home » Companies » About development institutions. Denis Kovalevich, Technospark: We do not need business geniuses, but ordinary people who are ready to engage in entrepreneurial work G.M.: IMEC does system-level design

About development institutions. Denis Kovalevich, Technospark: We do not need business geniuses, but ordinary people who are ready to engage in entrepreneurial work G.M.: IMEC does system-level design

Based on the results of the comments, I decided to look into it in more detail, wrote a letter to the site. I promptly received a response and a proposal for a meeting from Denis Kovalevich, Executive Director of the Skolkovo Nuclear Technology Cluster (I was there until July 15) and one of the drivers of the idea. Denis and Ruslan Titov, who is responsible for the network of technology centers at Rusnano, told me about how IMEC works, about the interaction of the Troitsk Nanotechnology Center with them, about international cooperation and its development, about Russian scientific and technological teams.

About getting to know IMEC

Denis Kovalevich: I was responsible for the innovation program at Rosatom for 4 years. One of the tasks was to find new applications for technologies used in the nuclear industry. In particular, radiation technologies - technologies for controlling radiation from various sources - laser, accelerator, plasma, and so on. More and more industries are beginning to seriously depend on this type of technology. Radiation is actively used, for example, in medicine: x-rays, tomographs, accelerators. To develop such technologies, a nuclear cluster was founded in Skolkovo two years ago.

And here is an example - almost half of the processes in the production of electronics, this is work with radiation - plasma and lasers - therefore, in a cluster, we have collected several projects in microelectronics: http://www.nanotech-active.ru/, http://community.sk .ru/net/1120130 , http://community.sk.ru/net/1110065 .

A year ago, active contacts with IMEC began. We studied how they are arranged, how they develop. It turned out that in microelectronics this is the largest communication center, there is nothing like it anywhere else in terms of the number of active partners.

Georgy Melnikov: And Albany?

Ruslan Titov: IMEC is strong in independence from market participants. There was no industry in Belgium, which is why it was chosen to be and remains a non-captive center. The industry decided so, and the Belgians financed the creation of the center. Albany is indeed a competitor in terms of model, but this is an unsuccessful attempt by IBM to copy the experience of IMEC. The Americans failed to collect broad cooperation, they are much smaller.

D.K.: We are trying to repeat the logic of IMEC development - we are collecting capital investments, hoping to find applied problems. The first IMEC infrastructure at current prices cost 65 million Euros. This is not such a sky-high project in terms of money, we are planning a project on a scale of 150 million euros. At the same time, we can get in Russia a piece of world cooperation in the science-intensive industry. What is almost non-existent now is not the export of brains, but the import of tasks. Yes, and the import of brains, for that matter.

IMEC is also active in new areas of electronics - medicine, bioelectronics, telecom. For example, personal medicine. IMEC is developing sensor models to take dozens of different indications of a person as they live. One of the obvious requirements for such devices is ultra-low power consumption, since, as you understand, it is often impossible to change the battery built into the sensor to change the battery.

It is possible to get into formalized cooperation around the same lithography only with breakthrough technology. Another thing is participation in new topics, where hundreds of new companies appear a year. This is a formidable task.

We set a goal to work out a model according to which IMEC would be interested in working with Russian partners. The Troitsk Nanocenter pays IMEC to identify areas where development will take place in the next 5-10 years and new partners will be required, because through their experience and communication, the Belgians understand what will happen tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. A very important characteristic of IMEC is that a large number of companies are being created around it in one way or another - in 25 years of operation, about five hundred plus dozens of their own spinoffs. IMEC as a partner and its model of work were chosen in order to grow a new player in Troitsk, as a point of growth, who will not try to repeat what local research institutes do there, who will not be a commercial organization in itself with the task of generating profit for shareholders , but will replace the delta between science and applied developments and applications. And as soon as interesting applications appear, they will be displayed in startups.

Georgy Melnikov: Do you want to create a competitor to IMEC?

DK: No, we want to make a partner center with them to work together in some markets. Now the agenda for such cooperation is being determined. Today, seven points are being considered where there are living scientific teams: Moscow, Troitsk, Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, maybe Tomsk and Novosibirsk. I can’t tell you more precisely yet, because this is not very tactful towards our partners - they are also in the process of deciding on the depth of integration. We will occasionally deal with some, we will open laboratories with some. I can name one laboratory - a group at the Institute of Spectroscopy in Troitsk, deals with plasma technologies, EUV and nanodiagnostics for lithography. The format has already been determined with them, the Troitsk nanocenter will invest about 100 million rubles in equipment there this year.

About the product chain

DK: The overall picture looks like this. On the left is fundamental science, on the right is global industry, Intel, ASML. In the world, this gap is filled with a dozen different positions. And in Russia there are two and a half such positions. We are trying to develop startups on the part of the industry and we are forced to force scientists to do business, and they have neither the desire nor the skills to do so. So it is necessary to fill in the missing positions of engineering, industrial design, prototyping, staff leasing, and so on. One of these important positions is occupied by IMEC. D&A - development and applications. Not R&D, like research with a generally unclear result, but a center for applied development and application. They are engaged in that and only that which the industry specifically needs.

R.T.: For example, a certain corporation has a complex applied problem, and it is looking for what kind of cooperation can solve this problem. The corporation pays IMEC to select partners. The Belgians figure out what's what, perhaps they advise a framework program with another lead contractor, and take the silicon part for themselves.

GM: Who owns the solution as a result?

R.T.: When, how. IMEC has a very complex intellectual property ownership model. When working with one customer, that customer owns the solution. And there is a model with a multi-customer, pre-competitive work, when the result belongs to all invested parties. They have a team of lawyers working, for each of the orders they choose their own design model. Also, we plan to work.

GM: Will those who made the decision be able to use this IP later?

RT: IMEC has such a right. Under contracts, he can withdraw IP to a spinoff or sell it to a third party.

GM: Who decides what the industry needs? The industry itself? IMEC?

D.M.: Now sometimes IMEC prompts, because he learned, and at first he took tasks and solved them, on time, for reasonable money. Then the industry appreciated the quality of the work, and now IMEC receives research equipment for free, as the companies understand the benefits of such cooperation.

GM: IMEC does system level design?

DK: Not really. It's definitely not integration. For example, for ASML, it is rather reverse engineering: in IMEC they receive a lithographic machine being developed, potential users gather around this machine, add their experts, potential suppliers, and bring the machine to mind with the whole world. They take a finished car and begin to roll back its design, finding problems and plugging holes. In ASML, 90% of development used to be outsourced, but now the equipment is so complex that a partner, which has become IMEC, is needed to complete the system.

GM: Who will set tasks for the projected center? Are there any plans for customers in Russia?

DK: Tasks will come from the global industry. In Russia, we are starting to talk with Ruselectronics, but on the other hand, we are looking for directions in which we can solve the tasks jointly assigned to us. And they will solve their own problems.

GM: And Micron?

DK: We would be happy if Mikron offered us at least one task, but for now he is both a factory, a design center, and a seller of end products. He will constantly be in a conflict of interest and develop natural production on his own, and not order tasks on the side. But we do not and do not plan to do fabs, designs, RFID production. Also, we are not engaged in basic development. We can cooperate with those who understand what they do, where there is a clear separation between what we do and what they do.

GM: Let's say Mikron has problems when setting up a 65nm process. Can he come to you for help about engineering and competencies?

R.T. No way. Production technology setting services is a standard task, many in Europe can do it, the margin is zero.

G.M. 65nm in Europe is only available in a couple of places.

R.T.: IMEC does not install the technical process. To adjust their technical processes, they hire specialized companies. This is a simple task - to establish a technical process so that the equipment works.

GM: TSMC has also been introducing new processes for years.

R.T.: A few years, but not twenty. You also need to understand that there are zero military topics in IMEC, this was the condition for their creation. There was one infringement by the military, and a very harsh response was given to this.

G.M.: Can a manufactured chip always be inserted into a military hardware?

R.T.: In such cases, they require a declaration that the piece of iron will not be used for military purposes. If they are convicted of dishonesty, they immediately stop cooperation. Just now, under similar conditions, Rusnano is negotiating with the Swedes on one project in power electronics.

On the tasks of nanotechnology centers

D.K.: In the end, I'm interested in startups and opportunities for the emergence of initial technologies that arise as a result of the activities of such infrastructure organizations, among other things. In the Soviet Union, this activity was supported in one form or another in the form of industry institutes and design bureaus. During the stagnation of the industry, the ecosystem has died out, since branch science is not a thing in itself, but a part of the industry, a normal piece of the production process. We are restoring this piece. If we succeed, the performance of the system called startup generation will increase tenfold.

G.M.: And how does a startup emerge from research?

R.T.: Let's see how the interaction between startups and IMEC works. Through a venture fund, someone, usually the state, invests money in a company where IMEC uploads IP and sometimes a team, and he also begins to provide services to this company. For example, a startup orders certain works from universities (IMEC cannot make such orders according to the charter), and IMEC does the silicon part, the production of chips, for this company without immediate payment. This is how a startup forms a debt to the scientific center. If a company enters the next round of financing, it first of all covers the debt to IMEC.

DK: A relatively small non-profit fund, the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs (FIEP), was allocated from Rosnano to develop the infrastructure of nanocenters. The fund was tasked with creating 200-250 startups throughout the network of nanocenters in 2013. It is supposed to invest at a very early stage, literally in the first steps. A startup in the context of nanocenters is an idea about the application of technology. You need to find a hole in the existing technological chain and fill it with your breakthrough solution. So, there is a group of private individuals in the Troitsk Nanocenter, including myself, FIOP, together with this group, finances the nanocenter and invests in start-ups. On the other hand, ASML is working with IMEC to create a 13nm lithography machine for the new process. Among other things, a problem with the white light source has surfaced - the current supplier, Cymer, has not yet coped with the creation of a new generation of the device. Troitsk saw this problem, we agreed that we would invest in the solution ourselves, and if we get a result, we will take over the engineering and become ASML suppliers. That is: they found a point in the industry, found a technical team, set a task for it, allocated money. Now the task is to put this business on stream.

R.T.: Nanocenters are developing in six directions, microelectronics is one of them. Exclusively material based, possibly embedded software.

G.M. What about EDA? How relevant is this?

R.T We don't have such startups. It does not require specialized infrastructure. We are looking at those formats that can be materially tied, and so far we have succeeded in microelectronics, in composites, even in industrial design. And companies involved in the design of microelectronics cannot be given anything in any one place. IMEC itself is reluctant to design. They have knowhow, but they are attached to something. For example, they did for TSMC to design several designs on one wafer at the same time in order to reduce the cost of prototyping (GM: the so-called MPW multi project wafer).

GM: What about, for example, double patterning solutions? On the one hand, software, on the other hand, it is quite rigidly tied to a lithographic machine.

R.T.: It is difficult to make an independent player. In this case, software becomes a means of implementing a certain business model; it turns out that it depends not on our infrastructure, but on a certain manufacturer. This is not our area of interest. There are many designers in Russia, they design at a good level, write software. They are already on the market, they can be invested. And FIOP is a non-market entity that the market would never have created.

About Russian research centers and scientific schools

D.K.: It is important for us that the laboratory has experience in receiving tasks from the industry and issuing high-quality results on time. Like the laboratory of Konstantin Nikolaevich Koshelev: components developed by Koshelev on the order of ASML are integrated into their machine. At the Troitsk Nanocenter, we are looking for partners for whom we can be a direct customer. The center plans to engage in engineering, find and broadcast tasks to laboratories. At the same time, laboratories should be ready for a rather tough conversation, accept and solve problems with high quality.

It is clear that there are few ready-made laboratories of this level today. Therefore, together with IMEC, we are looking for tasks for which we can create laboratories in Russia from scratch, based on the priorities of the Belgians and our expertise. For example, Russia has good biology and biotechnology, and IMEC is actively developing personal medicine. So we must try to grow a laboratory of personal medicine. Or, together with telecom employees, organize a laboratory for silicon photonics. Those topics that we find will be the content of the center, nothing else. This center will not conduct initiative research at the request of scientists for ten years. Only engineering, where tasks are set by the industry.

G.M.: What is the methodology for finding points of cooperation?

DK: In Russia, there are 3 groups, maybe four, which regularly perform the tasks that the global microelectronics industry sets for them. All of them are known, they know each other, they are friends. Koshelev in Isan in Troitsk; Rakhimov's group at Moscow State University; Institute of Physics of Microstructures in Nizhny Novgorod. There are few apprentices, everyone knows everyone, there are no accidents.

G.M: And Alferov?

DK: He can afford to generate problems himself, it's very exciting, but we are looking for more applied scientists.

We agreed to continue the conversation. I am planning a conversation in the fall, I am already collecting questions.

I will try to ask if there are points of contact with the Kurchatov Institute (Rosatom) and how to understand the news http://top.rbc.ru/society/02/08/2013/868542.shtml in the context of our conversation. I propose to continue talking about specific examples of projects that are in progress. It is interesting to find out who is involved in negotiations on the part of the aimek, what their experience is and to talk about how they grow into high-tech administrators.

If you have any more questions - ask.

Mergers and acquisitions will continue to grow in 2018, with technology acquisitions as the main driver of this process, according to a Deloitte report. Building a high-tech business quickly in order to sell it is one of the most effective business models. This is how, for example, the venture construction company Technospark works, which annually launches a dozen startups. Denis Kovalevich, General Director and one of the private shareholders of Technospark calls this approach a pipeline, it frees entrepreneurs from having to step on the same rake several times and allows them to accumulate experience super-intensively. Denis Kovalevich told Inc. how to build a business in the hardware industry by investing millions of rubles, not dollars, why there are global ambitions in a small market, and why the innovation pipeline needs people who are ready to engage in entrepreneurship.

Knowledge and business pipeline

We are not an accelerator or an incubator - we are building a business. An accelerator is, in fact, a university: its basic task is to educate people through projects (like in an MBA when they analyze cases). For us, training is just an additional effect.

We don't expect brilliant entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas. We organize work with those who are ready and want to engage in entrepreneurial work. Every year we create a dozen and a half new companies and open several dozen entrepreneurial positions.

Our technology is not a funnel, but a conveyor. The funnel is the approach of traditional venture capital funds. Each of them receives thousands of applications for investments, looks at hundreds of startups live, invests in a dozen of them and after 7-10 years sells a few at an extremely high price, and writes off the rest. Such a business normally exists only in places with an inexhaustible influx of human capital and tens of thousands of new startups a year. We in Russia cannot count on this and must build our business differently. Of the 100 companies that we have launched over the past 5 years, 10 already have growing contract revenue or a salable product, these are the most sell-ready companies and will be sold in the coming years. The next 30 - we call them "candidates" - are developing their products at full speed, most of them we will transfer to the group of leaders in the next year or two. Behind them are 60 very young startups in which we are just starting regular activities. Every year, some of the companies from the third group become “candidates”, and we launch another 10-15 novice startups.

In Russia, it is believed that the conveyor turns people into non-humans, but I think that the opposite is true. When Henry Ford created the automobile assembly line, he multiplied labor productivity and therefore could pay his employees more than other companies. More importantly, the conveyor gave work to people who did not know the secrets of craftsmanship - those who did not have a special education, but wanted to work, got a chance. We're doing the same thing with entrepreneurship—we're opening up technology company building to people who can work hard but don't think they're natural business geniuses.

Why would novice entrepreneurs waste years of their lives mining the knowledge necessary for a decent start of a new business? We are building companies in a dozen new industries and therefore spend hundreds of thousands of hours a year collectively analyzing markets and technologies. No single newcomer will be able to catch up and overtake us - but by opening new startups, we give entrepreneurs the opportunity to immediately take the first step, and not run after the train.

What is Technospark

The company was founded in 2012 by a group of entrepreneurs and the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs (part of the RUSNANO Group) for the mass creation of technology startups in the hardware industries. Technospark is not an incubator and does not issue grants, but it builds new technology businesses from scratch. Today, more than 100 companies simultaneously grow at the site in Troitsk, which are engaged in the development and production of high-tech products and services - from logistics robots to solar roofs. In early May, Technospark, together with partners from a network of nanotechnology centers (Saransk, Ulyanovsk, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Tomsk), announced the Business Debut 2018-2019 program - a large-scale recruitment of young entrepreneurs into new startups and a 10-month "combat » practice in a real business environment. Debutants will take positions as business builders in 100 new technology companies created by Technospark and a network of nanocenters. Each startup will receive 1 million rubles of investments to create its first product and to pay salaries to debutants. Those of them who achieve obvious results in 10 months will be able to become co-shareholders of the startup.

Small market, big ambitions

Despite the large investments, Russian scientific developments are almost not subject to monetization - the reason is that the tasks for the development are set by scientists, not entrepreneurs. For example, for the first 2-3 years we were very fond of lasers: Troitsk is almost the most “laser” city in the country, there are three dozen scientific groups that deal with this topic. We thought it was the Klondike! There is definitely something for business! But from the old backlog, only one worthy business was found - lasers in ophthalmology.

We regularly buy and transfer global technologies to Russia. Even despite the sanctions. In the fall of 2014, at the peak of the foreign policy crisis, we agreed with our Belgian and Dutch R&D partners on one of our companies becoming one of the owners of a package of advanced technologies for surface-integrated photovoltaics. Today we are making joint products using this intellectual property with several large Russian companies and are preparing to build the first production of solar roofs.

Russia is a small technology market by world standards, so any ambitious company here must be global

In California alone, there are an order of magnitude more tech companies that buy products from other tech companies than in Russia. But this only forces us to immediately build export-oriented businesses. For example, we have a company that develops and manufactures logistics robots (these are self-propelled carts that travel around warehouses, transport goods and replace people) - it has production both in Russia and in northern Europe. Both here and there have their advantages: in Russia the labor force and some other items of expenditure are cheaper, in Europe the contract infrastructure is better developed and there are an order of magnitude more customers per square kilometer.

We will never be interested in cryptocurrencies, media, social networks, fintech - purely IT solutions: 75% of all new companies in the world are concentrated there and the competition is a thousand times higher than in the remaining 25%. If I make robots, I know all my competitors. And if I did a social network, then I would have thousands of competitors - I can’t know them all. Without knowing your niche thoroughly, it is impossible to be successful.

In any industry, there are a lot of empty niches and problems that no one solves - to see them, you have to be very “in the know”. For example, 1.5 years ago, our biotechnology group created a startup that creates a technology for express diagnostics of well water for the oil industry. The bottom line is this: the older the well, the more bacteria in its waters that spoil the equipment. To suppress bacteria, regular diagnostics are needed - today it takes more than a week, since it is done in special laboratories, which means that during these weeks and months the equipment deteriorates intensively. We develop a solution for diagnostics right on the well. "From the street" this problem - and a chance for business - can not be seen.

Business can be built only on those technologies that reduce the cost of the product. For example, over the past 10 years, the cost of metal 3D printing has decreased several times and the modeling and 3D design processes have accelerated, which allowed us to create TENmedprint, a company that prints individual titanium endoprostheses. If you do not know for sure to what extent a particular technology is ready for industrial use and how much more needs to be invested in it, it is impossible to make an entrepreneurial calculation.

Build a company - sell a company

We are building dozens of companies in parallel so that we can sell them as soon as we are ready. Look at the statistics of M&A transactions in the world - their number is growing every year by tens of percent. And although this market is still quite young, it is already safe to say that technology startups are a super-demand product. Technospark and a network of nanocenters have sold dozens of technology start-ups over the past 2 years. These were young companies created by us in Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Ulyanovsk, Kazan, Saransk, Troitsk, Dubna, St. Petersburg. Young, but already rated by buyers. For example, the company NCL, which makes a laser medical puncher, was bought out by our partners and co-investors who invested in it at the start.

Our main clients are growing corporations: for them, buying startups is one of the most effective development tools. Instead of building a new technology business yourself, it is much more profitable to buy a company that an entrepreneur has grown.

Our investment opportunities have always been quite modest - that's why we figured out how to build hardware startups for millions of rubles, and not for millions of dollars. How long does it take to build a worthwhile hardware business from scratch? 15-20 years. Our goal is to cut this period in half. If this is done, then at the same time the size of investments will be reduced by several times. In terms of complexity, this is how to reduce the construction period of a nuclear power plant from 8 years to 48 months.

Time is the only irreplaceable, and therefore the most monetized resource. Even if you are not going to sell your company, its current value is exactly what a potential buyer is willing to pay. How much time this purchase will save him - a year, five or ten years - he will pay so much.

Building a successful technology company using new engineering inventions and being able to sell it - in real life, such painstaking work takes years and costs a lot. Is it possible to understand how this path works and assess your readiness to create a new technology business in just a few hours? It is possible, says Denis Kovalevich, shareholder and CEO of the Troitsk Nanocenter Technospark, which according to the results of 2016 became the best in the National Rating of Technoparks. He told ITMO.NEWS how even first-year students will be able to try their hand at creating a new industry from scratch, what the first interuniversity venture nanocenter in Russia will do, and why creating 150 high-tech companies a year is quite realistic.

Denis Kovalevich, shareholder and CEO of the Troitsk Nanocenter Technospark

Already on February 21 and 22 at ITMO University, shareholders and heads of nanocenters will recruit to the club of the interuniversity venture building nanocenter. The event will be held in the format of the business game “Build a company. Sell the Company” - students will create their own invention from the simplest materials and build a company, which they will then try to sell. The scriptwriter of the game is Denis Kovalevich, a shareholder and head of the Troitsk Nanocenter Technospark.

Denis, please tell us how the game was created, and what should those who dare to participate and try to build their own company prepare for next Tuesday?

The game "Build a company. Sell the company” we created at the beginning of last year. Its main goal is to teach us to analyze our own abilities and ways of thinking, to assess whether they are suitable or not for technological entrepreneurship. We specifically chose the form of the game, because it is the game that allows you to live through relatively safe material that experience that in real life is expensive, takes years and always has real consequences. In the game, all this is compensated and compressed into an ultra-short period.

After the game was developed in this version, we adapted it for students so that young guys could also try themselves, participate in the process of creating a new industry. I note that this is the essence of the game - the creation of a new industry from scratch and the opportunity to try yourself inside this industry in different qualities. For example, participants will be able to be entrepreneurs who create companies and then prepare them for sale and sell them, or take other positions, such as engineers who work with entrepreneurs and create new designs or produce technological products.

In the second half of last year, we held a whole series of games with students, and it showed extremely high efficiency. The game found an active response from the students, and many of those who played ended up in our personnel reserve. When they graduate and are ready to start working as entrepreneurs with us, in our technology companies, we will be open.

During the game, the leaders of the nanocenters are planning to enroll in the club of the interuniversity venture nanocenter. What is this organization and what will it do?

The decision to create an interuniversity venture building nanotechnology center was made last year. "Interuniversity" in this case means cooperation between two partners - St. Petersburg Polytechnic University and ITMO University. At the same time, in this story it is completely clear that where there are two, there are more. In the future, the Club will also be open to other universities, both St. Petersburg and Russian universities in general. And this game, which will take place at ITMO University in the near future, will be the beginning of the formation of a club for the nanocenter being created.

What is a club and why is it needed? This is a platform open to everyone: both freshmen-bachelors and masters who complete their studies. The fact is that at this stage the guys will be able, firstly, to understand through the game more about how entrepreneurs and engineers act in business. Secondly, to try on a new model for both Russia and the world of serial technological entrepreneurship, or venture building, as it is more accurately called. In the event that the fitting takes place, if “the suit fits” or if they understand that it can suit them in the future, they will be able to stay inside this club movement that we are launching, and then go further and take steps into a specific business.

We, in turn, are ready to open a part of our entrepreneurial “kitchen” to a wide audience: how acting entrepreneurs tell how we create companies, what technologies we use, and so on. If the guys associate themselves with this, then we just tell them: “OK, there are ways to become part of this work.”

Can this form of dialogue be called unique for our country?

I think that this is generally the first entrepreneurial club of its kind in Russia, the first club created in connection with professional activities in serial technological entrepreneurship. There are various fairly formal near-state associations of already solid businessmen, and our club is something exactly the opposite. This is a platform for different guys - maybe they are doing some kind of business while still studying at the university, or they are just thinking about it and don’t know where to start, maybe these are engineers who work inside such entrepreneurial projects, and not inside large government agencies or corporations. And now they have a place where they can communicate, get a unique and so far inaccessible experience of building their own technology company, which appears in people over the years, as they say, at their fingertips.

As for the entrepreneurial "kitchen" and the current state of the system of Russian nanocenters... In December last year, the Association of Clusters and Technoparks summed up the results of the II National Rating of technoparks in Russia. More than 100 technoparks across the country were considered, after which 25 best ones were selected, and as a result, the Troitsk Nanocenter became the leader of the rating « Technospark» . What made you successful?

Deloitte, in 2018 the number of mergers and acquisitions will continue to grow, and the acquisition of technologies will be the main driver of this process. Building a high-tech business quickly in order to sell it is one of the effective business models. This is how, for example, the venture construction company Technospark works, which annually launches a dozen startups. The General Director and one of the private shareholders of Technospark, Denis Kovalevich, calls this approach a conveyor belt, it frees entrepreneurs from the need to step on the same rake several times and allows them to accumulate experience super-intensively. Denis Kovalevich told Inc. how to build a business in the hardware industry by investing millions of rubles, not dollars, why there are global ambitions in a small market, and why the innovation pipeline needs people who are ready to engage in entrepreneurship.

Knowledge and business pipeline

We do not wait for brilliant entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas. We organize work with those who are ready and want to engage in entrepreneurial work. Every year we create a dozen and a half new companies and open several dozen entrepreneurial positions.

Our technology is not a funnel, but a conveyor. The funnel is the approach of traditional venture capital funds. Each of them receives thousands of applications for investments, watches hundreds of startups live, invests in a dozen of them and after 7-10 years sells a few at an extremely high price, and writes off the rest. Such a business normally exists only in places with an inexhaustible influx of human capital and tens of thousands of new startups a year. We in Russia cannot count on this and must build our business differently. Of the 100 companies we have launched over the past 5 years, 10 already have growing contract revenue or salable product, these are the most sell-ready companies and will be sold in the coming years. The next 30 - we call them "candidates" - are developing their products at full speed, most of them we will transfer to the group of leaders in the next year or two. Behind them are 60 very young startups, in which we are just starting regular activities. Every year, some companies from the third group become “candidates”, and we launch 10-15 more novice startups.

In Russia, it is believed that the conveyor turns people into non-humans, but I think that the opposite is true. When Henry Ford created the automobile assembly line, he multiplied labor productivity and therefore could pay his employees more than other companies. More importantly, the conveyor gave work to people who did not know the secrets of craftsmanship - those who did not have a special education, but wanted to work, got a chance. We're doing the same thing with entrepreneurship - open access to the construction of technology companies for those people who are capable of hard work, but do not consider themselves natural business geniuses.

What is Technospark

The company was founded in 2012 by a group of entrepreneurs and the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs (part of the RUSNANO group) for the mass creation of technology startups in the hardware industries. Technospark is not an incubator and does not issue grants, but it builds new technology businesses from scratch. Today, more than 100 companies simultaneously grow at the site in Troitsk, which are engaged in the development and production of high-tech products and services - from logistics robots to solar roofs. In early May, Technospark, together with partners from a network of nanotechnology centers (Saransk, Ulyanovsk, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Tomsk), announced the Business Debut 2018-2019 program - a large-scale recruitment of young entrepreneurs into new startups and a 10-month "combat » practice in a real business environment. Debutants will take positions as business builders in 100 new technology companies created by Technospark and a network of nanocenters. Each startup will receive 1 million rubles of investments to create its first product and to pay salaries to debutants. Those of them who achieve obvious results in 10 months will be able to become co-shareholders of the startup.

Small market - big ambitions

Despite the large investments, Russian scientific developments are almost not subject to monetization - the reason is that the tasks for the development are set by scientists, not entrepreneurs. For example, for the first 2-3 years we were very fond of lasers: Troitsk is almost the most "laser" city in the country, there are three dozen scientific groups that deal with this topic. We thought it was the Klondike! There is definitely something for business! But from the old backlog, only one worthy business was found - lasers in ophthalmology.

In California alone, there are an order of magnitude more tech companies that buy products from other tech companies than in Russia. But this only forces us to immediately build export-oriented businesses. For example, we have a company that develops and manufactures logistics robots (these are self-propelled carts that travel around warehouses, transport goods and replace people), - it has production both in Russia and in northern Europe. Both here and there have their advantages: in Russia the labor force and some other items of expenditure are cheaper, in Europe the contract infrastructure is better developed and there are an order of magnitude more customers per square kilometer.

We will never be interested in cryptocurrencies, media, social networks, fintech - purely IT solutions: 75% of all new companies in the world are concentrated there and competition is a thousand times higher than in the remaining 25%. If I make robots, I know all my competitors. And if I did a social network, then I would have thousands of competitors - I can’t know all of them. Without knowing your niche thoroughly, it is impossible to be successful.

Build a company - sell a company

We are building dozens of companies in parallel so that we can sell them as soon as we are ready. Look at the statistics of M&A transactions in the world - their number is growing every year by tens of percent. And although this market is still quite young, it is already safe to say that technology startups are a super-demand commodity. Technospark and a network of nanocenters have sold dozens of technology start-ups over the past 2 years. These were young companies created by us in Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Ulyanovsk, Kazan, Saransk, Troitsk, Dubna, St. Petersburg. Young, but already rated by buyers. For example, the company NCL, which makes a laser medical puncher, was bought out by our partners and co-investors who invested in it at the start.

Our main clients are growing corporations: for them, buying startups is one of the most effective development tools. Instead of building a new technology business yourself, it is much more profitable to buy a company that an entrepreneur has grown.

Our investment opportunities have always been quite modest - that's why we figured out how to build hardware startups for millions of rubles, and not for millions of dollars. How long does it take to build a worthwhile business in the hard-ware industries from scratch? 15-20 years. Our goal is to cut this period in half. If this is done, then at the same time the size of investments will be reduced by several times. In terms of complexity, this is how to reduce the construction period of a nuclear power plant from 8 years to 48 months.

Denis Kovalevich, an entrepreneur and CEO of the Troitsk Nanotechnology Center Technospark, which launches dozens of new technological startups every year, told Snob what large corporations pay builders of new companies for, why it is important to be able to copy, and what engineers of the 19th century had what today's engineers lack

Ɔ. We communicate with you at the site of one of your companies, directly at the production site. And around us are all these installations that appeared thanks to the talent of engineers. And I have a question: what kind of engineer is he today?

I think most people think that an engineer is a genius called to invent one unique thing that will be the best in the world. This idea of an engineer has a long history and its heroes, such as, for example, Leonardo da Vinci. For me, as an entrepreneur, the key role of an engineer is to create more and more economical technologies and solutions, daily reducing the amount of resources consumed in technological processes, time spent and, therefore, reducing the cost of the product. I recently clashed on this issue with school teachers - this happened, most likely, because any teacher dreams of producing a Nobel laureate. And not someone who will painstakingly work on productivity. In this sense, for me, an engineer is someone who works for Ford.

Ɔ. And invents a conveyor.

And he figured out how to make a car for 300 dollars, while in the market at the beginning of the 20th century there were cars for only 3,000 and in the amount of several thousand pieces a year. In the third year after the assembly line was launched, Ford produced a million cars. And you and I are only able to buy a car because Ford made this entrepreneurial revolution in automotive technology.

Ɔ. That is, we need a person who must combine the ability to design with economic knowledge.

In the 19th century, engineers in Russia understood what I am saying now much better than today's engineers, who were formed in the Soviet system. Because engineers then worked in partnership with entrepreneurs. Together they built the industry of pre-revolutionary Russia - one of the most developed in the world at that time. And then the partnership fell apart.

I devoted seven years to work at the state corporation Rosatom, whose institutes employ more than 20,000 people. These are scientists and engineers who are very good at doing unique things, but who find it extremely difficult to reduce the cost of a product and increase labor productivity.

Ɔ. In general, they say on the world market: if you want to get a unique thing, turn to the Russians, if you want to get a lot of the same things, turn to anyone, but not to the Russians. What is your understanding of entrepreneurship in Russia?

My parents are originally two atomic physicists who went into business in the early 1990s.

Elena Nikolaeva Photo: Tatiana Hesso

Ɔ. And I have. Physicists-mathematicians. Mom is now in the banking sector, dad was an entrepreneur. And when dad went into business, former colleagues at research institutes said ...

Commerce, merchant.

Ɔ. Trader, yes.

This attitude towards entrepreneurship is the standard of the society in which we now live. But at the same time there is a completely different attitude, because we all know Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. And even those who criticize entrepreneurs, calling them “commerce” and “trader”, these people are treated with respect. In this sense, society lives in a state of ongoing schizophrenia.

Ɔ. However, I note that after a quarter of a century, many physicists are returning to science.

Yes, but mostly in a different role. My parents returned to technology activities, but already in an entrepreneurial position. In my opinion, today we are only just beginning to see the sprouts of what is generally called the technology business. After the breakdown of the planned production chains of the USSR, the first wave of entrepreneurs gathered them anew, they became owners of enterprises due to the intermediary and restoration type of entrepreneurship, and formed large industrial conglomerates. And only in recent years, new technology companies have begun to appear that earn not on old assets, but on the fact that they make their product or service faster and better than anyone else in the country or in the world. Here we are, at Technospark, trying to carry out such an operation with the very process of creating startups. We are trying to build startups cheaper and faster than anyone else.

Ɔ. Are you actually an accelerator?

No, we are a business of building businesses. We are a partnership between a group of private entrepreneurs, of which I am one, and the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs (part of the RUSNANO Group). In Technospark, responsibility for business lies with private partners. Now you are in the territory of private enterprise. And here are about 100 companies created from scratch over the past 4 years. That is, we start building 20-25 new companies a year.

Denis Kovalevich Photo: Tatiana Hesso

Ɔ. How do you open them?

Five years ago there was a field of dandelions here. We started building it from scratch. For the first year and a half, we created a significant part of new companies - 30-40 percent - together with Troitsk entrepreneurs who were once engineers and scientists in our institutes. Conditionally, let's call it spin-offs from the Research Institute. By the end of the fourth year of operation, the percentage of such companies in our portfolio had dropped to about 10%.

Ɔ. That is, they were engineers who had already begun to commercialize their product.

Yes. For example, our partner in the market of medical and industrial lasers is the Troitskaya company Optosystems, founded by Sergey Vartapetov, one of the best laser scientists in the country. When we started a partnership with her, she already supplied 50% of ophthalmic lasers to Russian clinics. Together we made a new generation femtosecond laser that allows you to perform eye surgery without damaging the outer layers of the cornea. Only two or three companies in the world have such technology.

Ɔ. And here the question arises. Like a scientist, a developer becomes an entrepreneur. What is happening to him at this moment?

There are at least two things going on. First, he alienates what he has developed, technology, from himself, transfers it to the company and ceases to treat this technology as his own. A particular technology is always a changeable element within a business. The second is the transition from the desire to do something unique to the fact that your development will be profitable only if you continuously increase labor productivity, that is, reduce the cost of this product.

Ɔ. Can this be learned?

The question in philosophical language sounds like this: can someone convey to someone else, than he already has, a picture of the world?

Ɔ. When you and I watch a film, we somehow accept the director's picture of the world.

It's true. By the way, Hollywood's contribution to the establishment of entrepreneurship in the United States as a recognized activity with the presumption that the entrepreneur - the key engine of the economy - is gigantic. In our country, the consensus so far is the opposite: any entrepreneur, especially those working in partnership with state-owned companies or institutions, is a potential suspect.

Denis Kovachevich, Elena Nikolaeva Photo: Tatiana Hesso

Ɔ. That is, the process of changing public opinion is man-made. Is it called propaganda?

In my opinion, meanings and pictures of the world are much better transmitted through families. For example, if a million people in our country over the past century left their descendants with entrepreneurial capital, family businesses, or just the experience of such work, then the attitude towards the contribution of entrepreneurs to the national welfare would be completely different.

Ɔ. We seem to have businesses in the country - maybe the issue of succession in them is complicated, but one way or another it is on the agenda.

For the most part, these are structures that are inseparable from their creators - they are extremely tied to them. Those who try to turn these structures into real companies, that is, businesses that can work without their founders, face enormous problems. Plus, in most companies, technology is so outdated that it is cheaper to build a new one than to upgrade an old one. You know, as one older friend of mine says, an injection into the prosthesis will not help.

Ɔ. How were other Technospark startups formed?

The second third of companies is copying. I don't know about you, but I think the ability to copy is one of the highest skills you can have.

Ɔ. Steal like an artist.

The main thing is not that the idea should be "one's own", but that it should be appropriate. The question "whose is she?" It doesn't matter to the entrepreneur. For example, we launched a logistics robot company in 2014 after we saw that this market was starting to open up. We saw that the company that developed and started producing these robots was bought by Amazon for almost $800 million.

Ɔ. And they have small-capacity robots.

Yes. Our company develops two lines of robots. One is heavy, which holds one and a half tons, and their deliveries will begin in a year. And the second up to 300 kg. The reality is that today Amazon and other retailers are losing billions of dollars a year in inventory. The only way to reduce these losses is to rebuild the warehouses with robots. We founded this company because we knew for sure that there are at least 5, 6, maybe 10 places in the world for such businesses. And they started to create a company for the development and production of robots from scratch.

Denis Kovalevich Photo: Tatiana Hesso

Ɔ. Does it make sense to start from scratch? Have you looked at what is already on the market?

From scratch, this means from the decision that the company will make such a logistics robot that can achieve a relatively low cost and which can be produced in quantities of tens of thousands of pieces per year and more. Because if you make a robot that can be produced in the amount of 1000 a year, nobody needs it. And the robot must also be designed so that its parts can be produced at existing production facilities in Russia and in the world. Otherwise, additional investments in production assets will be needed and the product will again become too expensive. Plus, we have a separate company that integrates various robots into warehouse solutions.

Ɔ. There must be a third part. Do you have to have engineering, service all over the world?

100 percent. But in entrepreneurship, it is important not only not to miss something, but also not to start too early. Now engineering and service is the responsibility of a company that deals with warehouse solutions. As soon as the situation matures, we will separate the maintenance and service of robots into a separate type of business.

Ɔ. What then is the last type of company in Technospark?

The last 30% are our own bold hypotheses about what technology businesses make sense to build.

Ɔ. How did you define areas of focus? Where do you get the hypothesis about the demanded businesses in the future?

There is no problem in generating hypotheses - everyone who does something always has an abundance of ideas about new businesses. The difficulty is to implement them in time. The English economist William Jevons wrote 140 years ago that an entrepreneur carries out un-investment, that is, in Russian, uninvestment. And he also said that every entrepreneur has a time limit for this very investment. Either you managed to realize a chance - in a limited time and using a limited amount of capital - or you did not. An entrepreneur is someone who answers the question of what is economically meaningful and appropriate to do today. In a sense, this is the question large and mid-sized tech corporations are paying to answer when they buy young startups. By the way, in 2017, for the first time, the share of purchases of young technology startups in the global volume of mergers and acquisitions exceeded 50%. Back in 2012, they were 25%. And in the 90s there were a few percent.

Elena Nikolaeva Photo: Tatiana Hesso

Ɔ. What is it connected with?

Roughly speaking, entrepreneurship has been divided into two parts - the work of growing companies from scratch until they are objectively ready for sale, and the work of growing and "exploiting" already established companies. Today, decent global companies choose not to hire a new vice president or create a new division within themselves to start a new direction. They instruct their corporate venture fund to start buying in such and such a market such and such a number of startups per year.

Ɔ. To what extent does Russia fit into world statistics?

Russia's share in this section of world statistics is still almost imperceptible. Over the previous three years, from 2014 to 2016, the entire network of nanotechnology centers, one of which is Technospark, sold about 30 young start-up companies. At the same time, we deal only with hard-weir - this is clear from our status as a "nanotechnological center". If we are engaged in software, then only integrated into the hardware. And these 30 companies in three years are almost 75% of the entire Russian market for sales of start-ups in material-based industries. About the same number of IT startups were sold.

Ɔ. However, there is movement. Did this government decree to open venture corporate funds have such an effect?

It hasn't worked yet, but I hope it will. Now we have three types of buyers. The first is Russian private equity funds that invest in scaling the business of startups we have created. The second is foreign companies localized in the Russian market, for which this practice is already part of their business culture. And the third type is entrepreneurs with whom we once created joint companies and who buy out our share.

Ɔ. What other bright projects do you have here?

Behind you are working installations in which artificial diamonds grow. These units are not only one of the highest quality in the world, but also one of the fastest and cheapest - due to our and partners' investments in increasing the productivity and speed of their work.

Ɔ. Where are artificial diamonds used?

For example, in special optics. Where glass cannot withstand power, such as laser radiation, and glass needs to be replaced with a more durable material. The material that can be made transparent is diamond. At the exit from the installation, it is black, and polished with an accuracy of 2 nanometers of roughness becomes transparent. Such an industrial product. Another example is our company, which produces systems for the accumulation and storage of electricity.

Denis Kovalevich Photo: Tatiana Hesso

Ɔ. In the field of alternative energy?

While the Russian market of surface-integrated photovoltaics lags behind the pace of development of storage systems, but in the end, yes, there will be a photovoltaic roof, facade, window that collect solar energy during the day, the battery stores it, and in the evenings it gives out and turns on your washing machine in automatic mode.

Ɔ. You have a wide range of activities.

Yes. We are also building, for example, a group of companies in the field of genetics. Genetics in world medicine today is, first of all, the refinement of the treatment plan. Standard diagnostics tells the patient: a) that he has cancer; b) names a specific organ. And that's it. But behind this diagnosis are dozens of different types of diseases under the general name "cancer", and at the same time, there are already hundreds of drugs that can overcome it - but not any, but a specific type of cancer. All over the world, genetic contracting companies receive from doctors the results of examinations using traditional medical equipment and a sample of the patient's DNA, and give back its transcript. And the doctor, on the basis of this, selects a specific drug that will work.

Ɔ. To what extent is such interaction integrated into the healthcare system?

Almost nothing. This is a significant change in the structure of the division of labor in the medical market, plus the retraining of doctors. Few doctors today know how to work with the information that they can get from geneticists.

Ɔ. Who should tune the links? What can and should such a structural player as the state do?

My answer will seem banal to you. The main thing is not to interfere with the development of genetics and the work of geneticists with physicians.

Ɔ. I'm sorry, but it seems to me that it is wrong to stand in such a position. The state still has to do its part: set up the infrastructure, remove the chains of intermediaries, eliminate the absurdity and free interpretations of laws. Don't you think so?

Yes, you are right, of course. And in the retraining of staff, too, can participate.

Ɔ. Do you and the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs somehow influence education in schools? To get specialists out of there for new technologies?

You asked the question very accurately, because we work primarily with schoolchildren, and not with students. Since the construction of any new company in our areas takes 10-15 years - this is our operational planning horizon - the question of who will work here in 10-15 years is also very specific for us. These are the guys who are now in the fifth-eighth grade of the school.

Ɔ. How do you interact with them?

We are not the Ministry of Education and cannot change the system. We are building a block of additional training near the schools. Two thousand children pass through our playgrounds here and in the city center every year. Excursions, workshops, engaging shows, summer schools, even project work.

Ɔ. What do you teach?

Of course, we introduce children to the technologies that we ourselves deal with. But most importantly, we are trying to convey to schoolchildren the “feeling of work” – the ability to work with high productivity every day. Unfortunately, the level of devaluation of attitudes towards long and repeated work is catastrophic. This is a larger problem than finding markets, capital or anything else. We teach schoolchildren to complete what they start, we instill skills to save resources.

Ɔ. Does it make sense for Russia as a whole to concentrate on something specific or does it need to go to all areas at once?

This is the cornerstone question. My point of view as an entrepreneur is maximum specialization. It only makes sense to do what you can, at least potentially, be able to do more economically and productively than others.

Ɔ. For example?

In all areas that Technospark is engaged in, we see such an opportunity - a multiple increase in productivity and by opening up new markets. Old industries will not help the country's economy grow, new ones are needed. I think there is a chance that 100 years after the revolution, the economy of our country will restore its movement towards working in global markets, and not slide into another autarky. And technological entrepreneurs will “choose” these very new industries with their actions - this is their main role in the economy, in my opinion. You see, I can only earn money if I correctly answer the question “what to do?”. This is my function as an entrepreneur and at the same time my motivation.
Ɔ.

About development institutions. Denis Kovalevich, Technospark: We do not need business geniuses, but ordinary people who are ready to engage in entrepreneurial work G.M.: IMEC does system-level design

Knowledge and business pipeline

What is Technospark

Small market, big ambitions

Build a company - sell a company

Knowledge and business pipeline

Small market - big ambitions

Build a company - sell a company

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