Barents entrepreneurs match-making
Maria Yarandaykina is hoping to find companies and IT-students to cooperate with when starting up her technology company. This weekend she was one of 90 aspiring entrepreneurs from Norway, Finland, Russia and Sweden that gathered in Kirkenes for match-making.
The event was was part of the Kolarctic project Young Innovative Entrepreneurs, a business development project that aims to make it more attractive for young entrepreneurs to stay and do business as well as initiate projects in the Barents region. Advisor Morten Brugård at the Norwegian Barents Secretariat is project coordinator for the Norwegian participants. The Barents Secretariat supported the conference with 240 000 NOK.
One of the participants in the conference was Maria Yarandaykina from Arkhangelsk. She studies international business relations in Oulo, Finland and plans to start her own company called SuprView, which will develop an application that uses augumented reality in the field of constructions.
“With this application you can see how a house or another construction will look like in its surroundings before you start building it”, she explains. “For example can city councils use it to show the public what a building will look like when it is finished".
The match-making conference was Maria’s first event in the Young Innovative Entrepreneurs project, but already halfway out in the first day of the conference she said it looked very promising:
“So far everything looks very nice and I like the way everything is organized.” Maria came to Kirkenes to find other companies to do business with and IT-students that can participate in developing her product. She had already found some potential candidates when BarentsObserver spoke to her on the first day of the conference.
Watch video from the match-making conference from DT Lab.
Project Manager Morten Brugård from the Norwegian Barents Secretariat is very pleased with the conference: “It was fantastic”, he says to BarentsObserver. “In the feedback forms the participants says that they have learned a lot about innovation, how to create new products and how to later make money on them, which is an important part of being an entrepreneur.”
See photos from the event here.
The Kolarctic ENPI CBC project Young Innovative Entrepreneurs was started in 2012 and will continue throughout 2014.
Text: Trude Pettersen. This article was published for BarentsObserver