On June 13th the university’s top student startups had the opportunity to showcase their projects to hand-picked private investors known as business angels, who are ready to support companies at the beginning of their journey.

Professor Dmitry Kulish, the director of the Entrepreneurship Center, introduced the students to the investors:

“Skoltech has a substantial number of early-stage startups, while most external accelerator events are primarily designed for more advanced projects. To address this issue, our team sought to identify and recruit a group of investors who are not only willing to invest in university and student startups, but also embrace the challenge and utilize the Skolkovo infrastructure. With the expert assistance of Andrey Zverev from the Skolkovo Foundation, we were able to organize a conference where we connected promising early-stage startups with hand-picked investors.”

The Skoltech Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation has been actively engaged in working with student teams, providing them with the necessary guidance and support through the Skoltech Startup Funnel and Skoltech Triple Point programs for over a year. These initiatives have allowed young scientists to refine their skills in presenting their projects before both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned industry experts, all while garnering valuable feedback.

The conference brought together around 15 professional investors with proven experience in investing into early-stage startups, some of which represented their own funds and groups of angels, and the other part — large venture companies. According to our calculations, the total volume of investments under their control exceeds 10 billion rubles.

“We act as a ‘big brother’ who can help startups navigate this path more comfortably by learning from our mistakes, said investor Oksana Popova, the head of Motorika. We actively collaborate with Skoltech and closely follow university-based startups, wondering how we can be of assistance. Of course, it’s essential to understand what the product is and how quickly it can scale to achieve financial success. The Angel Conference provides a convenient format for interaction between investors and young entrepreneurs!”

A total of 24 startups took part in the conference, among them — Sunsense, Fiber Pipe, Safe Foot, Dronespect, iTracker. 

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