17.06.2019

Participants in a joint project of Sberbank and 500 Startups have completed training in accelerator

The famous American accelerator 500 Startups and its partner Sberbank open new horizons for talented IT developers. Intensive Startup Development Program is aimed at finding promising teams, attracting potential investors willing to invest in interesting products of a narrow focus (e-commerce, cloud services, finance, etc.).

Learn more about selection criteria and the learning process:

At the first stage, the jury faced a difficult task: it was necessary to consider 843 applications and sort out the absolute majority of the contestants. 30 of them were enrolled to the accelerator and have completed the full course including both theoretical and practical classes with mentors, business angels, speakers, managers from large Russian companies.

Many teams wanted to be among the seven finalists and go to Silicon Valley for further internship. All of them have proven themselves, having achieved brilliant results.

What skills the participants practiced:

·presentation of innovations to investors;

·building a promising business model taking into account markets' specifics.

According to the vice-president of Sberbank M. Zavadsky, products of conditional “winners”should be particularly appreciated by American consumers.

Step forward: what the finalists of the program thank for

Alexander Fokin, creator of ViewApp anti-fraud scan application, confessed previously that they used to be mainly focused on insurance companies: ViewAppit can be used to carry out inspections of objects in order to issue a comprehensive insurance policy or evaluate damage upon occurrence of the insured event. But during the acceleration program it became clear for the team that the potential market is much bigger and is not limited to insurance. Thus, a pilot project was launched. It allows to monitor deposits for Sberbank and Sberbank Leasing JSC, a road map for obtaining documents has also been drawn up; it will help protect the program from being copied.

Kirill Buryakov, the author of startup Doczilla does not regret the time spent on learning. The service is designed for office automation, you only need to answer a few questions and the resource will prepare the necessary document (application, order, etc.). The project did not need financing, but the team had difficulty advancing it. In the end, they managed to run few pilot projects with several reputable companies.

The creator of the Yorso platform Anton Trantin notes that the valuable advice of mentors helped to put accents in the right places and modify the functionality of the software based on customer needs. A convenient platform is designed for remote ordering seafood from trusted vendors.

Additional benefits include control over the entire supply chain, simplified workflow, transaction automation.

The development team of the Windy.app program was initially focused on a limited circle of users practicing street sports (fishing, surfing, etc.), offering them reliable weather forecast. The knowledge gained in the accelerator, allowed to expand the base to 7 million users covering new areas.