Small Business Growth At The Municipality Of Moskovsky District – day 1 in St. Petersburg

The Journey to St.Petersburg

The trip began early this morning, which mean that I caught the first bus to the airport at 5.10. Before this I had manage to take a shower, but my stomach was screaming for food and a cup of coffee would definitely have done wonders.

When I got the airport there was no line to the check-in, because most people check in online nowadays. That is people with a printer, since it apparently is required to print the boarding pass at home if you check in online. How are people who only travel occasionally supposed to keep up?

Anyway, since my bank had told me that they could not make a money exchange to Russian Rubel, I wanted to change money at the airport. Only at the airport I found out that the exchange office was closed and I was on my way to Russia without any cash, great! Instead I focused on my next mission food, which was more difficult than expected since airport food cannot manage the combination sandwich without meat and seeds, it was either or. So I ended out with two mini-yogurts. But as I had a Starbucks coffee in my hand I was not too disappointed.

Anyway, my journey to St. Petersburg was in general very uneventful. I had a layover in wonderful Denmark, a great idea since I got both a sandwich without meat and seeds and a few hundred Rubels. And by the time I got on the next flight I had no worries.

However, my luck was about to change again as I got in the airport in St. Petersburg, only to find out that they had lost my luggage somewhere. Later I found out that at least from Finland there are only three flights a week to St.Petersburg, so I could only hope that this was not the case from Denmark.

Anyway without a change of clothes or any idea of where the rest of my team was, I sat down in the car with the Non-English speaking driver who was going to get me to the next meeting. (I had to come a day later than the others because I had to work Monday)

The first meeting

The first meeting was at the Young Entrepreneurs at the municipality of Moskovsky district of Saint-Petersburg. And the first thing that you should know, is that in the Nordic countries we mean young people, under 30 perhaps who are entrepreneurs. Here they have another definition; a young entrepreneur is someone who recently started a business, no matter the age of the person.

The municipality of Moskovsky’s main goal is growth of small business.  Today there are more than 16000 small business and 4500 individual entrepreneurs in the district, which have 300.000 inhabitants. The district has the highest quantity of small businesses in St.Petersburg and there are entrepreneurs in all different areas.

At the municipality we got a few presentations about different programs that the Moskovsky district has been working on. One that started this September is a new grant program for small businesses.

The grant program is open for anyone with a startup company. The business owners can apply to get 70 % (max 300.000 RUB) of their budget paid for from this government program, and this is money given to them, meaning that they do not have to pay them back. The only requirements are that the owners have a business plan and that they attended seminars in business development. Ofcourse the grant givers track the money and the receivers have to be able to explain every Rubel spent. I found this program very inspiring, so far 48 people have got the grant which gives them a great opportunity to succeed with their small business.

This is only one of the programs that they provide. The municipality of Moskovsky has a lot of smaller goals to help them improve the growth of small business. For example they arrange conferences and seminars to teach entrepreneurs about how different thing work, such as renting offices, taxes and entrepreneurial rights. They also participate in the law making for entrepreneurship. Another great service is that they always have the door open if entrepreneurs want to come and businesses idea or problems etc.

All this is only a few examples of that the government and the municipality of Moskovsky are working on, and they are all great example of how much Russia has changed during the resent years.

Another interesting organization that was presented was teenage +. It is an organization for teenagers between the age of 13-19 where the main goal is to develop leader qualities in young people. Something I found very promising. This goal is reached by letting young people participate in for example social and charity events, such as visiting old people, plant trees and keep the city and the playgrounds clean. The organization is founded by private contacts such as entrepreneurs and public organizations and as mention before the municipality of Moskovsky. The organization also arranges seminars, training and summer camps where the young members can get more theoretical knowledge and practice.

After the meeting a few of the participants took us on a sightseeing trip in a small bus around the Moskovsky district.

The evening

As I arrived fashionable late to the trip, the meeting I wrote about was the only one I took part in on Tuesday, and I must say that I found it very fascinating. They have a lot of good ideas and concepts, even though the grant for example does not really help entrepreneurs that do not have funds to cover the rest etc.

After the meeting we left our Russian hosts and went to eat a three course meal at a restaurant near the hotel, and even though I could not wait to see the rest of the city, I was too tired to begin with that after the meal. So instead my team mates and I spent the rest of the evening at the hotel catching up. It is amazing how many business ideas we could come up with only by having a conversation.

And for you who might wonder, our third participant Michael could not join us for the trip due to problems with the visa.

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