YEES-2010 - Attack of the Confederation

New Hope

Last Saturday, April 17, two things happened. The first - ash clouds from a distant Icelandic volcano with an unspeakable name covered the business of European air carriers with an ashtray, and the second, directly related to the IT industry, is the Russian Startup Challenge , where Finobox was one of the seven finalists. So, the place of action - Moscow business, tower con Federation.

Empire Strikes Back

On Habré hung a banner inviting web projects to attract investment. We received our invitation from the partners of the campaign - StartupPoint. The composition of the experts turned out to be quite interesting and paid particular attention to Pavel Cherkashin, with whom we already had the opportunity to communicate last fall. But in order to get into the Federation tower of the Moscow-City complex, it was necessary to qualify. Filling out an application and sending it to the address indicated, we soon received a pleasant reply that the advisory council chose Finobox and 6 more finalists out of 70 announced participants and we will be able to give a presentation to the “Runet guru”.
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After another couple of hours, on Tuesday evening, we received a call from the organizers, who informed us that in order to participate in the final, we should pass two trainings - “tomorrow and the day after tomorrow”. Considering our remoteness from the center of the galaxy at 100 km, it was problematic to change all the plans for the two coming days. Everything was aggravated by the uncertainty of the exact time. Doubts about the competence of the organizers began to creep in.

As a result, the organizers reported that the training for the preparation of the presentation will take place the day before the presentation - on Friday evening, at the Moscow School of Business.

Return of the Jedi

The training was conducted by Andrey Zotov, already known to us by iCamp, which was held in the summer of 2009. In his report, he spoke about the problem of startups and how best to build a presentation so that the project interested investors. After, already taking into account the received advice, we slightly corrected the presentation. And since time was catastrophically short (Zotov logically noted that it was worth meeting much earlier), the discussion and correction of the presentation went on the road.

Hidden threat

Collection time was scheduled for 5 pm Saturday. Upon arrival, we began to look for an entrance. At the pass office, the girl said that the guard around the corner had lists of participants. When we said the name of the event, he made round eyes and tried to repeat what we said. He said that only a certain forum “YEES” is being held here (you never guess - {Your} Education Enables Success). The phone of one of the organizers monotonously reported that the subscriber is not available. By the second number we were informed that we were just for this “YES”. The guard, laughing and again trying to say "Startup Challenge", missed us.

The badges were not on the lists, of course, they were signed by hand (looking ahead, I will say that I never saw anyone with a printed badge). All this has already caused an ironic smile.

Having seen through the empty corridors, having enjoyed the scenery of the shooting pavilion of “Our Rashi”, we found ourselves in a conference room, in which someone had already performed with his report.

Attack of the Clones

Where to go, to whom to give a presentation, what time we are speaking (what is happening at all) - there was no one to ask these questions. An hour later, at the time of the announcement that after the coffee break, the desired challenge will take place, we were nevertheless found by the girl to whom the presentation was given. We performed second.







The comments of the Finobox specialists turned out to be quite controversial. And the fighters for the purity of the Russian language could break on the spot from indignation (as during the whole event). I understand that sometimes you can use English words when it is appropriate and the audience is appropriate, but some statements by respected experts made me remember my sister, who has lived in Canada for more than 15 years and periodically forgets Russian words. During the break (coffee break), the vice-president of a Swiss bank approached us and quite successfully, albeit in a peculiar way, joked in Russian.

If we mark the rest of the projects, then one interested us (we will use it ourselves), and the other, for example, caused a cultural shock - the idea to plant a lot of people to recognize something was always perceived as an innovative Chinese joke. But in the direction of a joke - it is all done and are trying to sell!

But the most important thing is that I had a clear conviction that no one here even thought of investing money in any project. And to say that all the projects were bad - I can not. It was still not the bare ideas of the type - "put the webcam in the birdhouse." In general, our opinion is such that the Russian Competition of Projects was like an appendage to fill the airtime.

Revenge of the Sith

Since there was no constructive conversation during the presentation, we decided to take the opportunity to socialize in an informal setting at the evening reception (atepaaati) at the photo center. Lumiere brothers. And here we managed to make some interesting contacts with people who were interested in our project.

Glimmer of hope

In general, such events are probably quite useful. You can, of course, speculate about the unwillingness of a domestic investor to invest in IT projects and about the profitability of moving the tank with oil, but if you move in this (IT) direction, you will definitely have results.