On December 1, Ufa, the capital city of Bashkortostan in the Southern Urals, saw the opening of new business incubator Smart Park, the local media reported. The space was created by the young entrepreneurs of the capital for actively minded people that are promoting new ideas and developing long-term projects. Smart Park includes a co-working space, support services to accelerate project development as well as event and networking features.
Unlike many such initiatives in Russia’s regions, this undertaking does not belong to state structures, but the Ufa community of young innovators. As the authors behind the idea note, the project began as a response to the current shortage of infrastructure for the implementation of project initiatives, which ultimately leads to a brain drain from the regions.
Meanwhile, Arkady Moreynis, a figure of the Moscow startup scene, has launched an “anti-accelerator” in the form of a video-based training program for young entrepreneurs that allows direct exchanges with Moreynis.
Existing business accelerators, according to Moreynis, function irrationally. Founders often realize that there is little point in continuing a project since nobody actually wants it, although they do acquire valuable knowledge that will help them launch a new, more relevant project.
This scheme is not bad for a founder, but meaningless for commercial accelerators since they take on projects in return for a share, thereby hoping for growth, says Moreynis. Only “development institutions and state-backed organizations working on budgets” can function this way, he wrote on Facebook.
Moreynis, who founded Price.ru in 2008, has headed two Moscow incubators in recent years: Glavstart and Plug & Play Russia.
