STARTUPS, LOCAL ECOSYSTEM AND GROWTH MARKETING: KEY INSIGHTS FROM ROUNDTADBLES AT EMERGE 2020

5 MIN READ, JUNE 9, 2020

Participants:
Dmitry Filonov, The Edinorog Media (Russia)
Marat Shaken, TheTech. kz (Kazakhstan)
Angelina Dmitruk, Startup Jedi (Belarus)

Key insights:
 — Get-to-know your author;
 — Stay in touch with local media even after you relocate;
 — Media prefers writing about those, who already have their MVP ready;
 — Having a PR manager might be useful, but founders should be able to articulate their startup idea in a good way;
 — Advice for early-stage startups: better reach out to small and industry media, not the top ones;
 — Don’t expect to have +100 500 clients after the first publication, it takes time!
— Remember that investors mostly watch your traction, rather than mentions about your startup in publications.

Participants:
Anna Sholina, CEO Rutech (Russia)
Vladislav Zdorenko, CEO Startupbootcamp (Russia)
Hakob Hakobyan, CEO Seaside Startup Summit & Founder Startup Armenia Foundation (Armenia)
Andrius Milinavicius, BDO at Baltic Sandbox (Lithuania)

Key insights:
 — Competition is a driving force but support is also important;
 — Successful founders tend to invest in their locals and they are open for Qs;
 — Best advisors and strong founders are the main things for building a successful community;
 — Do fireside chats and regular catch-ups with your community;
 — Keep in touch (e.g. via Slack) and be open for sharing information;
 — Offer cool startups to great mentors;
 — Use networks from the top universities (e.g. successful graduates);
 — Members of the community have to be sure that nobody is going to steal their idea;
 — It is important to share the common values within the community;
 — You can always go online — sit down and talk to anyone you want!

Participants:
Olga Anfilova, Minsk ambassador, Google Women Techmakers (Belarus)
Moojan Agshari, Co-founder, WAI (France)
Sandra Golbreich, CEO, Baltic Sandbox (Lithuania)

Key insights:
 — Run workshops for girls to open their minds to AI and boost their confidence;
 — Female-founded startups can be more mature than others, but their founders can feel stressed because of competing with male founders on the market.
 — Community can come out of just a Facebook group!
— Female founders often run sustainability-themed startups;
— Discrimination in top startup positions is less than in the corporate world;
— According to the recent report by PwC, female-founded startups are three times more likely to hit IPOs than the male-founded ones.

Participants:
Baris Yesugey, Google Developers Ecosystem (UAE)
Ilker Akansel, Google Developer Relations Coordinator — Turkey, Caucasus & Central Asia (Turkey)
Merve Isler, Google Developer Relations Coordinator — Turkey, Caucasus & Central Asia (Turkey)

Key insights:
— Global corporations set up partnerships with startups quite often;
— Fuckups are as much useful as successful cases. Share them!
— Watch corporate IT activities and grab ideas from there to your community events;
— Think about the industry camps, workshops and developer students club;
— Google Developer groups — for mature professionals
— Google Developer student clubs — a hobby and substantial contribution the study process;
— Active participation in communities brings benefits to your CV.

Participants:
Katerina Sakovich, Marketing Manager, Mira (USA)
Darya Sesitskaya, CMO, Connect.Club (USA)
Adrianna Stanoch, Startups & Apps Manager, Google (Germany)

Key insights:
— Find influencers in the field, who would like to share info and use cases about your product;
 — You might try working with clients for free — this might result in attracting new potential customers;
 — Track and measure everything — your records and your performance. Try tracking what your product delivers to users;
 — Identify your KPIs;
 — Try app sales;
— Develop marketing strategy;
— Define how you want customers to purchase you product using different ways and various digital tools;
— Categorise your clients and define what each of them might bring to you;
— Finding the right benchmarks will cost money, but they are effective;
— Stay in touch with people from the similar field;
— Gather feedback before the product launch;
— Do experiments with landing pages and prices;
— This all will help you generate your first revenue!

Participants:
Max Chebotarev, Partner, Cats.vc (Russia)
Alexey Sidorov, Investment Associate, Flashpoint (Russia)
Lana Graf, Partner, YellowRockets.vc (USA)

Steps for VCs to go global:
— Startups tend to look at markets where your team members are experts in, rather than origins of your fund;
— Local entrepreneurs don’t have global mindset. Avoid working with companies that aren’t global from the scratch;
— Contribute to the ecosystem that you want to enter;
— Meet as many locals as you can and open new offices;
— Make connections with accelerators and look through their portfolio and past investments;
— Significant industrial events might help to understand who are the clients of startups you’d like to invest in, try to build connections with them.

Participants:
Cyrill Golub, Co-founder of Angels Band and LitBAN (Belarus)
Maria Ivanova, Head of Adventureland (Russia)
Gabil Tagiev, CEO & Founder RocketDao (Belarus)

Key insights:
 — The business angel wants to know the startups' financial metrics as well as understand that the project lies in the field of the venture;
 — The business angel wants to see that the founder understands what he/she is doing and what’s the next step for the business;
 — Many founders think that their startup’s evaluation should be as high as possible, however, business angels want to lower their evaluation. Actually, business angels interested in the balanced evaluation, which is just right for a particular round;
 — Startupers tend to see business angels as opponents and don’t consider their background;
 — The business angel is interested in the founder’s business, not in his/her product;
— VCs are not playing in the field, where angels are playing — don’t mix it up.

Participants:
Alex Malyshev, CEO Russian hackers, Moscow
Pavel Shchahelski, Community manager, GDG Minsk

Key insights:
— The software development is pretty agile;
 — The startup development is the race;
 — Four essential things for your startup: the rock’n’roll team, interactive development (from sticks to bricks), and super fast go-to-market;
 — Start your dream with proof of concept, not MVP;
 — Use open and lean innovations: share your ideas, delegate coding to community, scale your product globally.
— Be a part of the competitions, IT-contests, hackathons — share your product with the world ASAP;
 — Try everything as early as possible — be a T-shaped hacker, hustler and hipster at the same time;
 — Share and validate your idea with everyone who can give you a constructive feedback;
 — Do A/B testing, hypothesis validation, and other techniques on a regular basis;

Participants:
Olga Barretto-Goncalves, Chief Startup Instigator, Magnetic Latvia (Latvia)
Joseph K. Ziegler, CEO, Astana Hub — International Technopark for IT Startups (Kazakhstan)
Ilia Korolev, Portfolio Director, IIDF (Russia)

Governments could step in to:
 — Fix the gaps in the supplies when startups struggle to meet the demand due to the pandemic;
 — Introduce a special tax regime to prevent layoffs;
 — Lift permanent permits limitations (e.g. introducing startup visa);
 — Commercialise science;
 — Provide funding for 'exploring the globe.

Participants:
Mikhail Gavrilov, Vice president, Bank Saint Petersburg (Russia)
Ani Oganesyan, International projects manager, GenerationS corporate accelerator (Russia)

Key insights:
 — Corporates may introduce startups to their partners;
 — Corporations are interested in the growing effectiveness of their processes. The highest demand is for technologies that help corporations transform their operations to a smarter and more adaptive state;
— Accelerators may scout those startups that meet the particular needs of partnered corporations;
 — A startup studio seems to be too risky for a corporation: it’s hard to set and to meet KPIs for such a studio; hence, top managers may not approve it;
 — The strongest point of startups that seek partnerships with corporations is their technology;
 — The weakest point: the way startups are using their soft skills while communicating with corporations, e.g. the way they show their value for corporations.

Participants:
Luba Yudasina, Product Manager, Airbnb (USA)
Yuri Ageev, Managing Director, Productsence (Russia)
Radek Taraszka, Community Manager, Product Tribes (Poland)
Dmitry Kalaev, Head, IIDF accelerator (Russia)

Key insights:
 — Make sure to scale your product internationally;
 — Pay attention to the emerging markets, especially Asia;
 — Product positioning varies depending on the market where it is going to be introduced;
 — If you’re a startup, apply different marketing strategies depending on the market;
 — Stay in touch with fellow product managers and be a part of the global product communities.