The customer wanted a picture. The startup wanted to sell the future. Zarbo, a Russian team building augmented-reality tools for online shops, had an appealing proposition: let shoppers inspect a product from every angle and virtually place it in their room. Then its founders began asking customers what they actually needed.
Some buyers were less interested in virtual try-ons than in making product photographs cheaper. A billiard table must be assembled before it can be photographed. A three-dimensional model can generate images without that ceremony. The technology had not changed. The reason to buy it had.
- IIDF combines venture investment with product and sales acceleration.
- Sprint 2.0 gives eligible Russian technology teams a free, twelve-week program.
- The practical lesson: find the buyer’s costly problem before polishing the pitch.
The billiard table problem
Zarbo’s June 2023 accelerator account contains a confession worth framing: “We were doing what we wanted, not what the client needed.” Founder Alexander Krasnoyarov describes how the team, accustomed to commissioned development, started gathering feedback from the open market during Sprint.
The team learned to explain its economics, adapt to customers’ existing workflows and stop opening conversations with its own biography. Its reported results included eight new B2B customers, ₽425,000 in income and contracts worth ₽850,000. Those last two figures measure different things. A signature is not cash in the bank.
That small distinction captures the useful side of the Internet Initiatives Development Fund. Under the rather bureaucratic name sits an organization concerned with an intensely ordinary difficulty: engineers can make something work before anyone has agreed to pay for it.
Six billion rubles, then the hard part
The Agency for Strategic Initiatives established IIDF in March 2013. By July, entrepreneurs could register projects, and the founding announcement described ₽6 billion under management. Kirill Varlamov became its director. The ambition extended beyond writing checks to education, expert support and improvements to the machinery of investing.
IIDF subsequently grew several connected businesses. Its investment operation takes stakes in technology companies. Its accelerator works on products and sales. Corporate teams buy expertise in innovation and product development. International sales specialists help businesses choose markets and establish repeatable sales abroad.
The institutional backing matters. In January 2020, Rostelecom announced a ₽2 billion investment in the subsidiary IIDF Invest, with a planned completed stake of 31.03%. This was capital for the investment operation, including new projects and existing holdings. It was not a customer paying an accelerator tuition bill.
Two doors, two different prices
The general investment route currently advertises checks from ₽3 million to ₽200 million. Early-stage funding ranges up to ₽35 million for a stated 5%-25% stake; terms are individual. Applicants need Russian registration, a product, first customer revenue and at least 25% ownership by Russian citizens. The fund seeks a minority stake.
Sprint 2.0 is a separate proposition. Supported by Russia’s digital ministry and financed through a federal program, it offers twelve weeks of acceleration without a participation fee. Selection remains competitive. Teams need a Russian legal entity, an MVP, at least two people and resources to complete the work.
The cost is therefore ownership on one route and a substantial commitment of working time on the other. Sprint combines diagnosis, weekly tracker meetings, expert consultations and a demo day for teams that meet their goals. Free admission does not perform the customer interviews for you.
The budget holder enters the room
Brand Talk offers a more recent example. The reputation-monitoring service entered Sprint 2.0 with a finished product and an unclear sales approach. Its September 2026 account describes a shift from developing the tool toward quantifying its value, entering new segments and securing five pilot projects in three months.
Sweb Tech’s May 2026 case tackles another familiar problem: the person who appreciates a product may not command the budget. The occupational-safety training business sharpened different propositions for safety managers and production directors. Saving administrative time appealed to one; reducing production disruption mattered to the other.
The team also changed sales incentives from revenue toward gross profit, tied to more profitable products. These are participant accounts published by the accelerator, rather than a controlled study of its effectiveness. Their value lies in the decisions they describe: ask about budgets, identify the decision maker and measure the economics of the offer.
“We were doing what we wanted, not what the client needed.”Alexander Krasnoyarov, Zarbo founder
Translated from his Sprint case study
A graduate becomes the partner
IIDF’s corporate practice began in 2016; product-development expertise joined the innovation operation in 2023. The center now reports more than 150 corporate programs. The same customer-discovery problem evidently survives the move from a startup desk to a corporate meeting room.
In 2017, X5 and IIDF announced a retail partnership that offered startups expert advice and access to anonymized information covering more than three billion purchases. The attraction was a place to test assumptions against a real commercial operation.
July 2026 supplied a neat sequel. IIDF and Metascan, a portfolio company since 2018, announced a ₽300 million cybersecurity fund. Alongside capital and acceleration, the proposed offer includes access to Metascan’s corporate customer base. A former beneficiary had become a partner supplying the very thing young B2B companies struggle to acquire: buyer connections.
Put the hypothesis on the calendar
For a founder, IIDF fits between financing and commercial execution. An angel investor is an alternative source of capital; another accelerator may offer coaching. IIDF brings investment, structured tracking and corporate work into the same orbit. Its programs still have different entry requirements and terms.
The copyable habit is modest. Choose a customer segment. Interview it. Write down the expensive problem in the buyer’s language. Run a small sales experiment and review what happened next week. An idea without an MVP will not satisfy Sprint’s published criteria; a business without first revenue will not satisfy the general investment page. Even eligible teams must make time to change their assumptions. The billiard table will not assemble itself.