Russian format

What is it worth doing abroad if you want to succeed? How not to lose connections, including commercial ones, with your homeland? And what can make a person who launched a business “there” from scratch, return to Russia? - The New Times learned from young Russian entrepreneurs from London and Prague

Ivan Mitin in his own Anticaf “Dials”, London initiative Russians master Europe. It turns out that in England and in the Czech Republic you can launch a business from scratch, and for this it is not even always necessary to have starting capital. In addition, ideas that have justified themselves in Russia can work abroad.

Time-30-year-old Ivan Mitin began money career as an entrepreneur with the project “Poems in your pocket”, in which he invested only two thousand rubles. He walked along the Moscow streets and laid out cards with verses. He wrote about this on the blog and aroused unexpected interest among readers who wanted to join. “I began to organize the evenings where creative youth came, we drank tea, talked about high and made cards,” says Ivan NT . “So I understood that I have a talent to create a pleasant atmosphere for people.”

Soon, Ivan and three of his friends threw themselves at 50 thousand rubles, opening a “house on a tree” - a club on the interests where everyone paid for the entrance, as much as they wanted. The third step was the Anticafa Dial. The concept of the institution is simple: the guest pays not for the menu, but for time. A minute costs one ruble. Although the author does not like the term “Anticafe” by the very “Anticafa”: “I strive to ensure that our brand becomes a household word describing the whole industry.”

The first “dial” appeared in Moscow in September 2011 and cost 800 thousand rubles. The business paid off for a record for a month and a half, because there was a huge flow of visitors - 300-400 people a day. Today the network is represented in many cities of Russia, as well as in Ukraine and Slovenia. Last winter, the Dials opened in London. “People for 40 minutes stood in line to get inside,” Ivan recalls. “It is surprising that Russians are doing something else except machine guns and tanks.”

However, creating a business in England was much more difficult than in Russia. “Our format turned out to be completely new for their system, so the registration of the local legal entity (LTD) lasted almost six months.” The second problem is rent. “Find a premises in Moscow, I can get the keys from it in two days, but here we either refused, or it did not fit. As a result, we removed 500 square meters for 3.5 thousand euros, but it took more than two months to decorate the papers. ”

The difficulties did not end there. All premises in England are divided by type of use. “Ours has the status of a regular office,” Ivan explains. “But on the opening day, the world press called us“ a cafe where you pay in a minute ”. The lessor decided to terminate the contract: “For about a year there was a court, which was worth the half thousand of the“ dial ”. How much - rallies do not specify.

Having appeared in England, Ivan summarizes, the project lost huge money, despite the huge attention of the media, which was not received for free of any business project from Russia. The cause of high taxes (20 % of income goes to the treasury) and a high level of minimum salaries to employees - £ 7.5 per hour. In Russia, according to him, there were no difficulties. Starting a business, Ivan was afraid of only the "bloodsuckers" from the state bodies. However, in vain: “I have a grocery store somewhere in Vykhino, I am sure that money would immediately start shaking money, because this is a clear model. And we have a strange place for officials. People read books, play board games, communicate, self -service - there are no guards and waiters. This goes beyond the attitude of the officials who go to bribes. ”

On foot on London two with a half years ago, 33-year-old Konstantin Pinaev, a native of Balashikha near Moscow, founded the project “Around London at 40 Steps”, offering tourists from Russia original foot tours in the capital of foggy Albion. He did not go to the implementation of the startup, not a penny of his own money.

Behind Pinaev - two higher educations: economics and sociology. For the past nine years he has been living in London, where he moved at the invitation of the British company Promise Corporation to work in the consulting field. “Once I missed the lessons of Moscow,” Pinaev recalls in a conversation with NT . - But I became interested in London and began to lead the popular blog of the Emigrant Notes. This prompted me to create a project. ”

The idea was prompted by a friend from the USA. Arriving with friends to a new city, they found the local version of the Monopoly game and moved along the cages - from street to street. The classic “monopoly” has 40 cells - hence the name “40 steps”. “Each cell is a tour route on the street artist Banksy or Jack of a Ripper,” Pinaev explains. According to him, the competition in the excursion market is the highest, but most guides offer the standard-Big-Ben and Tower: “This is interesting in the first 24 hours. But those who happen in London often want to see not only what they draw on postcards. ”

More and more ideas and young people flies to London in October 2013. With the help of crowdfunding, Pinaev collected £ 9 thousand and registered an analogue of the Russian IP, which took him 15 minutes. “I treated this as a hobby,” he says, “conducted one or two excursions per week. But gradually the interest in the project grew, and I decided to quit, completely devoting myself to my brainchild. ” It was scary to go into free swimming, Konstantin admits, but the game was worth a candle.

Perhaps someday Konstantin Pinaev is getting to a real monopoly now three times a week, he spends two rounds a day, where groups of 10-15 people come. The ticket costs £ 20. In addition, he conducts private excursions, which you can get on by paying £ 200: “These are prices just above standard English -speaking tours, which cost from 10-15 pounds. But their million, they followed the dead end - not to develop an idea, but to offer the lowest price. In addition, 50-70 people come to them. How in this way you can feel the spirit of London is incomprehensible. ”

In anticipation of reincarnation, the 26-year-old Alexei Terentyev left the country long before the protests of the winter of 2011-2012, which gave rise to a whole generation of young emigrants of the “swamp wave”. While still a student of the Higher School of Economics (HSE), Alexei created the NKVDDPRO project, which offers Russian companies to place their servers abroad. “Our hosting reacted only to the legal requests of Interpol and local authorities. This did not suit people with hot hearts from Russian special services ... ” - he ironizes in a conversation with NT .

In 2010, having received a diploma of higher education, Alexey gathered a suitcase and went to live in Prague. Here he took up business and founded the Creative Telematics & Trade holding. The holding has four main directions are still four: this is ISMOKE hookah boutique, anticafe - by opening a full -fledged kitchen, it is ready to compete with the “dial”, whose coming to the Czech market is inevitable, as well as a printing house of small orders and hosting, which became more successful after leaving Russia: “The more totalitarian the regime in Russia, the more customers wanted to place their sites Or 1C-Bukhtiya somewhere in England or Germany. This was the secret of the success of NKVDDPRO. ” Over time, hosting, according to Alexei, “of course, began to copy, so now we have to take really high -quality round -the -clock support.”

In the Czech Republic, Alexei Terentyev inhaled the air of freedom to register a business into the Czech Republic, according to Alexei, we only need a certificate of disgracelessness from his country, transferred to the Czech language, but the rest of the set of documents is standard: the authorized capital (200 thousand kroons in the account), the availability of a legal address (if not his own real estate, then the consent of the lessor), the submission of documents to the trade court, notarized signatures of directors, local certificate of disgust and state fee 2.5 thousand kroons.

Why the choice fell on the Czech Republic, the interlocutor NT explains this: this country is simultaneously close to both the Soviet and European mentality plus an affordable lease that compensates for a rather high tax rate of 21 % from sales. “For example, our average warehouse of 35 km from Prague costs 4,500 kroons per month (area - 55 meters), an office 7 minutes by car from the center of Prague - 12 thousand kroons (80 meters), and the office in Prague suburb is 8 thousand kroons (80 meters). At the same time, there are 220 meters of area under the Antikafa cost 20 thousand kroons. ”

The trucks of a truce - in a hookah ISMOKE, masters from Russia, Ukraine, the DPR and even from Iraq are talking about the probability of his return to Russia, Alexei quotes another famous Russian emigrant - the Nobel Prize in Physics Andrei Game. He, answering the question of journalists, which would make him return to his homeland, said: "Reincarnation." “I used to think that this would happen when I would be thirty. Now I hope at least fifty to wait for the "reincarnation" of the country. "

Photo: London.ziferblat.net, CreativeTelematics.org, Shutterstock, Podebrady.ru, Londopolia.com