On February 16, 2019, the opening of the PSU Startup-school, a new non-commercial project, was held at Polotsk State University. Young Researchers Council implements the project together with its partner NGO “Society for Innovative Business Support” (SIBS) under the project “Creation of a Sustainable Infrastructure for the Support of Startups and Small Business in Belarus”, supported by the USA Agency for International Development (USAID).
The main aim of the Startup-school is to help new entrepreneurs, students, junior researchers realize their creative business-idea and start their own business project.
More than 80 people attended the meeting. Among them were entrepreneurs from Polotsk and Novopolotsk, junior researchers, lecturers, bachelor and master’s students, schoolchildren and our partners: SIBS and USAID.
The “Triple Meetup in Polotsk” included master classes provided by successful Belarusian entrepreneurs who wanted to share their experience and speak about how they have learnt to run and manage their business by trial and error.
Sergey Olshevsky, vice-chairman of the “Centre of Youth Innovations”, an expert in G2B and GR, was the first to speak. He told the guests about some important things for a businessman like boundaries in development, market share, claim for uniqueness and innovations.
After a coffee-break, Alexander Ogorodnikov, co-founder and Head of the consulting agency Call Tracking, provided his master class.
Alexander informed the guests about what is needed and when to start their business, about typical rookie mistakes, what should be considered at the start and what can go wrong in the process.
Later, after another coffee-break, Nikolay Mikulich, co-founder of the projects “Shum.Expert” and #HotSalesDay, supervisor of Belarus IT Sales Club, head of the entrepreneurs club “Pro Business”, was the next to provide a speech.
Nikolay, an expert in ideas generation, helped the audience to generate their business ideas during his performance. Nikolay explained why only some of the ideas come to realization and how to move to the stage of “packing” your ideas and what to do with your product at the final stage.
All the guests gained valuable experience and useful advice from the speakers. Even after the event had finished, the discussions were still going on, as some participants continued asking the speakers bunches of questions.
Failed to attend the event? Don’t be upset, come to the next meeting of the PSU Startup-school on March 16, 2019. The meeting will be dedicated to marketing and promotion. Check out the latest news on the university website and on social media:
- VKontakte (https://vk.com/psustart),
- Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/PSUstart),
- Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/psu_start ).
You are welcome!
P.S. Young Researchers Council would like to express the deepest gratitude to the university authorities for supporting the initiative to create the Startup-school at PSU, to the Department of Educational Work and to the Centre of Information Technologies for helping to organize the event, and to the Department of Social and Informational Technologies and Services for providing the informational support for the event.
Petr Rezkin, Head of the Young Researchers Council, Head of the Start-up School at PSU, PhD in Economics
E. P Puysho, Start-up School Coordinator at PSU
Photos: Nastya Meleshko