On November 22, at the Senezh Management Workshop, the jury and experts delivered the final verdict to the teams that had been working on projects for two months as part of the pre-acceleration program. We slept little, worked a lot - but it always happens when
In this post, we will sum up the main results of the pre-acceleration program — did we manage to achieve all the goals that we set before the final stage of the competition? How many projects really have a future? What alliances were concluded as a result of this difficult battle? Are the teams themselves satisfied with the results?
Read about this and more below.
53 teams took part in the educational (distance) program of the pre-accelerator. 20 projects reached the full-time stage, which took place at the Senezh Management Workshop on November 22-47.
In total, 150 successful developers, designers, marketers and managers were gathered on the site, the remaining 95 are jury members, investors, trackers and experts. They were with the teams throughout the remote and intramural stages - over these two months they practically became related.
Instead of a thousand words, we asked participants and trackers to share their opinion on the progress and results of the program - in our opinion, the opinion "from the field" is much more interesting.
In general, about the course of the program
FrozenLab team: “At the Digital Breakthrough competition, the initial task was to automate and classify user requests that come to the management company. We solved it as part of the final of the competition and developed it on the pre-accelerator. Our main goal during the program is not to attract investments into the project, but to find opportunities for its development. As a result, we developed a project based on speech analytics, which determines who is calling the company (and at what address he lives) and immediately transfers the information to the right person within the company or helps to immediately process the application. During the pre-accelerator, we have already found the first clients - a management company from Ufa, who became interested in our idea and concept and agreed to conduct a paid pilot with us on mutually beneficial terms. We can manage the project remotely, so we can support companies in any city in Russia.”
Dmitry Kuznetsov, member of the Black Pixel team: “At the final, the regional stage and as part of the pre-acceleration program, we worked on a prototype device that analyzes the health status of people with arterial hypertension. With the help of it, data on the patient's condition is collected and transmitted to the cardiologist, who makes the final conclusion. The collection of information takes about 2-3 weeks - then the main diagnosis is made.
The team PLEXet Initially, it was necessary to compare two programs to find plagiarism. To simplify the task, so as not to train the system for each programming language, the team made a comparison of the executable code of the program. This solution allowed checking many files at once. But bad luck - the problem turned out to be too specific ... Therefore, they did not look for duplicates and focus on one PLEXeT client: “We thought, why don’t we start looking for viruses. Now it is a voluminous and capacious market, where there is just a problem of quick file analysis. And we have almost everything ready to solve it.”, - is talking Oleg Bakhtadze-Karnaukhov, captain of the PLEXeT team.
So the team had a pivot and the concept changed. Initially, they planned to implement several services at once - to make something like firewalls to protect documents on the corporate network, anti-phishing, and much more. But the trackers suggested that this is not the way, and you need to stop at only one solution. And so they did.
“Initially, we planned to create 4-5 services at once, built an ecosystem. But then they realized that this is not good - you need to leave only the sweetest " Oleg comments.
After the pivot, the team decided to upgrade the technical part. “We know how to find viruses, so let's distribute them”, the team said. And, in fact, she did everything at the highest level using clustering based on parsing. This solution helped to identify some threats predictively, before human detection.
Yuri Katser, captain of the WAICO team from Moscow: “As part of the pre-accelerator, we continued to work on creating a web service for processing data from pipe flaw detectors, with which we won the final of the competition. Separately, I would like to express respect to some aspects of the educational program, which was extremely useful. Most of all, we remember the lecture on the legal foundations of creating a company - often everyone forgets about this.
Developers from the Dream Team made an application to help tourists visit Russian reserves without obstacles. It will allow you to buy tickets online - this will eliminate the queues and make visiting such places more comfortable and safe. Now many people enter the territory as a “hare”, which is fraught with emergency situations with the call of employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. To register in the system, a person must enter passport data and describe the desired route - this will replace the long registration process in printed magazines. The entrance to the territory will be carried out according to the QR code received as a result.
Sergey Ivanov, tracker: “The main task of the pre-acceleration program is to give projects a further life so that they are further in demand for the real market, real customers represented by the public sector and corporations. This work was carried out in two directions.
The first direction is education. A large amount of educational material was prepared for various modules. Trackers helped with the development of this material and its application in practice. The second direction was connected with the verification of ideas by real users and customers. This was necessary so that Senezh could share not only ideas and views, but also real indicators and metrics.
Each team had a strong technological cluster - developers, designers, planners, architects, business analysts. In my opinion, there was a great need for product managers - those people who will structure the relationship of the project with the market, increase the efficiency of testing hypotheses, turn ideas and views into experiments so that the project finds its place in the market as quickly as possible.
Were you able to achieve the goals you set at the beginning?
WAICO: «First of all, we went to the pre-accelerator for contacts, partnerships or administrative resources. But alas, within the framework of the program, we were given only the contact of an expert from Gazprom Neft (GPN). We expected more. Nevertheless, we went to the GPN corporate accelerator - they are interested in our solution, and we are discussing the process of conducting the pilot. Right now the pilot site is being selected.”
Black Pixel: “Our main goal at the pre-accelerator is to raise funds for the operational launch and marketing of the product. Our goal has been achieved, and now we are talking with companies about further cooperation. We also managed to attract an administrative resource to the development and find experts from the corporate segment, who liked our solution, and they are ready to work further.”
Sergey Ivanov: “A significant proportion of projects have already found their first market customers. Many participants signed agreements on pilot projects - I supervised three teams, and two of them entered into cooperation. Also, the first investment agreements were concluded and the first negotiations with investors were held.”
Was the work with trackers and mentors effective?
WAICO: “Support, of course, was important - trackers motivated us to achieve results and create really useful solutions. Due to the fact that we did not understand the specifics of working with corporations very well, a small stupor formed in the development of the project. But trackers helped to sort it out. In addition, they tried to help gather useful contacts for us and determine the final direction of the project.”
PLEXet: “I would venture to say that the presentation we made in front of the experts from the Innovation Assistance Fund was the coolest of all in my life. We felt on the same wavelength with all the members of the jury. They are all just incredible guys who checked our presentation and handout before the defense, and at the final pitch filled up with really right questions: “How is your solution different from others? How to develop it? Do you understand that dynamic execution is required here? And we realized - they really rummage around! One expert actually struck us in the heart - he found information about our competitors, asked questions about their products. We have a great aftertaste.
Working with trackers was also very effective - we were shown how the real business of pilots, implementations, and fundraising is done. We talked about all the pitfalls, loopholes. In general, they staged a real reality show - we all became a real family. We had dozens of chats, we regularly called each other and discussed all the issues. For this separate respect. Greetings to our tracker Viktor Stepanov - he is a real pro in machine learning, and in business, and in education.
What will happen next?
WAICO: “Despite the fact that we plan to cooperate with GPN, we are still actively looking for contacts and other opportunities to communicate with oil and gas and oilfield services companies. Our solution will be useful for them. In the future, we plan to create a full-fledged MVP and expand the functionality of the solution.”
PLEXet: “We refused to take money from investors - this imposes a certain responsibility on us (and if the decision does not work and we will spend everything in vain?). Nevertheless, we received funds from the FSI. With the help of them, we will be able to fully test the pilot from all sides and there will be less risks. We will spend them mainly on scientific research. We also need a lot of funds for the development of machine learning - to understand how it will look in combat conditions.
dream team: “After the competition, we plan to integrate our solution with the online service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations to inform the rescue services that there are tourists in the reserve. In the application, they will be able to notify about the beginning and end of the route, with the help of which the rescuers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations will be able to go in time to search for lost or injured groups.”
Tracker Sergey Ivanov also spoke about possible scenarios for the development of projects after the pre-acceleration program:
“In my opinion, projects that have passed the entire program have several paths.
The first scenario is joining a large company as an established team or individual specialists.The second is the opportunity to launch pilot projects and turn them into a constant flow of orders. This is the way to provide professional development services for large public sector companies.
The third scenario is a venture path, where the team will continue to work on their product and attract investments. This is an interesting and most aggressive path, which, on the one hand, provides great prospects, but on the other hand, great risks. All these roads are open for Digital Breakthrough graduates. The guys can make a choice based on their interests, because at the competition they got practical experience, acquired acquaintances, and increased their competencies.”
Investor Alexei Malikov also spoke about the fate of the projects: “After listening to the final pitch, I see the prospects for the development of some projects after the pre-accelerator, but there is one important point. Since most of the solutions came from the results of the hackathon, many teams do not have business experience, and it will be difficult for them to create something large. Because making a product is one thing, but negotiating with a corporation is quite another. In my opinion, 50% of pitches are absolutely not alive, it’s hard to say something intelligible about 25%, but the remaining 25% can be trusted. For me, as an investor, the most important thing is to see in the eyes of the participants a clear understanding of how their future company will develop. If they haven’t made a business model in two months of the pre-accelerator, then it won’t be any further.”
We will be glad to receive feedback from other participants of the pre-acceleration program in the comments! How do you think it went? Are there any additions or comments?
Source: habr.com