pragmatically: they took services that improve something incrementally in their lives, emphasizing that they need specific things that will bring tangible results today. It turned out - 11 pilots were launched.

Interestingly, then the same banks said that they bent the stick with pragmatics - something very down-to-earth came out. There was not a single project that would be engaged in advanced technologies (I would have dreamed of tomorrow).

And in the new set with Insuretech insurance companies, we found a balance. We have projects for the future - for example, crowdfunding, and even a blockchain platform - about eliminating insurance intermediaries, or a project that uses serious medical research to predict health risks. There are still no pragmatists in these projects - it is not clear how exactly this can be applied today. And we hope for three months to find options. On the other hand, there are enough down-to-earth services that can already be used.

- Is it possible to identify any topics that are in demand by partners?

Anton Arnautov: In both of our accelerators, there are projects related to psychography and enrichment of client data with information from social networks (with some analysis of this data, including methods of machine learning).

Apparently, this area is really interested in financial institutions. In general, it seems to me that now the most interesting thing is happening in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

- Probably, big business and representatives of startups initially speak different languages. Is there in Fintech a problem of misunderstanding between representatives of a partner and a startup?

Anton Arnautov: Practically not. Fintech startups stand out against other projects. Although we have teams that came from science, as a rule, start-ups in this area are created by people with a certain industry experience. Often they are created by specialists of a fairly good level, having worked in large financial institutions.

We do not need to work as a translator, but still have to interfere. When, relatively speaking, the former deputy chairman of a large bank creates his startup, his behavior changes so much that he ceases to understand the logic of his former employer. We have to rebuild it back. But this is a barrier rather than a cultural plan: it is clear that a startup is very different in its culture from a large hierarchical structure.


- What competencies are not enough for managers and ideological inspirers of Russian start-ups?

Anton Arnautov: All these are young projects. Of course, some of them already have active customers, cashflow, etc., but still this is a business that has existed for three years. Naturally, any young business (by the way, we, too, since Fintech Lab exists only a year) does not have enough experience and makes standard mistakes. And our task is to save them, if possible, from stuffing extra cones.

Typical problems are with customer development, i.e. to check your ideas on real customers, to learn to ask them questions and listen to the answers; in understanding how large financial institutions are structured, what is their logic, with whom to negotiate there and what reactions to expect.

- Are there any purely Russian “holes” in knowledge?

Anton Arnautov: Our startups are largely product-centric. They really like their product (otherwise they would not create it).

First of all, startups think about what a wonderful thing this is, we must offer it to the whole world. But understanding what the world wants, what pains he has and how to integrate into it, comes to them secondarily.

Often this must be taught. As far as I heard, in the West, startups are more focused on demand, on customer research, on sales, etc.

- And why is there such a bias? Is it a problem of educational institutions?

Anton Arnautov: With universities and schools we have a disaster in this regard. We do not train entrepreneurs, do not instill the skills necessary to create and manage their own project.

Observing this picture, we decided to open a second line of work: we now want to launch a pilot on the so-called group project training between financial institutions and universities. The idea is to create micro-start-ups within the university - project teams that would work on real-world tasks. The meaning is precisely from the 3rd year to teach students to work in a project, to interact with the customer, with a certain timing, to learn to work in a team.

- Your first acceleration program has already passed. Is it time to draw any conclusions, mark the results?

Anton Arnautov: I can hardly attribute to myself everything good that is happening now with the startups participating in the program. But our role here, of course, was. Here are some examples.

One of the strongest startups in the first program was the Relation Rate project from Yekaterinburg, combining psychography, computer vision and machine learning. I am very glad that it turned out to attract these guys here. Now they continue to pilots with banks, but the main thing is that they have started to work successfully with retail and they have numerous investment proposals. Incidentally, this is a common situation - after the first projects, investments may come. As I understand it, the level of maturity of this startup is about two times higher than when they came to us. Now it is already "taking off" business.

Another team - Rubbles - is already known in our market, they participated not only in our accelerator. Now they have received serious investments in the West. I think it helped them, including expanding the track-record with our help. They are now gaining international experience, and this is excellent.

The speech recognition project Robin, in addition to successfully participating in our accelerator and developing pilots with banks, won one of three nominations for Finnopolis, received a cash prize and new contacts with banks there.

The project Insurion participated in our first banking accelerator, and now continues to work in the insurance. From the project of one person, he turned into a small business.

Panda Money - a bank for children, which, frankly, was not very popular in Russia - received international recognition. They have some projects in Japan and Switzerland - they have gone international.

- And what are the results from the other side - from the partners (financial institutions)?

Anton Arnautov: When I agitate financial institutions to participate in our program, I always say that there are two core values ​​that can be learned from the program.

First, they really need the pragmatic services on which they will earn. Here, the minimum program is completed: there are a number of pilots, some are more successful, others less. Someone made two pilots, someone three, and someone - one. But the services are running, they have worked on real data (with live clients), and they are now analyzing the results.

Secondly, they also found themselves in some sense in a stressful situation, working outside their corporate habits and rules, in the context of a three-month acceleration program. This is no less, and perhaps more important for them.

It turned out that the degree of their readiness for such a schedule was greatly overvalued. Much of the internal business processes had to change. And what has been changed will remain with them. With or without our startups, they have learned to do many things much faster.

- It turns out, interaction with startups works as an accelerator for them?

Anton Arnautov: Absolutely. They say that the main thing now is time to market. And we help them build a fast track.

The partners have the usual procedures that can be performed for months and years. And in order to launch a pilot, we have to do a fast track around or on the side of these procedures. It stays with them.

- Is the partner's involvement enough for such transformations?

Anton Arnautov: Our entire program aims to increase the degree of involvement of a financial institution in what is happening on the site. It is very important. Without engagement, we call it the usual accelerator syndrome.

What usually happens when a certain customer company allocates a budget for innovation? An innovation manager is appointed, who receives, conditionally, a bag of money and takes it to some accelerator, expecting innovation to be given to him. The accelerators gather startups, work with them. And after three months, a certain result is obtained, which now needs to be implemented in the company. And at this stage nothing comes out, because at best one person is involved in the process - an innovative officer who, according to colleagues, does not understand what he is doing.

We have not. It all starts with the selection procedure for startups. Last time we had up to eight representatives from one insurance company - literally from all links.

Another procedure we borrowed from Accenture. This is an exit day when our entire accelerator with its full complement leaves for the partner’s office and real speed dating takes place there, where not only mentors responsible for our accelerator participate, but also representatives of all key divisions that can be affected by launching a pilot: lawyers, IT, security, products.

I recommend at this stage to call not only those who are interested in implementation, but those with whom there may be problems. For example, lawyers. These are wonderful guys - they know perfectly well why not.

During the day off, representatives of the partner have the opportunity to meet with all startups participating in the accelerator. After all, we do not know what will happen in the process of this program. There begins the group dynamics - everything can change.

As a result, after three months, no one will say that he does not understand at all who these people are. Partner employees already know who this is and what they want to do. They are already thinking about how to embed it. This is fundamentally important.

- What would you advise startups - future accelerator participants?

Anton Arnautov: Probably, to clearly represent the prospects.

If a person (startup) is focused on a venture model, dreams of entering an IPO, etc., then he must understand: one of his inevitable steps will be to buy a ticket and fly to Silicon Valley.

Or somewhere else where a venture model is well developed.

If he wants to work in Russia, he should think of his project as a business from the very beginning: customers, cashflow, orders. Yes, he can hope to receive investments, but they will come only when he already has a working business.

Must see reality. If you see that there are no venture funds, probably, your model should be built without relying on the myths that investments will come now (and therefore all efforts should be spent on attracting investors).

In addition, we must understand that in our region - in Fintech - large corporate structures have an increased immunity, which rejects any attempt to quickly change anything. And you need to be reserved with perseverance and patience to break through these barriers, or look for those who really help, like us, Skolkovo, etc.

- By the way, is this immunity a feature of all large structures in the world?

Anton Arnautov: In large structures in the West, a culture of interaction is much more developed. They understand that many things, especially experimental ones, will inevitably have to be carried beyond the perimeter. Therefore, they have much better developed interfaces for working with startups.

In Russia, almost no one can boast.