Yorso Silicon Valley Bootcamp with Pulsar VC
10 projects from Kazan, five days of intensive program in the heart of Silicon Valley, startup battle, more than 20 professional speakers / VCs / succeeded founders and many-many more: all this became possible with bootcamp prepared and organized by Pulsar VC and Tatarstan Venture Fund. I don’t know what skeptics will say now about business and startup development in Russia but this fact is a nice response to “vse propalo / everything is bad”-mood people.
How it was and what it means to startup community in Tatarstan region — read below.
The preparation
At the beginning of October, 2017 I got a sudden call from unknown number with the following message:
Hi! Is this Anton Trantin? We are from Innopolis Special Economy Zone. Your project Yorso was chosen to be presented in California as a part of event organized by Tatarstan Venture Fund and Pulsar VC in two weeks. Will you go?
I moved to Innopolis from Moscow in 2015 and was many times surprised in a positive way by regional governments: it looked like they really wanted to grow the IT-community and develop new technologies. They understood that it is not just a political but a required step to survive in a new digital economy.
The call was even more surprising: I’m just a guy who graduated from the Innopolis University and run my own company Innosoft, LLC with primary project Yorso — marketplace for fish and seafood wholesales. We don’t have any administrative resources or even investors. This is just a team of graduates who want to disrupt the offline industry. That is why the fact of being invited to the Silicon Valley trip was unbelievable.
“Well, I’m in”
— was my response
Pulsar VC team quickly organized what was necessary for the journey: further communication, pitch-deck preparation and try-out run, tickets and accommodation, program agenda and initial acquaintance. Thus, October 22nd, we left Kazan and were on our way to the USA.
The Team
The members of the delegation I was honored to be part of are the following:
- Ilia Karas — Mouse project — connecting musician fans and audience in a right way
- Alexey Fedoseev and Dinar Shakirzyanov — Agrarium — blockchain app platform for agriculture industry
- Alexander Dmitrienko and Kirill Shidenko — TV2.digital — AI solution for advertisers to catch the audience during TV-advertisement pauses
- Vagan Martirosyan — TRY.FIT — new experience buying shoes which fit you the best possible way
- Talgat Kildiarov — Briology — Solutions for construction management based on mixed reality
- Alexander Prokhorov — Facemen Development — RFID labels and software for indoor analysis and security management
- Adel Gilaziev — Getcoder — find software developer in an easy way
- Irek Rakhmanov — Krafto — platform for used auto parts search and trade
- Mikhail Trofimov — Reveal — Facebook Ad management
- Pavel Korolev and Ildar Faizrahmanov — Pulsar VC — early stage venture fund and accelerator
The journey
The first place of living and program start was in San-Francisco. We stopped near Chinatown (which in fact is the largest chinatown of Asia) to be able to reach all places we needed just walking 15–20 minutes: this is the best mean of transportation ever. The program had several parts.
Speakers who succeed
The cute and nice co-working place The Vault hosted us in the first day with the set of speakers who agreed to share their experience with us in AMA-format:
- Leonard Grayver — Greenberg Whitcombe Takeuchi Gibson & Grayver LLP — shared with us the way of managing startups, making them successful, named most common mistakes to avoid and what to emphasize going global from Russian market to the USA especially with all our mentality issues
- Mikita Mikado — Co-Founder and CEO, PandaDoc — shared real insights of making sales for b2b market which was especially useful for me as a Yorso founder
- Vasil Azarov — CEO at Startup Socials and Growth Marketing Conf — told us how to grow startup and reach your target audience in the most efficient way
- Pavel Cherkashin — Managing Partner, GVA Capital — great talk with the following topic: “Why one startup looks hot, while others are of no interest to investors?”. At least we know what is important for him as for investor and which projects are the focus of interest
Companies who succeed
When you have a chance to “touch” the greatest companies but not just to read about them — you get a new experience and motivation. Special thanks for “warm” hosting and sharing your office ideas and corporate culture: I’ll definitely “steal” some practices into Innosoft.
500 startups
We got a chance to visit one of the best world IT accelerators and get acknowledged in person with Marvin Liao. He told us the mechanics of the accelerator, main conditions and of course we were able to ask any questions about conditions, insights and criteria they focus on while making a decision for taking or not the project into the batch
Evernote
The company with Russian roots who is now valued for at most ~ $2 bln. was almost bankrupt at the beginning of its history. We got insights from the very first developers who did the career in such projects as Paragraph and Silicon Graphics and then built Evernote.
Well, it’s Google, baby! Two Russians employees with more than 10 years experience in the “Corporation of Good” guided us through the Google Plex campus and offices, gave us a chance to have a lunch with other “googlers” and showed a “magic room” with chrome-books, google earth visualizer and other cool stuff (sorry, no photos!).
Global Technology Symposium
The main event organized by Sasha Johnson consisted of several parts:
- Showroom with startups and short pitches for Rustam Minnikhanov and Tatarstan delegation
- Startup battle and pitch session with honored judges and VC’s representatives (including a sudden meet with Lyubov Simonova). It was really tough to compete with mature and developed hardware, software and new materials projects so the third place of Mouse and Ilia Karas is a great achievement
- Networking, networking, networking: special dinner in Stanford, lunch in Golf club and many-many more…One can like or don’t like SF homeless people or american liberal values but there is no such place on Earth where people tend to help each other and where Stanford University community and knowledge around it on a regular basis brings new extraordinary people and projects to the market
Postmortem
I’m sure Pulsar will give a more precise and “nice” report prepared by professionals but still: while it was like “yesterday” I was obligated to share it with all of you.
Special thanks to the founders whom I got to know: in any event the best you can get is people and new acknowledgments. Guys, you are the best! Let’s keep in touch.
I want to thank one more time Pulsar VC and Tatarstan Republic for not just saying but making great steps in developing the high tech industry. You show the example of how to motivate and promote projects and teams but not just making infinite business trips for governments who usually don’t do anything for entrepreneurship development. Keep going beyond the others and who knows: one day you get one more unicorn grown in Kazan but not in California.
