In our posts, we have repeatedly mentioned that after the final of the "Digital Breakthrough" competition, successful teams will be able to refine their projects within the pre-accelerator and create products for the market. The program started on September 30, and we can already summarize the first results. But first, let's explain the essence of the program and why the pre-accelerator is necessary for companies, investors, and the teams themselves.
With the help of experts, the projects created during the hackathon (at regional or final stages) are maximally developed and prepared for market entry. They are introduced to representatives of companies, investors, and future mentors, who, like good fitness trainers, extract the maximum potential from them. By the way, all the work takes place under the strict supervision of 20 trackers — individuals who have successfully grown more than one startup and undoubtedly know all the pitfalls in the emergence of future unicorns (and we are not talking about mythical horses) 🙂
The main goal of the trackers is not to boast about the portfolio of projects they have grown. They become mentors and engage with the teams individually on a regular basis, providing them with an external vision of the project and pointing out obvious 'bugs' in the implementation of ideas. Representatives from companies — task providers for the hackathon — also work with the participants. As a result of their collaboration, the raw development will transform into a true pilot and have the potential to actually take off in the market.
We asked two trackers how the pre-acceleration process is going now.
Nikita Chizhov, Tracker
"All participants approach their main mission differently. For example, the primary goal of one team is to secure further employment in a large corporation and to develop their project from within. Meanwhile, another team aims to obtain a grant and establish connections within government bodies, while a third team wants to build a large-scale product for the entire market and attract investments from a business angel. Currently, the teams are in the validation stage of their core idea, and to assist them, we utilize customer development techniques that help identify the problems of potential clients and understand how suitable the solutions are for their needs."
One of the tools that allows for strategic planning and development of ideas is the business canvas tool. It enables you to describe all business processes and customer segments, the key proposition, necessary resources, infrastructure, and partners. This will help the team initially think through in more detail what is required to achieve their goals.
Denis Poshekhontov, a member of the St. Petersburg team Continuous Disintegration (winners in the nomination of the State Corporation Rosatom), shared their goals with us:
"For the pre-accelerator, we chose a prototype of the finale and slightly expanded its hypothesis. Our main mission is to attract funding for the project and bring it to market. Additionally, we are interested in seeing how the startup environment looks from the inside. Who knows — maybe in the future we will also become a full-fledged startup with a truly competitive solution."
Marat Nabiullin from the goAI team (winners in the MTS nomination) highlighted the goals of his team, which turned out to be very broad:
- To develop a three-year growth strategy.
- To sign NDAs and letters of intent with a corporate client, a government customer, and two other major corporate customers.
- To obtain data for analyzing the labor intensity of tasks and creating cost calculations for contracts.
- To prepare and agree on commercial proposals with the definition of contract forms, stages, deadlines, costs, testing parameters and acceptance conditions, conditions for changing development costs, parameters for monthly maintenance, SLA levels and security, compliance with GDPR requirements and regulatory documentation, requirements for the transfer of rights and licensing, creation of user instructions for the system, and training parameters for personnel.
- To sign one contract based on specific parameters."
Oksana Pogodaeva, a tracker and entrepreneur, also spoke about the progress of the pre-acceleration program:
The tracker always plays a key role in the implementation of any project. It assists projects in goal setting, formulating hypotheses, and their elaboration. It also focuses teams on achieving their goals, conducting weekly HADI cycles (Hypothesis-Action-Data-Insight) to quickly gather useful market knowledge and understand what is truly needed by it and by the end consumer.
At the start of the pre-acceleration program, a diagnostics of projects was conducted, which allowed for an understanding of their current state, as well as helped identify the strengths and weaknesses of the teams.
It is also important to note that the tracker is not an expert and does not give advice on how the team should act in a given situation. It leads them to understand the problem and search for solutions through guiding questions.
Sixty teams were selected to participate in the pre-acceleration program, and they have been working on enhancing their projects and skills for the second month now. After the defense, which will take place from November 20 to 22 at the Senеж Management Workshop, the refined prototypes of innovative solutions will go into 'free float' in the market without mentors. Some will be able to do this with the help of investors, who also keep an eye on the work and interact with the teams during the process.
Other participants, who did not aim to bring their projects to market, will find employment in a company and work on its development from within.
Marat Nabiullin shared how the pre-acceleration stage is going for them:
‘Within the framework of the pre-accelerator, we are working on a project, tasked from the contest finale, and developing the personnel retraining service 'ADEPT' based on artificial intelligence. This service addresses the issue of 'upskilling' specialists within the company for open positions and contributes to career growth on one side, while on the other, it adapts employees from disappearing professions due to the digital transformation of business and offers them new positions.’ Marat also shared feedback on working with mentors: “During the pre-acceleration phase, we receive very valuable feedback from mentors. They allow us to view the product from a new perspective and significantly improve it. Additionally, they share useful contacts that will help us bring our development to market in the future. A big thank you to our mentor, Viktor Stepanov, who keeps us focused.”
Why do companies need a pre-accelerator at all?
Firstly, a pre-accelerator helps organizations scout for promising tech specialists. Such resumes cannot be found on Head Hunter or Super Jobs — typically, these specialists are already employed or run their own businesses. Throughout the competition, we observe a trend among companies wanting to hire not just individual experts but an entire multidisciplinary team that can evaluate the company's activities with a fresh perspective and come up with new solutions for its innovative development.
In addition to IT specialists organizations are hunting for technological solutions, tailored to the specific tasks of their business. Hackathons are particularly effective in this regard, where they receive dozens of prototype options for subsequent integration into the company.
Investors gain specific advantages when working on projects in a pre-accelerator. We all understand that investing in human and intellectual capital is the most profitable. There is a wealth of such resources accumulated from hackathons. Therefore, investors, fund representatives, and business angels closely monitor the growth of projects, engage with teams, and decide whom to fund.
How advanced are the projects that entered the pre-accelerator after the finals?
Mentors, who have been on the front line for four weeks and are monitoring the teams' development, answered this question:
Oksana Pogodaeva:
“There is a noticeable variance in the level of projects; some teams have established themselves over the years, while others met for the first time during the regional round. Some teams have considerable experience in product development, while others are doing it for the first time. Overall, it is already evident that we can expect many pleasant surprises in the form of very interesting, unique, and even elegant solutions.”
Currently, teams are increasingly immersed in the specifics of working within the pre-accelerator, learning a lot from the educational block, and actively applying the knowledge gained in the implementation of their startups.
By the way, we forgot to mention that an educational program is included in the pre-acceleration process. It is divided into two stages — remote and in-person..
In the remote stage, teams work under the careful guidance of mentors to improve their products, receive expert consultations, and regular feedback on their development. At the same time, there is an online course on launching IT startups and implementing solutions into companies' business processes.
During the in-person stage, there are workshops on public speaking, training sessions on professional and personal competencies, and lectures from the competition's partners.
And, of course, in the final, the most challenging part awaits — after the program concludes, teams will have to present their projects to investors, funds, and representatives from companies who will evaluate the participants' progress throughout the entire process (we will soon publish a post on how to create the perfect presentation without a designer). The fate of each project will be determined, and later, the participants will either celebrate or work on their mistakes — it all depends on how actively work progressed during the pre-acceleration stage.
We hope that after this, all participants will be able to achieve their set goals and demonstrate that the "Digital Breakthrough" is more about the people who create innovations. That is why we decided to create a pre-acceleration program aimed at uniting all the components needed for successful technological progress — companies, investors, and of course, product teams.
Source: habr.com
