HOW STARTUPS CAN GET MOST OUT OF PARTNERSHIP WITH MICROSOFT

Microsoft supports EMERGE from its first launch in 2018. This year, we co-hosted together 3 tech-oriented workshops for the conference attendees. We asked Tomasz Kopacz, CEE ISV Strategic Partner Technical Lead at Microsoft, who was one of the workshops leaders at EMERGE 2020, to share his thoughts on how
startups can benefit from using Microsoft Azure and what other perks could bring Microsoft for startups, especially from the New East region.

Azure is a cloud platform which offers the extensive SaaS and PaaS functionality accelerating the startups' entry to the market and reducing their upfront investments. Are you building the IoT solution? Implementing AI capabilities for core functionality? Analyze big data? For that exactly Azure was built. It greatly helps companies to democratize the implementation of trending and core technologies. Azure offers various services that can cut down on the development efforts for startups and enrich their products with the advanced features. Do you want to reinvent the wheel or focus on building and improving your own product? The answer is obvious.

Plenty of them! I would highlight three appealing advantages to join Microsoft for Startups program. First of all, companies are granted with the Azure cloud platform credits (up to $ 120 000) and advisory from Microsoft tech leaders whose primary mission is to help partners and customers to use Microsoft technologies in the most appropriate way. Second of all, the platform gives access to the developer tools, such as Visual Studio and GitHub Enterprise, and the other business productivity services. Empowered with such a kit, any company can easily tune the development flow, improve the teamwork as well as organize the sales process. Finally, startup will be able to leverage Microsoft’s commercial marketplaces, enterprise sales team, and ever-expanding partner ecosystem to reach global customers. For more than two years, Microsoft motivates own sellers to promote and sell the partners' tech solutions built on cloud technologies.

With sufficient level of insistence, creativity and understanding of how Microsoft works, the startup can get even much more. Microsoft is a big corporation, but it’s flexible in terms of customer support. Thus, it’s important to define what support you need and how both parties could benefit from it.

Microsoft provides services and infrastructure which are trusted worldwide. Our services are certified in many countries and industries. Therefore, it makes easier for startups to bring their solutions into compliance with local regulations. Another important topic is the access to customers. Almost all enterprise customers in the world are Microsoft customers. The co-sell program, which I mentioned above, represents a global initiative, meaning that the sellers from every Microsoft subsidiary are at your disposal. Marketplace helps startups to make their solutions visible for customers as well as for Microsoft sellers at the global scale. In the long-term perspective, your tech product can be a tool for the application delivery to almost any Microsoft customer in the world. But it's worth highlighting that any startup should have the solid strategy, business plan and resources for global expansion to benefit from Microsoft scaling offers.

Microsoft provides support to startups at all stages. For early stage companies dozens of publicly accessible tools and learning paths are available. Startups at the growth stage can apply for Microsoft for Startups program. For this premium offer, we prioritize the startups working with the enterprise technology or B2B, which can best serve our customers and also benefit most from the listed program. The new member applicants will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
 — Offering an innovative technical solution that supports customers in their digital transformation;
 — Less than seven years in existence;
 — Seed, Series A, B, or C stage (or validated equivalent).

Yes, we cooperate with the startup enabling organizations locally and globally. Microsoft partners with Station F in France. Also, companies from the NVIDIA Inception program get preferred access to MSfS. Early in 2020, Microsoft launched and delivered the Global Pilots acceleration program in partnership with EY, Startupbootcamp and Altergate VC.

Venture Capitals and Microsoft pursue the same aims — accelerate the growth of startups. According to the examples above, Microsoft can offer VCs and their portfolio companies the tools to support their workflow management and business expansion. Furthermore, the partnership with Microsoft can positively affect the assessment of the company during the next round. Since Microsoft can connect investors with startups and vice versa from the different geographies based on their interest and focus, thus, the corporation is interested to expand the cooperation with VCs worldwide.

In order to have overview on how to cultivate the global mindset for building tech products and scale your startup internationally, we're happy to share the talk by Bunmi Durowoju, Senior Business Development Manager - AI and Intelligent Cloud, Emerging Markets, MS Airband Initiative at Microsoft, which was delivered at our FUTURE stream at EMERGE 2020.

EMERGE Team hopes that you enjoyed reading this blogpost. Stay updated with us for the further updates on our blog!