On October 20, best IT projects will be named in Moscow

On October 20, the final stage of VII IT project contest Web&TechReady will take place in Skolkovo Hypercube. Registration is open till October 17 at www.web-ready.ru.

The final stage of Web&Tech Ready will take a form of an investment Forum and gather over 700 guests, of which there will be 100 investors, 200 IT business representatives, market experts and partner companies, and 400 startup entrepreneurs and teams.

In the opening ceremony, the Minister of Communications of Russia Nikolay Nikiforov addressed the participants with a welcoming speech.

In 2015, 712 projects from 106 cities and 14 countries took part in the contest. 65 Russian and foreign business incubators and accelerators presented their projects. This year broke a record in terms of number of sites for participants and guests, that will be open during the final stage.

46 contest semi-finalists will present their solutions at a project exhibition. Based on the exhibition results, the Jury will choose 15 finalists who will make presentations at the main stage. Awards are given in 3 main and 10 special nominations. The main nominations, Seed and Startup, differ in the development stage, and the Spinoff nomination invites projects created within large companies.

Cash grants up to RUR 5M will be awarded to winners of the four special nominations of Skolkovo Fund: Mobile Technologies, Industry 4.0, IT Security, and Technologies for Game Development.

On October 20, besides the contest, Web&Tech Ready Forum will include the VC Corner site, where each project will be able to have 25 individual successive meetings with various venture funds including Runa Capital, Almaz Capital, Skolkovo, TMT Investments, IIDF, the Untitled, Altair Capital, Maxfield Capital, Starta Capital, Impulse VC, Flint Capital, Intel Capital, and others.

During the Mentor session, startups can find instructors and receive recommendations for successful project development from experts in the technology business, marketing, PR, project management and investment. The following experts have confirmed their participation in the Mentor session: Oleg Anisimov (Moe Delo), Arseny Gromov (Rambler), Igor Luts (the Untitled, ex-BBDO), Maria Lapuk (ex-head of PR department of IIDF), Dmitry Kochnev (Euroset), Vartan Minasyan (Kaspersky Lab), Sergey Shtern (RRC Group), Artyom Kumpel (ABBYY), Sergey Shlykov (Rostelekom), Aleksey Polunin (IBM), and others.

Skolkovo Fund welcomes representatives of investment funds and business guardian angels to visit the pitch session of Mobile Technology Center and iDealMachine. The pitch session is a graduation exam for projects that have successfully lived through 4 months of acceleration and confirmed their business models.

What is “the learned helplessness” of a startup, and how should it be addressed? How can you pluck enough courage to start solving an extra complex and important issue, and how to succeed? These questions will be discussed in the course of the Think Big discussion at the main forum stage by several founders of successful companies: Eduard Gurinovich (CarPrice), Andrey Yudnikov (iVedeon), Yevgeny Panich (Almalence), Ilya Flaks (Fibrum), Artur Gleim (Quantum Communications), Ilya Sachkov (GroupIB). Maria Lapuk will act as the moderator.

EMC will run an investment session for finalists of its own nomination. Intel and Google, IIDF and the Untitled retail lab fund, as well as Team Finland, the consortium of Finnish business support companies, will also grant their own awards. The final stage will be completed with the winner awarding ceremony.

The Contest Jury includes: Aleksandr Yegorov (Reksoft), Dmitry Chikhachyov (Runa Capital), Pavel Bogdanov (Almaz Capital), Aleksandr Turkot (Maxfield Capital), Filipp Gens (LANIT), Igor Bogachyov (Skolkovo), Igor Ryabenky (Altair VC), Konstantin Sinyushin (the Untitled retail lab), Viktor Orlovsky (SBTV Fund I), Aleksandr Lyskovsky (Alawar), Igor Kaloshin (Intel Software), Gennady Nissenbaum (Google), Dmitry Kalayev (IIDF), Aleksandr Chachava (LETA Capital), and others.

Registration for the investment forum is open till October 17 at ww.web-ready.ru.

Location: Moscow, Skolkovo Hypercube. Transfer from the Park Pobedy underground station will be arranged for participants, and a parking lot is available at the territory of Skolkovo Innovation Center.

Skolkovo Fund is a co-organizer of Web&Tech Ready. Intel is a technology partner. Partners include EMC, Google, Kaspersky Lab, Invest in Finland program, and Team Finland, a consortium of Finnish business support companies. The Contest is supported by IIDF, the Untitled retail lab venture trust, ITMO University, Moscow Stock Exchange, and Association of Software Developers RUSSOFT.