I realized that startup is a type of business in which an entrepreneur is really in demand and can realize himself. 500 Global paid attention to every startup’s leader as a person, as an entrepreneur and as a business driver. They constantly emphasized the role of co-founders, a team and high-lighted the importance of using this for the benefit of the project

Emotionally, the accelerator is its people mainly. Those 30 teams that we managed to talk to in the end became one flock. Nobody knows which of us will die tomorrow, and 90% will. But in any case, we can be useful to each other, perhaps create a new business even. That's what is called networking

Sber500 Accelerator is probably the best acceleration program in Russia today. They not only give you the chance to get help and expertise from 500 Global mentors and experts but also make awesome matchmaking with top Russian enterprises who need your product. During the program, we've onboarded several companies from the Sber ecosystem as well as some other well-known companies. The Sber500 brand is the quality mark that shows that your product is fundable and sellable. All the program is dynamic and fast-paced and you have to be ready to be fully committed to it, but it is definitely worth it!

I wouldn't call our product approachable in terms of its compatibility with sales best practices, or growth hacking mechanics. Yet, somehow, we'd beed very surprised to make it into final "Top-25" batch this year. Only later we understood that the Sber500 team had the same idea as we did: challenge only makes it more interesting.


In the next eight weeks our expectations had been exceeded numerous times. Instead of trying out some universal go-2-market playbook, our mentors had us rework the product value proposition, our approach to sales, the way we view our audience, and how we reach out from the ground up using expertise from the mentors around the globe.


Corporate acceleration programmes and innovation labs are one of the key sales channels for us, so in the last two years we have seen every major corporations' startup acceleration track. Sber500 takes it to a whole new level!


I haven't seen another place where you could rework your sales strategy with a B2B expert from Canada, build client personas with one of the design thinking founding fathers, adjust unit-economy model with one of the ZenJob founders, and then pitch your project to several funds and corporations – all of that in one day.


The project showed significant growth not just in term of business metrics, closed deals, and leads in the funnel, but as a team we had a much deeper expertise, better understanding our product and the market. Founders, sign up! The last, yet important piece of advice: don't forget to do your homework before the deadline during the bootcamp! :)