Russia’s high-tech startups are getting better by the year, but innovators need to be more persistent to commercialize their solutions, said Pekka Viljakainen, advisor to Skolkovo president Victor Vekselberg.
The Finn made the remarks at the final stage of the 2015 edition of the Startup Tour, which has taken in 12 cities and ventured abroad for the first time. It is the fifth edition of the tour and the third in which Viljakainen has taken part.
“The quality of the companies, on the whole, is growing,” said Viljakainen in comments to sk.ru. “But of course we need to keep progressing and aiming higher,” he added.
Viljakainen earned his “Bulldozer” nickname by virtue of his tenacious business practices that have seen him succeed with several startups – growing one into a multinational with 20,000 employees. He is hoping these instincts might rub off on Russian innovators, who he believes lack the persistence to take their genuinely excellent ideas to market.
In three years of attending the Startup Tour, Viljakainen has visited 57 Russian cities and heard in excess of 1,000 presentations.
“In Silicon Valley a startup will make 75 presentations before catching the attention of an investor,” he said. “But in Russia you have instances where a person throws his hands in the air after two bad meetings,” he added.
“People are in the habit of being a bit less patient than the situation demands. I would say that young Russian entrepreneurs need to adopt a mentality according to the words: ‘I will never give up!’ For your innovation to success, you need to fight for it.”
Viljakainen also reiterated a belief he has carried for a long time, addressing concerns he has heard all along the Startup Tour about trying to develop a business in times of economic crisis.
“A crisis is an excellent reason to say to yourself, ‘I will do this later, not now.’ This is the case in Russia, in Finland, in China and everywhere. In these situations, I always say that the greatest companies in the world were born in times of crisis,” Viljakainen said.
“To implement new technology, there will never be a better time than right now.”
Pekka Viljakainen also advises the Russian government. Photo: Skolkovo Foundation
Viljakainen also noted that the startup scene in Russia has matured over the course of the last three years.
“Three years ago I saw startups that came with decent ideas but had no idea how to present them,” he said. “And now these same guys are coming back and winning pitch contests in their cities. This is my biggest impression from the 2015 Startup Tour,” he added.
“This means people are learning. And that means that they are not only focusing on their innovations, which is a good thing in itself, but they are ready to promote themselves and their companies, which is even better.”
The Startup Tour, whose goal is to stimulate high-tech innovations across the country and beyond, is organized by the Skolkovo Foundation as the lead-up event to Startup Village in Moscow on June 2-3.
Krasnogorsk is the 12th and final stop on the tour, which for the first time this year took in Kazakhstan and Belarus on its journey around the CIS that went as far as Vladivostok in the east and Minsk in the west.
