My background

For my Bachelor’s, I studied management at one of the top universities in St. Petersburg. We had a rather good program with a solid theoretical base, but I didn’t have enough practical skills once I graduated. I’d had a dream of starting my own business, but the best way to learn is by doing. And we had no such opportunities as Bachelor’s students. When I was in my second or third year, I took part in a university accelerator where I worked on an online platform for joint investments in real estate. But it wasn’t a success: there weren’t many participants, while the acceleration program turned out to be underdeveloped: there were not enough experts or support from the university. Because of this, most projects didn’t go any further than the accelerator.

As a student, I got to intern at several companies. I had internships at Rostelecom (in the corporate culture section) and Evolve (a startup that develops a bot for women’s mental health); and I also worked as a content manager at a crypto exchange. But this wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. 

After graduation, I didn’t stop trying to start my own project: my friend and I launched a paid parking project. However, I was eager to do something more complex and exciting than this – but at that point, I had no experience nor support from more experienced startupers. Within three years, our project ended.

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How and why I got into a Master’s program

This experience made me realize that if I wanted to have a business, I’d have to learn to run it more systematically and in practice. I didn’t feel like taking an online course as I wanted to not only gain the knowledge and skills I lacked but also make new connections, become a part of a community, meet experts, put together a team, and start my own project. As a result, I decided to apply for a Master’s program because it offered both the expertise and the environment. 

I had several options, including the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg and Moscow and Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU). I studied programs’ curricula and talked to current program students. What I learned is that these universities were strong in theoretical aspects, but, again, not in practical ones.

The High-Tech Business Management program at ITMO was different. I was able to learn more about its curriculum in advance and talk to the program’s students and even its head: I knew some people via mutual friends and the head’s contacts were on the program’s page. Its description promised a heavy focus on IT in business, namely online marketing, remote employee communication, IT services market, and IT product development. 

I managed to get a tuition-free position at ITMO, so I didn’t pay for my studies here and even get a stipend every month. 

I applied through the Portfolio Contest. It was helpful that I had some work experience (the parking project) and was involved in creative initiatives at a sports and culture club when I was a Bachelor’s student. For instance, I helped organize events and ran channels and blogs where we posted interviews with our teachers and students, as well as our news parody project.
 

What I gained by doing a Master’s

Acquired practical experience

It was full on practice from the very start. During the first month, we had onboarding – an adaptation process during which we presented our business ideas. As the jury picked the top 50, we had a month to work on them in teams of five. Then, we presented our projects; and the top 10 advanced to the product workshop stage.

During the onboarding, we could both work on a suggested project or pitch our own idea. I presented my project TripFlash that made it into the top 50 in the first round. TripFlash is a virtual travel agent that can plan travels based on one’s preferences, budget, and destination points. The agent can pick routes, hotels, restaurants, and activities, thus making travels easier. 

We managed to make an MVP and create a Telegram bot. Though our project didn’t succeed in the final round, we gained some priceless experience: we took our project to the MVP stage and presented the pilot. 

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We also had project and product workshops during our studies. These are educational classes at which students are engaged in cases from major companies: we could develop bots, analyze ready-made products and their target audience, or create our own projects. Personally, I worked on a corporate game for Gazprom Neft that was meant to attract students at the company’s fairs. 

Also thanks to the workshops, I had a chance to try myself as a project manager for a relationship app: there, romantic partners could play minigames, take surveys, and analyze their behaviors and compatibility.

At ITMO, I learned to work in a team, maintain an audience’s interest, distribute work in teams, keep my motivation up, come up with new project ideas, and studied more about laws and financing. 

Launched my own startup 

During my Master’s, I started working on my startup named Gamebored – a service for creating custom board games. The service allows users to purchase popular games – be that Munchkin, Mafia, or Alias – with their own photos or any other illustrations. We presented this project as part of our course about the tools for business project development and launch, and one of our mentors became Elizaveta Moshurova, a lecturer at the Faculty of Technological Management and Innovations. We are now at the mid-point between an MVP and full-fledged launch: we have a landing page for our product and first sales that should beat our initial investments, 20,000 rubles. We’re building a website – but so far, the service is available as a bot in Telegram.

We’re aiming for meme- and anti-marketing; board games are part of geek culture and our audience are Gen Zs and millennials. That’s why we’re planning to focus on humor. We’d like to promote our product via social media and hope to have several thousands of followers by the end of summer.

When I was about to start my Master’s, I wanted to launch two business projects, so that I’d have at least one that would take off and make a stable profit. Once I have my first launch in the fall, I’m going to start working on another one. I’m not yet sure what it will be, but I want it to be somehow related to high technology and my hobbies – camping, sports, or videography. I’m going to take it to the ITMO Accelerator, present at different platforms, and find investors. 
 

I believe if I hadn’t been active on my projects, all my knowledge and skills would quickly fade away and become outdated. If you want to be an entrepreneur but have your doubts about doing a Master’s – I’d recommend thinking up a project in advance that you would be excited to work on and bring to the market. I had several offers from startups I wasn’t interested in – I knew I’d burn out there soon, so I always try to choose projects close to my heart. 

Made valuable connections

Starting from the onboarding, students communicate a lot with each other: create teams, work side by side, take on different roles, as well as learn to negotiate and find compromises.

There are also regular events at ITMO where you can meet students of other programs and find new team members for your project. Not so long ago, I was at ITMO Startup Night. There, students can pitch their startups and receive feedback, along with the first collaboration offers. Such events are also great places to meet students of different majors: designers, developers, biochemists, as well as optics and robotics specialists.

We built our team thanks to a course we had and also the people we knew at ITMO who helped us find a developer and an operating manager for our project.