Silicone edge

Plug&Play startup incubator opened in Dagestan

On Friday, September 19, the Plug&Play Dagestan startup incubator opened in Makhachkala, which will help local innovators develop. The opening ceremony of the incubator was attended by the President of the Republic Ramazan Abdulatipov, the Minister of Communications of Russia Nikolai Nikiforov and the editor-in-chief of TJournal.

Makhachkala welcomes a delegation of journalists, investors and other respected persons directly related to startups with the sun and 26 degrees of heat, unusual for residents of central Russia. Guests are brought to a specially equipped building on the territory of DSTU - Dagestan Technological University - where startups who are luckier than others will work. On the way and on the spot, the delegation is invisibly accompanied by armed people. There are metal detectors at the entrance to the building, and visitors are carefully checked against lists by strong men in civilian clothes. The editor of TJournal was not found on the list, so they kept him at the entrance for quite a long time, but in the end they let him through.

Inside the building, everything looks about the same as a startup incubator somewhere in Moscow, London or Dallas would look like: a spacious main hall, smaller rooms, fashionable plastic chairs, white walls. Along the walls there are tables with innovative devices. Everything is designed in such a way that at first it seems as if these are the fruits of local startups. But if you pause for a second, it becomes clear that these are still only dreams of a bright future.

However, the speeches of the speakers at the opening ceremony of the incubator were also dedicated to dreams of a bright future. When the concentration of stern people in jackets in the hall became critical, the President of Dagestan Ramazan Abdulatipov and the Minister of Communications of Russia Nikolai Nikiforov appeared. Abdulatipov, it should be noted, headed the republic only at the beginning of the year, after his predecessor Magomedsalam Magomedov was relieved of his post. Already under Abdulatipov, there was another symbolic resignation of the mayor of Makhachkala, Said Amirov: he was put in a helicopter that landed right on the central square of the city and taken to a Moscow pre-trial detention center.

At the opening of Plug&Play Dagestan, Abdulatipov called Dagestan’s past “the era of feudalism,” which should also be ended by the innovative environment formed by the opening incubator. If people engage in science, local residents will not “go into the forests”, but will take up a peaceful life, the head of the republic is sure .

This incubator will not contain eggs and chickens, but brilliant Dagestanis developing world-class products. Ramazan Abdulatipov, President of Dagestan

The performances at the opening of Plug&Play generally sounded very inspired. Abdulatipov praised the young minister Nikiforov and his son-in-law Magomed Musaev, president of the Global Venture Alliance, who had a hand in the emergence of the incubator. Nikiforov himself, in turn, praised Ziyavudin Magomedov, chairman of the board of directors of the Russian Summa group, who founded the Dagestan Plug&Play: usually, he said, ministers come to the regions to see the results of two or three years of spending budget money, but this time there was no money from the budget Not a penny allocated.

If you've heard of Silicon Valley... It shouldn't be confused with other silicon things. Ramazan Abdulatipov, President of Dagestan

People whose daily work is related to startups were also brought to the opening of the incubator: Anna Belova from the Russian Venture Company, Said Amidi, who founded Plug&Play USA, Jeff Barton, who heads the SkyDeck incubator at the University of Berkeley, and several successful startupers. In their speeches, they addressed directly those who are going to promote innovation in the republic, but, it seems, they were never heard. For the presentation of Dagestan startups, two dozen people remained in the hall with two hundred seats. About half of them are startups themselves.

To be honest, not all projects presented during the pitch session can be called startups. For example, a girl from DSTU showed the idea of ​​a 3D model of a person. The user, she said, will be able to view any process and any part of the body at various levels, be it entire organs or individual molecules. She was unable to properly explain to the experts how the project would “recoup” the invested money, eventually exhaling “Well, you’re a charitable foundation, so get involved in charity” ( one of the founders of Plug&Play Dagestan is the Peri charitable foundation ).

There was also a young man who came out to present an online store of Caucasian souvenirs - knives, belt buckles and silver iPhone cases . An already operating store, its owner said, needs a designer, an economist, as well as lawyers who will help obtain a permit to trade. Dagestani craftsmen also offered a website with 3D panoramas of Caucasus sights, a service for remotely tracking the position of cars using a navigator, a mobile application for organizing meetings, and two startups described a way to place advertising on payment terminals (you can find them on literally every corner in Dagestan).

The only one who stood out favorably from his “competitors” was the author of a service with the working title Multiposter, which allows you to publish content to several social networks at once from one place (including the Russian VKontakte and Odnoklassniki). A rather simple idea was presented by the author head and shoulders above other startup candidates - with a high-quality presentation and a clear vision of the future project. The developer admitted: a week before the speech, he was given a book teaching him how to present products. “I read for two days and gave a presentation on the third,” he explained.

The head of Plug&Play Dagestan, Mikhail Blank, emphasized that the presented startups will still be selected by a jury, and the “lucky ones” will be announced in the coming weeks. The winning teams will have the opportunity to work in the incubator and communicate with mentors and experts from other countries. “Summa” promises to support the most promising startups, but the organizers have not yet said anything specific about money: according to them, first they need to create a “culture of innovation” in Dagestan, and then we’ll see.

“I don’t understand what a “startup” is. This is my business, making websites. So, I’m also a startuper?” Timur asks after the presentation. Timur is a young head of a local web studio. Looking at him, you understand: perhaps the “culture of innovation” has not yet taken root in the republic, but there are definitely people with such a culture. He talks about his trip to the USA, about his cooperation with Odnoklassniki (his company received advertising exclusive in several regions, and then Mail.Ru took everything away), but at the same time he emphasizes: he is not going to leave Dagestan anywhere. “I have no competitors here,” Timur explains, adding that government contracts still bring in the most money.

An elderly taxi driver in an old Zhiguli car, avoiding the Makhachkala traffic jam, drives towards the airport. A couple of minutes ago, he drove past the city cemetery, the road to which had been repaired quite recently - and only because it was 90 years since the birth of the national poet of Dagestan Rasul Gamzatov, who was buried here, in honor of which various dignitaries came here. “I wish a helicopter would fly here more often,” he suddenly says, hinting at the story of Said Amirov’s resignation. “There are still so many passengers for him.”

The taxi driver complains that everyone, having achieved high positions, tries to pull up their relatives, without looking at their abilities. “If you’re smart but have nothing behind you, you won’t achieve anything,” he concludes. The taxi driver does not yet know that a startup incubator has appeared in the republic, which, in theory, should create normal conditions for smart young people and prevent them from either “going into the woods” or leaving for other regions. Just as he doesn’t know that in a few hours the leader of the “Caspian bandit group” will be killed in Makhachkala . A startup that would solve the main problem of Dagestan has not yet been created.

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