Cyril Vart

Before our annual analysis of the strategy of a tech giant, we wanted to share with you the reason why we're so enthusiastic about the Russian technology market.

Looking at the main sources of global news, you won't find many positive article on Russia: just check out Wall Street Journal or New York Times and you will get an idea.

But that didn't prevent us from looking behind the curtain... and what we found was surprising. Not only surprising in a positive manner, but also in a very promising way: there is a very fast expanding digital market in Russia, that not only is catching up on western level, but is also extremely innovative.

When we found out, we decided that we had to be part of it and we opened an office in Moscow. Our Russian office is now helping companies bridge the gap between them and the Russian market.

Today, we are releasing an extensive market study that will show why we are committed to Russia, and why you should have a different look on the Russian market.

Read the Study




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Key ideas

Why should you read this presentation?

- You still think that the Russian market is underdeveloped and that Russian startups are only copycats
- You are hesitating on expanding your business to Russia
- You have heard interesting stories about the Russian digital market, and you want to learn more
- You are Russian and you think that no Westerner understands what is going on there

At the end of the presentation, we give you 3 reasons why you should expand to Russia.

Did you know?

- Russia accounts for the largest pool of internet users in Europe, before Germany.
- Russians use more mobile payment solutions than UK citizens.
- Online advertising has already overtaken print advertising in Russia, a year before the US.

Debunking prejudices

You will dive into the dynamism of the Russian digital market and will discover that

- This dynamism is not superficial: it is based on a deeply-rooted culture of technology and science.
- Even if the overall market is still emerging, it has strong pillars to stand on: role-models such as Yandex or Mail.ru, and a diversified network of investors.
- The ecosystem is boiling, with many successful adaptations of western best-practices and a lot of local innovations.

And finally we will share with you our vision of the Russian technology specialties.

Amazon just announced the launch of Amazon Simple Workflow (SWF). An API that allows anyone to use their services to manage distributed workflow between applications & services….

The main question, if you are a business manager is: "Why should I give a damn?"

The answer is: because it is a perfect illustration of what the API model can bring to a business if you understand and accept it.

What just happened is that you can now build "amazon quality level" applications relying on Amazon infrastructure, entirely at variable costs, and delegate to AWS the tedious, costly, and complicated tasks.

Setting-up and most importantly, making work any workflows based service is one of the most complicated challenges when building professional task management software, and it requires special skills in hosting, infrastructure management, error handling, communications, etc... And if you want to send a task from one service to another, it gets worse.

So if I am a startup with a cool idea (ie. A freemium approval process manager, having a document circulate for approval between several persons not on the same building, company and timezone) I'll spend a lot of resources on trying to build a robust hosting and workflow management system. If I have 50K€ to build my prototype or beta, I will spend at least half of it on solving tricky timeout, errors, hosting & pinging problems... and probably fail somewhat.

But my first customer might want something that works on a "mission critical" level before using it, not something mostly working. So they will say "good potential, but not reliable enough", and even with the best design and user experience, we know how this ends.  No one needs an almost working product.

Using SWF's API, I can focus on my front end user experience, have my php or ruby junior buddy developer develop it, and not care or be encumbered with the "big IT" problems. Amazon already solved these, and I can access it, use it, embed it. Chances are I'll get to market faster, and have a much more robust beta on the market. This is a huge competitive advantage. My resources will be focused and spent on my core. And at project start stage, this is critical.This is the type of API that can allow quick and robust prototyping. We should know, understand and adopt it. When discussing a project or a new product, let's keep that in mind. Using API's instead of proprietary developments is the "startup way", and how we can gain speed, agility, traction and efficiency in new products development implementation.

This is how digital natives think : "Api-ify" to other expert services, collaborate with someone doing something very well, not code propriety (and burden, and costs). Win on your core competency, fast and focused.

As a business owner, of course, you have to trust Amazon. Should you?

I believe so, but will tell you why, and much more on this a bit later.