HSE Business Club Held its First Entrepreneurial Forum
The event was dedicated to Russian Entrepreneurship Day, which is celebrated on May 26. The guests of the forum were not only students of the HSE University, but also students from other Moscow universities. They were able to find out about internships in partner companies of the forum and personally interact with successful Russian businesses.
Business start-ups, "black swans", delegating authority, social impact, time management, personal qualities contributing to success, in-house production - these and other topics were raised during lectures by speakers at the forum. They were Russian entrepreneurs who founded their own companies. Among them was Evgeny Demin, CEO and co-founder of Splat. He told young colleagues how and why his team moved from distribution to in-house production.
"We intuitively realised that the quality of the product had to be impeccable. And you shouldn't sacrifice that for the sake of saving costs, because that won't end well," he says. - I mean, you have to make cool things and make them technologically efficient so that they are not expensive, but you should not sacrifice the perfect combination of factors for the sake of making them cheaper. Details mean a lot, so we strongly decided to make cool things so that our loved ones and we like them.
The world is full of mediocre things, let's make beautiful and cool ones
The Q&A session with Ascona founder Vladimir Sedov was no less interesting. He once again reminded the students that time is an entrepreneur's most precious resource, so they need to pay special attention to time management. The businessman also answered why a company needs to be vertically integrated: "We always seek to enter a business if we see an opportunity to be vertically integrated, otherwise it is difficult to compete because it allows us to feel much more flexible in the market. It also gives you a 1000% level of knowledge of the industry you are in. By doing only one niche, you only know your product from that niche perspective and you have no in-depth knowledge, which means the company becomes vulnerable - and so does your business."
In addition to lectures from businessmen, guests were also introduced to the forum's partners. Representatives of OZON, Changellenge, KPMG, VkusVill, Ancor, HeadHunter, ASI CMI, Puma, Sber, MTS and Netology told students about career opportunities in their companies.
"VkusVill is a young, actively developing company, ready for cooperation, experiments, new ideas, and HSE students are just that: young, active, creative specialists. Accordingly, [we] could have an interesting collaboration," explained Olga Kravchenko, a representative of VkusVill.
Guests pointed out the usefulness of the forum. "I have never been to a business event like this before, because I am a first-year student. But the event is good: very cool guests, a lot of insights," shared his impressions Daniil Morozov, a first-year MIEM student. - The last one that stood out to me was an insight about delegation: about letting people make mistakes. Usually, when you outsource something, you try to participate in the work and help, but here I heard that you have to give people the right to make mistakes, and I believe that this is the right thing to do. Daniel also confessed that it was for the sake of such events that he enrolled in the Higher School of Economics.
Margarita Lazorenko, the chief coordinator of the HSE Business Club, stressed that the student organisation is always happy to see fellow entrepreneurs from other universities at its events.
Margarita Lazarenko, Chief Coordinator, HSE Business Club
The most important goal of our forum is to create a dialogue platform where big businesses can share their experience with young entrepreneurs who are still at the very beginning of their journey. We have chosen our speakers long and carefully: we have been working for over a year. Most of them are very interested in events of this kind: they are all willing to share their experiences.