"Startupers should exhibit the survivability akin to that of roaches and other bugs"

On 25th of November, during the event organized by the student from the group "I-9" Maxim Lagutin, a lecture was given by the general director of startup factory "Glavstar" and the founder of the internet-based service Price.ru and former project development director for "Rambler Media" Arcadiy Moreins. During his presentation, Arcadiy touched on several issues, such as comparative costs between building a team versus building an idea,  which qualities are necessary for any startuper to attract investments, as well as answered different questions and reviewed various student's projects.

«The current rule number 1 - at the sowing stage of any startup, the investor is rather funding the team and not so much the individual idea. The actual ideas by themselves are often worthless, as they are prone to all sorts of revisions and major changes. In my own experience, i can assert that 99% of what you initially come up with, will end up unsuitable in the market place. That is why it is of great importance to realize, whether the people who came up with the original idea are actually able to be flexible enough to adoptively change it down the road. Startupers are like roaches - they must learn how to survive against all practical odds.

The team that has decided to work on the project, should well know how to persevere in the face of plethora of complexities and challenges associated with the life of a startuper. They must also develop a great sense of the detailed wishes and interests of their target audience, and be able to quickly adjust their own ideas to meet those expectations. Often when asked about who this or that project is aimed at, I can hear "at everyone of course". And I find this a challenge to explain to people that there is no such thing as "everyone", because every single product has a specific purpose and equally specific target audience. And it's this particular understanding, that differentiates regular developers from those who will become the successful producers.

And of course, every developer team should learn how to properly plan ahead, and moreover, be able to execute each one of those steps into reality. That is why i don't necessarily understand such generalizations as "community of startupers" or "professional startuper". Is this some kind of new profession? You are only a startuper while you are working on the basic idea and search for investors, once the funding had been secured and the project launched - you are already a businessman. It's a perfect model. Most people can not achieve the ideal, largely because they don't know how to prioritize and plan ahead».