Main agenda

Who Gets the Money First from VCs

Investment round is an opportunity to ensure rapid growth for the tech startups and at the initial stage a way to continue the company's life. In order to raise funding quickly and on good terms you need to know how investors evaluate startups.

The panel discussion will be attended by different stages venture investors who will tell you how to correctly identify the investor of their stage and build a proposal. You will learn all of the secrets of due diligence - what parameters help understanding whether the founders will be able to make a successful business and whether the product will be able to win the market.

Discussion Partner - EY.

Panelists: 

  Dmitry Pozdnyshev - Moderator

  Director, CIS Innovation leader,

  Digital and Innovation Coordinator for CESA region at EY

   Petr Lukianov

  Partner at Terra VC

  Kirill Belov

  Partner at Impulse VC

  Alexander Korchevskiy

  Partner at I2BF

 How Startup can get a Corporate as a Client

There is no doubt that corporations need startups. Corporations work a lot with startups, but pretty often they don’t get to the point of implementation, pilot projects can be delayed or require large resources. During the panel we will discuss what should a startup do in order to conquer a corporation as a customer. Top managers of the leading companies will share secret knowledge of successful cooperation and expectations from startups. 

Speakers:

   Irina Kalashnikova - Moderator

   Co-Founder and CEO at GoTech Innovation

   Ivan Melnik

   Head of Innovations at X5 Retail Group

  Nikolay Evchenko

  Head of innovation planning and development Department at Beeline

   Alexey Milevskiy

  Investment Director at Mail.Ru Group

Focus on Fintech: How to be Ready for Evolution

Fintech has been exploding in recent years, disrupting the financial sector and attracting billions in investment globally. Technology has changed the way we buy and sell, not to mention credit and lending, insurance, cybersecurity and countless other areas of finance. Investments in FinTech startups are intriguing, just remember the success stories of N26, Revolut, Klarna, Root Insurance. Banks are facing challenges – some of them use their own resources and expertise to lead on the transforming market, others develop a network of collaborators for developing new products.

During the panel we will cover the latest trends shaping the future of financial services, discuss the questions how banks are changing and which new services will the consumers get in the next 3 years. What is the role of startups in Fintech evolution, which types of companies and sectors will be most attractive. Speakers are going to exchange opinions about the future of FinTech in Russia.

Partner of Panel discussion - VTB Bank

Panellists:

  Sergey Lukashkin - moderator

  Director of Digital Transformation at VTB Bank

  Vasily Kuznetsov

  Founder of SweetCard

  Eldar Vagapov

  Managing Partner of Larnabel Ventures

Fireside Chat with Maxim Konovalov, Co-Founder of NGINX 

In the beginning of 2019 F5, the global leader in multi-cloud application services, announced the acquisition of NGINX, an open source leader in application delivery. The sum of the deal is around USD 670 million, the press release of F5 says.

NGINX is open source software for web serving, reverse proxying, caching, load balancing, media streaming, and more. It started in 2002 out as a web server designed for maximum performance and stability. NGINX is being used on 25% of all websites in the world including Vk, Mail.ru, Yandex, McDonald's, Starbucks, Netflix and other.

The total amount of investments attracted by NGINX since 2011 will be USD 104 million (according to Crunchbase). One of the first investors of the company was Runa Capital Venture Fund, which continued investing into the company in several rounds of investments.

F5 considers the transaction to be a strategic acquisition. The NGINX brand is retained, the founders of startup Igor Sysoev and Maksim Konovalov joined F5 and continue leading NGINX. 

We invited Maxim Konovalov to GoTech Arena to tell the story of NGINX, about the most important milestones in the company’s development. What is the role of the team and the product in the startup success story, how to deal with investors. The main question of the interview is how to make global business from Russia and to win the market. 

  Maksim Konovalov

  Co-Founder of NGINX

Estonia: gateway to EU market through e-Residency & Startup Estonia

Estonia has become one of the world's most technologically advanced countries. It is widely known as the birthplace of four unicorns - Skype, gambling software Playtech, the money transfer service TransferWise and the ride-hailing app Bolt (Taxify). Over the last 25 years Estonian Government made a lot to turn Estonia into a digital society, a movement now known as 'e-Estonia'. It is the first country to offer e-Residency, a government-issued digital identity and status that provides access to Estonia’s e-services and transparent business environment for non-residents.

Panel will be interesting for IT entrepreneurs aiming to access a global market with the desire of doing business in Europe. Experts from e-Residency and Startup Estonia will tell about vibrant startup ecosystem in the country and how Estonia may become the first milestone in business expansion. You will know about Startup Visa and e-Residency programs with benefits to manage a company entirely online, about public support available for founders, investments and how to join Estonia’s digital nation.

Discussion Partner - e-Residency Republic of Estonia

 Panellists: 

  Katrin Vaga - moderator

  Head of PR for e-Residency programme

  Marika Truu 

  Head of Startup Estonia

   Alexey Voronkov

   Head of Markets of Estonia’s e-Residency programme

  Anastasiia Moroz

  Co-Founder of the Pickio app

  Olga Bortnikova 

Head of YouTravel.me

A look at business from «the young and the restless» of the Forbes list «30 under 30»

For this discussion we invited technological entrepreneurs and investors listed in the Forbes rating "30 under 30». The list of the 30 most promising Russians includes those who by the age of 30 have become known on the Russian or global level. In Russia, the rating was released for the first time in 2019.

During the discussion the participants will answer the questions of what is the secret of their success, what personal qualities have helped them gain such fast recognition in the professional community, as well as what challenges our speakers will be facing in the next 3-5 years.

                                       Moderator:

100 mln+ App Downloads with Denys Zhadanov, Readdle

Readdle is one of the most successful publishers of productivity software on iOS platform known for email client Spark, Scanner Pro, Calendars, PDF Expert and Documents. When you browse the top charts in the App Store, there is always an app developed by Readdle. The Ukranian company is a bootstrapped success story with more than 100 million downloads. We invited Readdle Vice President of Marketing Denys Zhadanov to talk about how the company ran from zero to hero without any funding.

Since 2007 Readdle has developed 40 products and failed 32 times, this is the number of products in which clients were not interested. Readdle’s founders learned a lot and formulated the mission of the company - to improve people’s lives via technology. So you can focus on what matters and unlock your full creative potential. Denys will tell the remarkable story of the company, about key milestones and importance of storytelling for the products.

Speaker:

  Denys Zhadanov

  Vice President of Marketing at Readdle

  Alexey Obrovets

  Moderator