Student Startup Accelerators: Why Young Founders Are the Future of Innovation

Yesterday I took part in the final of HSE Fest, organized by the Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg — the largest student startup accelerator in the country. I was there as a jury member representing Rostelecom.

Here’s the thing: there is hope.

There are startups that are:

• not copies of copies
• not yet another interface slapped on top of a neural network that someone builds in a day on Replit
• not yet another aggregator of something nobody needs

There are projects that could actually take off. And the most important part — they’re being built by students. Students who freeze up during pitches and forget their lines. Students who can barely hold back tears when they receive a 250,000-ruble prize. Students with fire in their eyes. Students who, instead of bar-hopping, are sitting down to write code, solder circuit boards, and build prototypes.

By the way, the photo shows an MVP of a tea-brewing machine. Pretty cool, right?

Look at the group photo. In a couple of years, someone in that picture is going to raise a few hundred million. Dollars.

As Jobs once said, speaking to students: Stay hungry. Stay foolish.